The Louisiana Tech University History Department welcomes Dr. Jason Morgan Ward for a talk about his book, “Hanging Bridge: Racial Violence and America’s Civil Rights Century,” which has been recently published by Oxford University Press. Morgan’s talk will take place at the Lincoln Parish Library’s Events Center at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, September 22.  All interested parties are invited to attend. In “Hanging Bridge,” Ward examines the legacy of racial violence and the fate of the civil rights movement in Jim Crow-era Clarke County, Mississippi, viewed by many observers as the “meanest corner” in the United States.  Through a combination of elegant prose and painstaking research, Ward shines a light on “one of the darkest places in American history” while providing ample testimony of “the resiliency of the human spirit.” An associate professor of history at Mississippi State University who specializes in the history of civil rights and racial politics in the American South, Ward earned his doctorate degree at Yale University.  His previous works include Defending White Democracy: The Making of the Segregationist Movement and the Remaking of Racial Politics, 1936-1965 (University of North Carolina Press, 2011) as well as numerous articles and book reviews. Ward’s talk is jointly sponsored by the Louisiana Tech History Department, the Lambda-Rho chapter of the Phi Alpha Theta history honor society, and the Lincoln Parish Library. For additional information, contact Dr. David M. Anderson, associate professor of history at 318-257-2872 or by email at history@latech.edu.  The event is free and open to the public.