One dead in Ohio

For the first time in living memory, a presidential candidate for a major party has received the enthusiastic endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan; one prominent former member of that fraternity — a Grand Wizard, I think: or was it a Grand Dragon? — is running for the US Senate. Members of the Black Lives Matter movement did not riot in Cleveland, but that is only because they were nearly always surrounded by troops of mounted policemen. It shouldn’t be surprising that some of us are looking back with hope and trepidation at the American Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

One of the most remarkable books the movement produced is this 1973 family memoir, newly reissued with an afterword by the author. Paul Spike, an American-born old Fleet Street hand, is the son of the Revd Robert Spike, a pastor and activist who was found bludgeoned to death by a janitor in 1966 in Columbus, Ohio.