The End Of American Lynching

Author : Ashraf H. A. Rushdy
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2012-06-18
Category : History
ISBN : 9780813552934

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The End of American Lynching by Ashraf H. A. Rushdy Pdf

The End of American Lynching questions how we think about the dynamics of lynching, what lynchings mean to the society in which they occur, how lynching is defined, and the circumstances that lead to lynching. Ashraf H. A. Rushdy looks at three lynchings over the course of the twentieth century—one in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, in 1911, one in Marion, Indiana, in 1930, and one in Jasper, Texas, in 1998—to see how Americans developed two distinct ways of thinking and talking about this act before and after the 1930s. One way takes seriously the legal and moral concept of complicity as a way to understand the dynamics of a lynching; this way of thinking can give us new perceptions into the meaning of mobs and the lynching photographs in which we find them. Another way, which developed in the 1940s and continues to influence us today, uses a strategy of denial to claim that lynchings have ended. Rushdy examines how the denial of lynching emerged and developed, providing insight into how and why we talk about lynching the way we do at the dawn of the twenty-first century. In doing so, he forces us to confront our responsibilities as American citizens and as human beings.

Author : Ashraf H. A. Rushdy
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2012-10-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9780300184747

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American Lynching by Ashraf H. A. Rushdy Pdf

A history of lynching in America over the course of three centuries, from colonial Virginia to twentieth-century Texas. After observing the varying reactions to the 1998 death of James Byrd Jr. in Texas, called a lynching by some, denied by others, Ashraf Rushdy determined that to comprehend this event he needed to understand the long history of lynching in the United States. In this meticulously researched and accessibly written interpretive history, Rushdy shows how lynching in America has endured, evolved, and changed in meaning over the course of three centuries, from its origins in early Virginia to the present day. “A work of uncommon breadth, written with equally uncommon concision. Excellent.” —N. D. B. Connolly, Johns Hopkins University “Provocative but careful, opinionated but persuasive . . . Beyond synthesizing current scholarship, he offers a cogent discussion of the evolving definition of lynching, the place of lynchers in civil society, and the slow-in-coming end of lynching. This book should be the point of entry for anyone interested in the tragic and sordid history of American lynching.” —W. Fitzhugh Brundage, author of Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930 “A sophisticated and thought-provoking examination of the historical relationship between the American culture of lynching and the nation’s political traditions. This engaging and wide-ranging meditation on the connection between democracy, lynching, freedom, and slavery will be of interest to those in and outside of the academy.” —William Carrigan, Rowan University “In this sobering account, Rushdy makes clear that the cultural values that authorize racial violence are woven into the very essence of what it means to be American. This book helps us make sense of our past as well as our present.” —Jonathan Holloway, Yale University

Author : Elizabeth Stewart
Publisher : Annick Press
Page : 199 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2012-07-03
Category : Juvenile Fiction
ISBN : 9781554514946

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The Lynching of Louie Sam by Elizabeth Stewart Pdf

Between 1882 and 1968 there were 4,742 lynchings in the United States. In Canada during the same period there was one—the hanging of American Indian Louie Sam. The year is 1884, and 15-year-old George Gillies lives in the Washington Territory, near the border with British Columbia. In this newly settled land, white immigrants have an uneasy relationship with the Native Indians. When George and his siblings discover the murdered body of a local white man, suspicion immediately falls on a young Indian named Louie Sam. George and his best friend, Pete, follow a lynch mob north into Canada, where the terrified boy is seized and hung. But even before the deed is done, George begins to have doubts. Louie Sam was a boy, only 14—could he really be a vicious murderer? Were the mob leaders motivated by justice, or were they hiding their own guilt? As George uncovers the truth—implicating Pete’s father and other prominent locals—tensions in the town rise, and he must face his own part in the tragedy. But standing up for justice has devastating consequences for George and his family. Inspired by the true story of the lynching, recently acknowledged as a historical injustice by Washington State, this powerful novel offers a stark depiction of historical racism and the harshness of settler life. The story will provoke readers to reflect on the dangers of mob mentality and the importance of speaking up for what’s right.

Author : B. J. Hollars
Publisher : University of Alabama Press
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2011-09-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9780817317539

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Thirteen Loops by B. J. Hollars Pdf

A vivid and troubling portrait of violence, lynching, and race relations over a fifty-year period in the state of Alabama.

