Green, Ben 1951-

PERSONAL:

Born 1951. Education: Brandeis University, B.A.; Florida State University, M.A.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Florida Center for Public Management, Florida State University, 2135 East Paul Dirac Dr., 102 Herb Morgan Bldg., Tallahassee, FL 32306-2670. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Founding teacher of the School for Applied Individualized Learning (SAIL); Florida Education Association, communications specialist; AFL-CIO, Florida, communications director and program director; Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, senior management trainer of the Florida Center for Public Management, 1986—.

WRITINGS:

Finest Kind: A Celebration of a Florida Fishing Village, Mercer University Press (Macon, GA), 1985.

The Soldier of Fortune Murders: A True Story of Obsessive Love and Murder-for-Hire, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1992.

Before His Time: The Untold Story of Harry T. Moore, America's First Civil Rights Martyr, Free Press (New York, NY), 1999, University Press of Florida (Gainesville, FL), 2005.

Spinning the Globe: The Rise, Fall, and Return to Greatness of the Harlem Globetrotters, foreword by Bill Cosby, Amistad (New York, NY), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Ben Green is the author of several nonfiction books addressing various events and people that have marked the history of the state of Florida. His first work, Finest Kind: A Celebration of a Florida Fishing Village, is based largely on oral accounts documenting the history of Cortez, a small town founded in 1880, where a number of Green's relatives have resided.

The Soldier of Fortune Murders: A True Story of Obsessive Love and Murder-for-Hire tells of Vietnam vet Texan John Wayne Hearne, who placed an advertisement in the magazine Soldier of Fortune. Hearne is central to a "fascinating story of murder for money," wrote a Kirkus Reviews contributor. In Soldier of Fortune magazine, Hearne announced that he could be contracted to kill people. After many requests, Hearne agreed to Debbie Banister's murderous proposal. Banister, who became Hearne's lover, is said to have paid Hearne ten thousand dollars to kill her husband and brother-in-law. Both men were shot in their hometown of Gainesville, Florida. After those murders, Hearne was commissioned by Bob Black and committed the Texas murder of Black's wife. "Green gives all the tasty crime details, outstanding portraits of the lawmen who ran Hearne to ground, and vivid shots of little-seen rural hamlets," remarked the Kirkus Reviews critic. Hearne, Banister, and Black were all convicted and sent to prison. The relatives of Bob Black's wife sued Soldier of Fortune magazine, winning almost nine million dollars in a settlement that was later overturned. A Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote that Green "has done an outstanding job of presenting a most complex case." In a Booklist assessment of The Soldier of Fortune Murders, Peter Robertson commented that Green "effectively captures the horror of a world in which murder-for-hire can be advertised profitably."

A Kirkus Reviews contributor wrote that Before His Time: The Untold Story of Harry T. Moore, America's First Civil Rights Martyr is a "fascinating chronicle" that "admirably details [Harry T.] Moore's life of sacrifice and that of his nemesis, Willis McCall, a Southern sheriff." During the 1930s and 1940s, Moore traveled throughout Florida, speaking out against Jim Crow laws and the atrocities and injustices committed against blacks, urging voter registration and organizing a local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Moore was murdered on Christmas in 1951. The crime remains unsolved, although the Ku Klux Klan is rumored to be responsible. "Writing with the immediacy of news reporting, Green brings to life this little-known chapter in the civil rights era," wrote Vanessa Bush in a Booklist review. Like other critics, a writer for Kirkus Reviews applauded Green for addressing his under-recognized subject, but felt "the book could have been improved with a more detailed analysis of why Moore has been largely forgotten after his death." "Green has performed a valuable service in bringing attention … to this courageous man. He does a good job of conjuring up the [setting]…. But this book is flawed by a tendency toward hyperbole … and cliche…. And Green, in researching his book, has spent too much time listening to doubtful theories about Moore's death in the furtive world of former Klansmen, whose entire reason for existing is to get drunk and talk," concluded New York Times Book Review contributor Adam Nossiter.

Spinning the Globe: The Rise, Fall, and Return to Greatness of the Harlem Globetrotters is Green's his- tory of, and tribute to, the most iconic basketball team of all time. Founded in 1926 by Chicago social worker, Abe Saperstein, the original five players were known as the Savoy Big Five, after the Savoy Ballroom in Chicago, but Saperstein changed the team name to the Harlem Globetrotters, prophetic in that the team eventually played in more than one hundred countries before more than sixty million spectators. Saperstein was sometimes charged with exploiting race, particularly by members of the black community, but others, notably Jesse Jackson, felt that the team was a positive influence. Performing their on-court comedy and shenanigans, entertaining their fans to the whistled tune of "Sweet Georgia Brown," the all-black Globetrotters developed their style of playing in the 1940s and 1950s, and regularly beat top college teams and National Basketball Association squads before the NBA became integrated. With the advent of televised games in the 1970s, the Globetrotters increased their fan base, but Green recalls several decades of heroes and disappointments of which few have previously been aware. With Saperstein's death the team lost momentum, but it was revived by Mannie Jackson. Art Rust, Jr., wrote in Black Issues Book Review: "Author Ben Green's hands-on description of the present-day players and their interaction with fans are sure signs that the history of the Harlem Globetrotters has come full circle." A Publishers Weekly contributor concluded: "The overall effect of this vividly rendered history is to make readers wish they could see the Globetrotters it describes in action."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Black Issues Book Review, September-October, 2005, Art Rust, Jr., review of Spinning the Globe: The Rise, Fall, and Return to Greatness of the Harlem Globetrotters, p. 30.

Black Issues in Higher Education, February 10, 2005, review of Before His Time: The Untold Story of Harry T. Moore, America's First Civil Rights Martyr, p. 39.

Booklist, January 15, 1992, Peter Robertson, review of The Soldier of Fortune Murders: A True Story of Obsessive Love and Murder-for-Hire, pp. 891-893; February 15, 1999, Vanessa Bush, review of Before His Time, p. 1010.

Journal of African American History, spring, 2006, Stephanie Y. Evans, review of Before His Time, p. 223.

Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 1991, review of The Soldier of Fortune Murders, p. 1452; February 1, 1999, review of Before His Time.

Library Journal, May 1, 1985, review of Finest Kind: A Celebration of a Florida Fishing Village, p. 71; December, 1991, review of The Soldier of Fortune Murders, p. 168.

New York Times Book Review, June 13, 1999, Adam Nossiter, review of Before His Time, p. 17.

Publishers Weekly, November 22, 1991, review of The Soldier of Fortune Murders, p. 43; April 11, 2005, review of Spinning the Globe, p. 42.