Introduction: A Legacy of Lynching 1. The Culture of Lynching 2. The History of Lynching 3. The Nation of Lynching 4. The Research of Lynching 5. The Memory of Lynching 6. The Protest of Lynching 7. The Message of Lynching 8. The Geography of Lynching Conclusion: The Lies of Lynching
Biography
Rasul A. Mowatt is Professor and Researcher who studies State violence and the geographies of Race for the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at North Carolina State’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences, USA. Before joining NC State, Rasul served on Indiana University’s faculty in the Departments of American Studies and Geography for 17 years and previously taught at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of The Geographies of Threat and the Production of Violence (2021), co-author of Laundering Black Rage: The Washing of Black Death, People, Property, and Profits (2024) and The City of Hip-Hop: New York, the Bronx, and a Peace Meeting (2025).
‘Rasul Mowatt's A Legacy of Lynching could not have arrived at a more needed time to discursively and materially confront the organized disvowal of racialized violence in the United States. It is written with great moral clarity, urgency, and copious illustration connecting the spectacle of lynching to the history of the banality of racist evil in the country. Most importantly the book gives a long perspective that connects the senseless and lawless murder of contemporary racialized African American victims such as George Floyd, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor and Tyre Nicholls to an unequal substructure of persistent discriminatory acts, violent expropriation and exclusion. By mapping out these continuities, Mowatt forces the contemporary reader to confront the disturbing and unfinished history of racial terror and its persistent afterlife in present day America.’
-Cameron McCarthy, Emeritus Professor, Center for Global Studies and College of Education's Educational Policy, Leadership & Organization, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, author of World of Contradictions: Culture and Identity in the Roiling of Globalizations and Spaces of New Colonialism: Reading Schools, Museums, and Cities in the Tumult of Globalization.‘The Legacy of Lynching is a sober, yet necessary examination of an often misunderstood American tradition. Not only does Rasul Mowatt manage to debunk many of our preconceived notions about this phenomenon, but his work adds historical context, human perspective and factual evidence that will enlighten every reader.’
-Michael Harriot, journalist, public historian, and author of the New York Times' best selling, Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America.