Author : W. Jason Miller
Publisher : University Press of Florida
Page : 185 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2011-01-02
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780813043241

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Langston Hughes and American Lynching Culture by W. Jason Miller Pdf

Langston Hughes never knew of an America where lynching was absent from the cultural landscape. Jason Miller investigates the nearly three dozen poems written by Hughes on the subject of lynching to explore its varying effects on survivors, victims, and accomplices as they resisted, accepted, and executed this brutal form of sadistic torture. Starting from Hughes's life as a teenager during the Red Summer of 1919 and moving through the civil rights movement that took place toward the end of Hughes's life, Miller initiates an important dialogue between America's neglected history of lynching and some of the world’s most significant poems. This extended study of the centrality of these heinous acts to Hughes's artistic development, aesthetics, and activism represents a significant and long-overdue contribution to our understanding of the art and politics of Langston Hughes.

Author : Terence Finnegan
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 199 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : History
ISBN : 9780813933849

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A Deed So Accursed by Terence Finnegan Pdf

From the end of Reconstruction to the onset of the civil rights era, lynching was prevalent in developing and frontier regions that had a dynamic and fluid African American population. Focusing on Mississippi and South Carolina because of the high proportion of African Americans in each state during "the age of lynching," Terence Finnegan explains lynching as a consequence of the revolution in social relations--assertiveness, competition, and tension--that resulted from emancipation. A comprehensive study of lynching in Mississippi and South Carolina, A Deed So Accursed reveals the economic and social circumstances that spawned lynching and explores the interplay between extralegal violence and political and civil rights. Finnegan's research shows that lynching rates depended on factors other than caste conflict and the interaction of race and southern notions of honor. Although lynching supported the ends of white supremacy, many mobs lynched more for private retaliation than for communal motives, which explains why mobs varied greatly in size, organization, behavior, and purpose. The resistance of African Americans was vigorous and sustained and took on a variety of forms, but depending on the circumstances, black resistance could sometimes provoke rather than deter lynching. Ultimately, Finnegan shows how out of the tragedy of lynching came the triumph of the civil rights movement, which was built upon the organizational efforts of African American anti-lynching campaigns.

Author : William D. Carrigan,Christopher Waldrep
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2013-05-24
Category : History
ISBN : 9780813934150

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Swift to Wrath by William D. Carrigan,Christopher Waldrep Pdf

Scholarship on lynching has typically been confined to the extralegal execution of African Americans in the American South. The nine essays collected here look at lynching in the context of world history, encouraging a complete rethinking of the history of collective violence. Employing a diverse range of case studies, the volume’s contributors work to refute the notion that the various acts of group homicide called "lynching" in American history are unique or exceptional. Some essays consider the practice of lynching in a global context, confounding the popular perception that Americans were alone in their behavior and suggesting a wide range of approaches to studying extralegal collective violence. Others reveal the degree to which the practice of lynching has influenced foreigners’ perceptions of the United States and asking questions such as, Why have people adopted the term lynching—or avoided it? How has the meaning of the word been transformed over time in society? What contextual factors explain such transformations? Ultimately, the essays illuminate, opening windows on ordinary people’s thinking on such critical issues as the role of law in their society and their attitudes toward their own government.

Author : James R. McGovern
Publisher : LSU Press
Page : 219 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2013-10-07
Category : History
ISBN : 9780807154267

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Anatomy of a Lynching by James R. McGovern Pdf

"A sensitive and forthright analysis of one of the most gruesome episodes in Florida history... McGovern has produced a richly detailed case study that should enhance our general understanding of mob violence and vigilantism." -- Florida Historical Quarterly "[McGovern] has succeeded in writing more than a narrative account of this bloodcurdling story; he has explored its causes and ramifications." -- American Historical Review "A finely crafted historical case study of one lynching, its antecedents, and its aftermath." -- Contemporary Sociology First published in 1982, James R. McGovern's Anatomy of a Lynching unflinchingly reconstructs the grim events surrounding the death of Claude Neal, one of the estimated three thousand blacks who died at the hands of southern lynch mobs in the six decades between the 1880s and the outbreak of World War II. Neal was accused of the brutal rape and murder of Lola Cannidy, a young white woman he had known since childhood. On October 26, 1934, a well-organized mob took Neal from his jail cell. The following night, the mob tortured Neal and hanged him to the point of strangulation, repeating the process until the victim died. A large crowd of men, women, and children who gathered to witness, celebrate, and assist in the lynching further mutilated Neal's body. Finally, the battered corpse was put on display, suspended as a warning from a tree in front of the Jackson County, Florida, courthouse. Based on extensive research as well as on interviews with both blacks and whites who remember Neal's death, Anatomy of a Lynching sketches the social background of Jackson County, Florida -- deeply religious, crushed by the Depression, accustomed to violence, and proud of its role in the Civil War -- and examines which elements in the county's makeup contributed to the mob violence. McGovern offers a powerful dissection of an extraordinarily violent incident.

