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Book Signing: Good Kids, Bad City by Kyle Swenson
Wednesday, February 20 @ 7:00pmMeet author, Washington Post reporter, and Cleveland native Kyle Swenson, touring with his book Good Kids, Bad City.
After 39 years – at the age of 60 – Wiley Bridgeman walked out of Cuyahoga County Justice Center arm-in-arm with his brother Kwame Ajamu. After a cumulative 106 years serving time for a crime they didn’t commit, the Bridgeman brothers and their best friend, Rickey Jackson, were suddenly free men (and soon to be millionaires from reparations) after their murder conviction was thrown out based on the key witness—after decades—confessing to false testimony.
In Good Kids, Bad City: A Story of Race and Wrongful Conviction in America, Kyle Swenson tells the stunning story of how three African American teenagers in Cleveland were convicted of murder in 1975 at a Cut-Rate corner shop based almost solely on the testimony of a 12-year-old paperboy, Ed Vernon, only to be proved innocent. It is the story of a Midwestern city’s struggle against larger forces of deindustrialization and corruption, and a story of race in America against a flawed justice system. Timely and insightful, gritty and empathetic, destined to become a new true crime classic, Good Kids, Bad City focuses on a particular case to reveal larger truths about our society—how it fails and yet how individuals rise above adversity to help us collectively improve.
This event is free. Seating will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.
$3 beer, $6 wine, Crust Pizza, plenty of off-street parking
