Incident at Ashton

Republished with a foreword by John Tisdale, director of TCU’s School of Journalism, the late Jay Milner’s novel is a riveting portrayal of a scenario that unhappily mirrored real-life incidents throughout the South in the mid-twentieth century.

In Ashton, a fictional town in the deep South, an elderly black man walks into the courthouse one day and makes a simple request. He wants to register to vote. At first the clerk is confused. Never before in the town’s history had a Negro displayed such arrogance. The clerk tries to discourage him, but the old man is adamant. A few days later they pull his body from the river, a gaping wound in his head. Only a few years earlier, this incident would have gone practically unnoticed in Ashton. But that time has passed. Phil Arrow, a young newspaperman, demands a full measure of justice from the people of his town.