In July, 1972, twenty-four young people in their teens and twenties from Clearwater, Florida, set up camp for the night at Briar Bottom, a public US Forest Service campground in western North Carolina. It was a pit stop for the group, which was on its way to a Rolling Stones concert in Charlotte. Around midnight, the county sheriff and six deputies showed up, allegedly responding to a noise complaint. Armed with pistols and shotguns, the law enforcement officers killed one of the young men and used excessive force on many of the others. No one was ever held responsible for the death. Now Timothy Silver, a professor emeritus of history at Appalachian State University, has gathered the facts about the case and woven it into an impeccable and beautiful account called Death in Briar Bottom: The True Story of Hippies, Mountain Lawmen, and the Search for Justice in the Early 1970s.
GCL Book Club: Timothy Silver, Death in Briar Bottom