Author : Philip Dray
Publisher : Modern Library
Page : 554 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2007-12-18
Category : History
ISBN : 9780307430663

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At the Hands of Persons Unknown by Philip Dray Pdf

WINNER OF THE SOUTHERN BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR NONFICTION • “A landmark work of unflinching scholarship.”—The New York Times This extraordinary account of lynching in America, by acclaimed civil rights historian Philip Dray, shines a clear, bright light on American history’s darkest stain—illuminating its causes, perpetrators, apologists, and victims. Philip Dray also tells the story of the men and women who led the long and difficult fight to expose and eradicate lynching, including Ida B. Wells, James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, and W.E.B. Du Bois. If lynching is emblematic of what is worst about America, their fight may stand for what is best: the commitment to justice and fairness and the conviction that one individual’s sense of right can suffice to defy the gravest of wrongs. This landmark book follows the trajectory of both forces over American history—and makes lynching’s legacy belong to us all. Praise for At the Hands of Persons Unknown “In this history of lynching in the post-Reconstruction South—the most comprehensive of its kind—the author has written what amounts to a Black Book of American race relations.”—The New Yorker “A powerfully written, admirably perceptive synthesis of the vast literature on lynching. It is the most comprehensive social history of this shameful subject in almost seventy years and should be recognized as a major addition to the bibliography of American race relations.”—David Levering Lewis “An important and courageous book, well written, meticulously researched, and carefully argued.”—The Boston Globe “You don’t really know what lynching was until you read Dray’s ghastly accounts of public butchery and official complicity.”—Time

Author : Robert W. Thurston
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 442 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2016-05-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9781317102977

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Lynching by Robert W. Thurston Pdf

Addressing one of the most controversial and emotive issues of American history, this book presents a thorough reexamination of the background, dynamics, and decline of American lynching. It argues that collective homicide in the US can only be partly understood through a discussion of the unsettled southern political situation after 1865, but must also be seen in the context of a global conversation about changing cultural meanings of 'race'. A deeper comprehension of the course of mob murder and the dynamics that drove it emerges through comparing the situation in the US with violence that was and still is happening around the world. Drawing on a variety of approaches - historical, anthropological and literary - the study shows how concepts of imperialism, gender, sexuality, and civilization profoundly affected the course of mob murder in the US. Lynching provides thought-provoking analyses of cases where race was - and was not - a factor. The book is constructed as a series of case studies grouped into three thematic sections. Part I, Understanding Lynching, starts with accounts of mob murder around the world. Part II, Lynching and Cultural Change, examines shifting concepts of race, gender, and sexuality by drawing first on the romantic travel and adventure fiction of the era 1880-1920, from authors such as H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Changing images of black and white bodies form another major focus of this section. Part III, Blood, Debate, and Redemption in Georgia, follows the story of American collective murder and growing opposition to it in Georgia, a key site of lynching, in the early twentieth century. By situating American mob murder in a wide international context, and viewing the phenomenon as more than simply a tool of racial control, this book presents a reappraisal of one of the most unpleasant, yet important periods of America's history, one that remains crucial for understanding race relations and collective violence around the world.

Author : Everest Media,
Publisher : Everest Media LLC
Page : 23 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2022-05-22T22:59:00Z
Category : History
ISBN : 9798822518216

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Summary of Ashraf H. A. Rushdy's American Lynching by Everest Media, Pdf

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 In 1986, the nuclear physicist Stanislav Shushkevich thought the institute’s reactor was bleeding radiation. It was in people’s hair and clinging to their clothes. It was near danger levels at the front door. #2 When someone finally called the institute to report an accident at Chernobyl, it was already too late. The graphite core of the massive, concrete-encased reactor had flashed to high-pressure steam in four seconds. The upper biological shield, which was made of concrete blocks, began to bubble and dance. #3 The Chernobyl disaster was the result of two explosions in the space of less than four seconds, which blew open the reactor and its contents. The reactor was sealed within a metal tank filled with a mixture of helium and nitrogen to prevent the graphite moderator from burning. #4 The Soviet Union had suffered 13 previous reactor accidents before the one at Chernobyl. Between 1964 and 1979, there were several fuel assembly fires at the Beloyarsk nuclear-power plant east of the Urals near Novosibirsk.

