May 29, 1938

Above, what Los Angeles was reading in 1938--and a shoutout to the Zombie Reading Program over at This Book Is for You.... "When there's no more room in closed stacks, the out-of-print will rise up and walk the earth." At left, a curious and sensational murder case. Arrested in Chicago on charges of killing a white woman with a brick, an African American named Robert Nixon confesses to a series of similar killings in Los Angeles. Nixon (above, a typical headline from the Chicago Tribune) is eventually convicted and electrocuted while his alleged accomplice, Howard Green, is extradited to Los Angeles in the fatal beating of a 12-year-old Marguerite Worden while Nixon killed her mother, Edna. Email me