Author and journalist John Pruitt is coming to the Center for Life Enrichment on Wednesday, June 19 to discuss his new book, “Tell It True” – and, consequently, to talk about race relations and injustices in the U.S., which the book deals with in a fictional form.
Fiction, he said, is an optimal way of telling a story because of the freedom it affords. The book is based on real events, though Pruitt has fictionalized them, giving it all more spice and pizazz than the real events had.
“Fiction gives the writer freedom to create a great story,” he said. “Historic fiction can make history more accessible to people. Fiction, when done authentically, when true to the time and character and place, is a tremendous benefit to those wanting to learn about history.”
The book centers around a pair of journalists covering a murder in rural Georgia. The plot also features a civil rights leader’s struggle to best a Black Power challenger, and there’s an election subplot involving a “virulent racist” villain squaring off with another candidate who’s forced to compromise his values, according to the CLE program.
“It’s based on a real episode which took place July 11, 1964,” he said. “The murder of Lemuel Penn, a serviceman. Ultimately, it was the first prosecution of the Civil Rights movement in 1964. The jury acquitted the Klansmen who did it, but they were later prosecuted federally, under the Civil Rights Act. They should’ve been executed.”
Pruitt’s book also draws from his own experience as a reporter, which he did as a job for decades at various TV stations and other jobs, including 15 years spent at WXIA-TV and then 27 at WSB in Atlanta.
According to the CLE program, some of his most celebrated work as a reporter included covering the civil rights movement as it was happening and the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In later years, he would also cover several Presidential inaugurations and the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers.
He retired in 2010 and now with the book, hopes to articulate the truths he remembers experiencing himself in years past.
Pruitt recalled being in the heat of the moment at the time the actual Civil Rights movement was happening, through street protests and unrest until the slow change at the higher levels of government. He described reporting on events as leaders at the time slowly “understood what the future was going to be.”
“They knew resistance was a foolish way to go,” he said.
Pruitt said he could see parallels to the current day’s fractured society, saying the events he wrote about “could be translated to the challenges in today’s society.”
In Pruitt’s estimation, some of the gridlock of the divisiveness today comes down to the “fractured” media, where everyone is able to watch or read different things based on what they already believe. “We’re all siloed.”
He said things weren’t easy in the 60s, either, as people were still slowly moving past ideas now considered regressive.
“It was incredibly difficult to have a meeting of the minds,” he said. “It’s hard to logically debate allowing African Americans the full benefit of citizenship. Young people have no comprehension of what segregation was like – they can’t comprehend it. It shows how far we’ve come, though we have far to go as well.”
Ultimately Pruitt said he’s hoping people will find ways to “walk a mile in the other guy’s shoes” on some divisive issues today.
“I hope the book will provoke discussion about the aspects of those days, the challenges we faced,” he said. “Hopefully people will recall how we got through that time, basically nonviolently.”
Pruitt will be the featured speaker at the CLE on Wednesday, June 19 from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. It costs $70 for members and $80 for non-members.