Author : National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Publisher : Praeger
Page : 120 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 1969
Category : History
ISBN : UOM:39015005977676

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Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889-1918 by National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Pdf

Author : Ersula J. Ore
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
Page : 153 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2019-03-12
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781496821607

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Lynching by Ersula J. Ore Pdf

Winner of the 2020 Rhetoric Society of America Book Award While victims of antebellum lynchings were typically white men, postbellum lynchings became more frequent and more intense, with the victims more often black. After Reconstruction, lynchings exhibited and embodied links between violent collective action, American civic identity, and the making of the nation. Ersula J. Ore investigates lynching as a racialized practice of civic engagement, in effect an argument against black inclusion within the changing nation. Ore scrutinizes the civic roots of lynching, the relationship between lynching and white constitutionalism, and contemporary manifestations of lynching discourse and logic today. From the 1880s onward, lynchings, she finds, manifested a violent form of symbolic action that called a national public into existence, denoted citizenship, and upheld political community. Grounded in Ida B. Wells’s summation of lynching as a social contract among whites to maintain a racial order, at its core, Ore’s book speaks to racialized violence as a mode of civic engagement. Since violence enacts an argument about citizenship, Ore construes lynching and its expressions as part and parcel of America’s rhetorical tradition and political legacy. Drawing upon newspapers, official records, and memoirs, as well as critical race theory, Ore outlines the connections between what was said and written, the material practices of lynching in the past, and the forms these rhetorics and practices assume now. In doing so, she demonstrates how lynching functioned as a strategy interwoven with the formation of America’s national identity and with the nation’s need to continually restrict and redefine that identity. In addition, Ore ties black resistance to lynching, the acclaimed exhibit Without Sanctuary, recent police brutality, effigies of Barack Obama, and the killing of Trayvon Martin.

Author : J. Mitchell
Publisher : Historic Publishers
Page : 298 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2010-10-03
Category : History
ISBN : 1453852794

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The Strangest Fruit by J. Mitchell Pdf

In a July, 2009 interview, the first African American President of the United States, Barack Obama, expressed the significance of remembering slavery when he said, "I think it's important that the way we think about it, the way it's taught, is not one in which there's simply a victim and a victimizer, and that's the end of the story." Similar to slavery, lynching should not be forgotten or remembered solely from the perspective of racist Whites victimizing African Americans. The general history of lynch mob violence in America has been well documented over the last century. During this time many scholars have rightfully focused on the thousands of African American victims that were brutally tortured and killed by white mobs, as they represent the majority of lynching casualties. Regrettably, there is another segment to this tragic part of American history. Blacks were not only lynched by White mobs-they were also victims of mobs composed entirely of people of their own race. The Kingsport (Tennessee) Times appropriately acknowledged in 1921, "In the South the Negro is generally, not always, the victim. Sometimes the mob is composed of Negroes, bent on direct action against one of its own race. The thought in mind is apart from racial antagonisms."Historians of mob violence have often concentrated on racial, social, or economically motivated factors as the basis for lynching, but there is also the universal "human" element involved in mob violence, hence the term "popular justice," which is not entirely based on race or racism. It is crucial to include Black lynch mobs in the American lynching historiography, as their inclusion warrants and demands that lynching be analyzed from various historical perspectives. This is not a book about Whites lynching African Americans. Furthermore, this book is not about racism or racists. Within these pages the reader will find the most comprehensive compilation of newspaper accounts detailing same race (Black-on-Black) lynchings ever compiled and published. Over 400 press reports are presented from a variety of newspapers including: Republican, Democrat, African American, White, conservative, radical, large, and small.

Author : James Allen
Publisher : Twin Palms Publishers
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : History
ISBN : 0944092691

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Without Sanctuary by James Allen Pdf

Gruesome photographs document the victims of lynchings and the society that allowed mob violence.