December 4, 1947. Elmore Bolling, a prominent Black community leader in Lowndes County, Alabama, was attacked by two white men on the highway near his home. The men shot him six times in the chest with a pistol, and once in the back with a shotgun. On hearing the shots, his five-year-old daughter, Jo, ran with her mother and brother and found him dead in a ditch.
For most of her life, Jo and her family believed the myth perpetuated by white people—and even by Rosa Parks—about why Mr. Bolling was killed. But in her 60s, Jo’s curiosity was piqued when someone shared a newspaper article from 1947 that she had never seen. It described her father’s murder as a lynching. That set her on a ten year process of research, revealing what really happened to her father, and piecing together the investigation of the crime that law enforcement refused to conduct.
In her book, The Penalty For Success, she tells the story of her father’s life: his genius for business; his faith and investment in his community; his marriage to Bertha Mae, mother of his seven children and partner in his businesses; and his persistence and success in the face of daunting barriers. A picture of Lowndes County from Reconstruction to post-World War II emerges of a society complicated by the strictures of Jim Crow, but not always in predictable ways. Jo shows that it was her father’s very success that drew white people to kill her father, following a common practice of lynching Black competitors to maintain white supremacy.
What People Are Saying
“This book…is not simply an historical account of a tragic Jim Crow era murder, or even just a story of a daughter’s quest for answers to her father’s death. What is captured herein is a penetrating look at the collateral consequences of racial terrorism.”
— Hassan Kwame Jeffries, professor of history at The Ohio State University, and author of Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt
“Josephine McCall has captured in fascinating detail the story of the tragic Jim Crow era lynching of her prominent-businessman father, Elmore Bolling. The narrative not only provides a moving biography of his life and legacy, it also offers a window into the harsh realities of the segregated South where no laws respected or protected people of color. It is truly a thought provoking and compelling work that has all the trappings (sex, crime, violence, villains, scandals, rapes, murders, infidelity, and interracial relationships) of a great book, documentary, and perhaps even a movie.”
— Jerome A. Ennels, Author: Wisdom of Eagles: A History of Maxwell Air Force Base; The Tuskegee Airmen: An Illustrated History, 1939 -1949; Those Daring Young Men
“Displaying the intensity of a skilled surgeon, Josephine Bolling McCall uses an assortment of interviews and primary and secondary sources to resurrect in excruciating detail the life and turbulent times of her father, Elmore Bolling. Readers will note how the retired educator separates fact from fiction to recount the death of her well-to-do-businessman father during a period of Alabama history many would prefer to forget.”
— Dr. Richard Bailey, author: They Too Call Alabama Home: African American Profiles, 1800-1999; Neither Carpetbaggers nor Scalawags; Black Officeholders during the Reconstruction of Alabama, 1867-1878