It took three decades but police finally said they’ve figured out how Eric McGinnis died.
The bigger mystery, how to create a world where people of all races are equal and trusting of one another, remains unsolved.
Buchanan residents and anyone else who’d like to come will discuss those ideas and more on the city’s Commons Wednesday at 6 p.m. They’ll talk about the third annual One Book One Buchanan.
This summer the community, led by the Buchanan District Library, jointly has been reading the book, “The Other Side of the River: A Story of Two Towns, A Death, and America’s Dilemma.”
Published in 1998, the book explores McGinnis’ drowning death, telling the story from the divergent perspectives of largely Black and poor Benton Harbor, and mostly white and prosperous city of St. Joseph.
The Buchanan library invited the book’s author, Alex Kotlowitz, to attend the event and he told WVPE Tuesday that he was surprised and excited to accept. He said he looks forward to sitting in on readers’ breakout discussions and answering their questions.
He covered McGinnis’ death as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, then became so obsessed with the case that he quit the newspaper to write the book. He and his wife rented a house in Berrien County for two years while he researched and did interviews.
“Virtually everyone I spoke to in St. Joseph, when I’d talk about Eric’s death, they were convinced, as were police, that Eric had died an accidental death,” Kotlowitz told WVPE. “That he had drowned trying to swim the river to get home. And virtually everybody in Benton Harbor, especially the elders in Benton Harbor, believed that Eric had died as a result of foul play because he had been dating a white girl.”
Potential spoiler alert: by the time you reach the end of the book, McGinnis’ murder remains unsolved. But in 2021 an eyewitness came forward. The Michigan Attorney General reopened the cold case and last year announced that McGinnis had been killed by 19-year-old Curtis Pitts, who was white and from St. Joseph. He and McGinnis had been seeing the same white St. Joseph girl, and Pitts, along with several others, attacked McGinnis outside a St. Joseph dance club. Pitts kicked him in the head, sending him into the river. His body was found five days later.
Pitts committed suicide in 2003 and the attorney general last year determined there wasn’t enough evidence to try his accomplices.
For this story, Kotlowitz advises not to worry about spoilers. He said it’s important for the truth to be widely known now.
“For me the book is so much about this kind of Rashomon around race, this ability of people in this country to come to a singular event, like Eric’s death, from such different, sometimes conflicting perspectives, having everything to do with race, having everything to do with their personal and collective experiences.”
Kotlowitz said he has visited both cities since the case was reopened and closed again. Some people in St. Joseph disliked his book and would cross to the other side of the street when they saw him coming. But he was much more warmly received in Benton Harbor.
“You know, it’s clear to me that for the people of Benton Harbor, the book meant a lot. I feel like I fell short in many ways because I didn’t solve the case but I think for them they’ve been incredibly appreciative that I was willing to openly talk about race and openly talk about Eric’s death.”
Buchanan library director Meg Paulette Perez said talking about race is uncomfortable for some. But she said One Book One Buchanan tries to select books that make people think. She said the book has been well-received by the community.
“It drew me in,” Paulette Perez said. “I really was surprised by how much the stories just came alive and I could really feel, pretty much what everybody in the book was feeling. I think one of the interesting things about it is there isn’t really harsh heroes and villains. There are really different perspectives and you get to experience them all through this book.”
Kotlowitz notes that some city of St. Joseph community leaders have recently thanked him for making them think harder about race relations and trying to forge stronger ties between the two cities. But sadly, the nation’s racial reckoning in recent years, sparked by the George Floyd murder, shows there’s more work to be done.
“I think for me one of the things that’s really sobering is how much the book, I think, still resonates about how we still lead these deeply separate and deeply unequal lives, and how, again, we come to these moments in time from such extraordinarily different perspectives.”
