In the Pines

When historian Grace Elizabeth Hale was a college student, her mother told her a story about how Hale’s grandfather, the white sheriff in a poor county in Mississippi, heroically stood up to a white mob and tried to prevent the lynching of a Black man. In Hale’s book, In The Pines, reviewed by writer and photographer Matt Witt, Hale recounts her investigation into whether this story about her grandfather was actually true.