Six Bridges Presents Chip Jones

For Immediate Release
January 10, 2022

Six Bridges Presents: Chip Jones

A heart-stopping thriller investigating the racial inequity of the heart transplant race

Little Rock, AR – Little Rock, AR – On Thursday, February 17, at 6:30 PM, the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS), will host Six Bridges Presents: Chip Jones. Join us virtually as Jones discusses his book, The Organ Thieves: The Shocking Story of the First Heart Transplant in the Segregated South. The book, described as The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks meets Get Out by Kirkus Reviews, will be released in paperback earlier that week.

Jones has been reporting for nearly thirty years for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Roanoke Times, Virginia Business magazine, and other publications. As a reporter for The Roanoke Times, he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his work on the Pittston coal strike. He is the former communications director of the Richmond Academy of Medicine, which is where he first discovered the heart-stopping story in The Organ Thieves.

This gripping true story is set in 1968, where Bruce Tucker, a black man, went into Virginia’s top research hospital with a head injury, only to have his heart taken out of his body and put into the chest of a white businessman. Jones goes one to expose the horrifying inequality surrounding Tucker’s death and how he was used as a human guinea pig without his family’s permission or knowledge. This book is a “startling…powerful” investigation of racial inequality at the core of the heart transplant race.

The session will be moderated by Dr. Laura K. Guidry-Grimes, an assistant professor in the Department of Medical Humanities and Bioethics with a secondary appointment in Psychiatry at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Guidry-Grimes also serves as a clinical ethicist for the UAMS Health System and Arkansas Children’s Hospital.

Additional author sessions have been scheduled, with full details coming soon. Expect Brad Taylor on January 29 and Phong Nguyen in August.

This virtual event will be held via Zoom and is free but does require registration. Complete details and registration for the event can be found at cals.org/event/chip-jones. Contact Brad Mooy at bmooy@cals.org for more information.

About CALS 
The Central Arkansas Library System includes 15 branch libraries located in Little Rock, Perryville, and throughout Pulaski County. CALS has the largest research collection in central Arkansas. Most of its more than one million items may be reserved online and picked up at any branch that is convenient to the patron. Library Square, the library system’s downtown Little Rock campus, includes the Main Library, as well as the Ron Robinson Theater, the Bobby L. Roberts Library of Arkansas History & Art, and the Galleries & Bookstore at Library Square.

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Contact Information
Tameka Lee
501-918-3048
tlee@cals.org 
Central Arkansas Library System
www.cals.org