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The Jump-out Boys subscriber-only content

J. Robert Lennon

  • Tulia: Race, Cocaine and Corruption in a Small Texas Town by Nate Blakeslee  Buy this book

On a summer morning in July 1999, a massive drug bust took place in the Texas panhandle town of Tulia. In a few hours, beginning before dawn, the town’s police force, the county sheriff and his deputies, a group of state troopers, and the agents of a special drug task-force had rounded up dozens of men and women, all of whom were accused of selling cocaine – crack and powder – to an undercover operative, a narc, called Tom Coleman. When the operation had finished, 47 Tulians, almost all of them black, found themselves in jail.

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J. Robert Lennon is the author of a story collection and five novels, including Happyland and Mailman.

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