G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1996

The appearance of Alex Haley’s Roots as a television miniseries in the 1970s stimulated many black Americans to search for their family origins in slavery and Africa. A similar passion drove a group of Floridians to excavate the layers of sediment that kept hidden from all but a few of their relatives their secret past. Uncovering the buried treasure of their heritage, however, did not require digging into slavery or the continent from which their ancestors came; rather it meant a journey ofsome sixty years back to a location only a hundred or so miles from where most of them currendy lived. Through their investigations, they sought to remedy a brutal injustice perpetrated against their families and reclaim the history that six decades of silence had robbed from them. Michael D’Orso’s recent book, Like Judgment Day, is a written record of this once buried history.