- Born
- Died
- Birth nameJesse Hill Ford Jr.
- Jesse Hill Ford was a product of the South he was born in, and his death a product of the honesty of his literary picture of race relations in that South. He was best known for his second novel, for which he also wrote the screenplay, The Liberation of L.B. Jones (1970). This story of the murder of a black undertaker by the white policeman with whom his wife had an affair made Ford's reputation and made him wealthy, but the people of his home town, Humboldt, Tennessee, felt betrayed as they recognized details of an actual event in that town. His next novel also dealt with racial conflict, and following its publication he received numerous death threats. Against this background, one night in 1970 he saw a strange car park on the shoulder of his driveway; Ford shot twice, killing a young black soldier who had picked this spot for a romantic stop with his girlfriend. Ford was tried for murder. He was found not guilty, but did not fully recover from the event; he finished the novel he was working on but never wrote again. He underwent open heart surgery in March and on June 1 1996 he took his own life.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Bruce Cameron <dumarest@midcoast.com>
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