Maury Nicely is South Bound speaker tonight

Southern Lit Alliance welcomes attorney, historian and author Maury Nicely tonight, Aug. 22, when the next South Bound lecture is held. Nicely will speak on “Hoffa in Tennessee” (University of Tennessee Press), his new, nonfiction account of Jimmy Hoffa and the Chattanooga trial that brought him down.

The event will be held in The Arts Building, 301 E. 11th St., at 6 p.m., followed by a book signing with the author. Tickets are $10.

Jimmy Hoffa, already acquitted in a Nashville court in 1962, was under investigation for jury tampering, and subsequently tried and convicted in Chattanooga after a judge in Nashville granted a change of venue.

Nicely explores Hoffa’s time in Tennessee, the major players in the case and the development of Robert Kennedy, then chief counsel of the Senate’s McClellan Committee, as Hoffa’s main antagonist. All the while, Hoffa’s continued legal troubles created a high amount of tension between the Teamsters, management and members of organized crime.

While many books overlook this important tipping point in Hoffa’s career, tending to focus on his disappearance, Nicely mines court transcripts and presents the Tennessee trial as both the height of Hoffa’s perceived invincibility and the beginning of his downfall.

Nicely is a local attorney with the firm of Evans, Harrison and Hackett. He is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and University of Georgia School of Law. His first book, “Chattanooga Walking Tour & Historic Guide,” is a guide to downtown historical sites.

For more information: https://www.southernlitalliance.org/.

SOUTHERN LIT ALLIANCE CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Maury Nicely