1st Edition

Lynching Reconsidered New Perspectives in the Study of Mob Violence

Edited By William D. Carrigan Copyright 2008
    240 Pages
    by Routledge

    240 Pages
    by Routledge

    The history of lynching and mob violence has become a subject of considerable scholarly and public interest in recent years. Popular works by James Allen, Philip Dray, and Leon Litwack have stimulated new interest in the subject. A generation of new scholars, sparked by these works and earlier monographs, are in the process of both enriching and challenging the traditional narrative of lynching in the United States.

    This volume contains essays by ten scholars at the forefront of the movement to broaden and deepen our understanding of mob violence in the United States. These essays range from the Reconstruction to World War Two, analyze lynching in multiple regions of the United States, and employ a wide range of methodological approaches.

    The authors explore neglected topics such as: lynching in the Mid-Atlantic, lynching in Wisconsin, lynching photography, mob violence against southern white women, black lynch mobs, grassroots resistance to racial violence by African Americans, nineteenth century white southerners who opposed lynching, and the creation of 'lynching narratives' by southern white newspapers.

    This book was first published as a special issue of American Nineteenth Century History

    Introduction

    William D. Carrigan

    Wisconsin’s Last Decade of Lynching, 1881-1891 Michael J. Pfeifer Lynching in the Mid-Atlantic, 1882-1940

    Janice Barrow

    Lynch Law Reversed: The Rape of Lula Sherman, the Lynching of Manse Waldrop, and the Debate over Lynching in the 1880s

    Bruce E. Baker

    Raw, Quivering Flesh’: John G. Cashman’s ‘Pornographic’ Constitutionalism Designed to Produce an ‘Aversion and Detestation’, 1883-1904

    Christopher Waldrep

    Resolving the Paradox of Our Lynching Fixation: Reconsidering Racial Terror in the Nineteenth Century

    Kidada E. Williams

    Narratives of Lynching in Southern White Newspapers

    Susan Jean

    Lynching Photography and the Visual Reproduction of White Supremacy

    Amy Louise Wood

    The Lynching of Immigrants in the U.S. South

    Clive Webb

    Conclusion

    W. Fitzhugh Brundage

    Biography

    WILLIAM D. CARRIGAN IS ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AT ROWAN UNIVERSITY IN GLASSBORO, NEW JERSEY. HIS FIRST BOOK WAS THE MAKING OF A LYNCHING CULTURE: VIOLENCE AND VIGILANTISM IN CENTRAL TEXAS, 1836-1916. HE IS CURRENTLY AT WORK WITH CLIVE WEBB ON A STUDY OF MOB VIOLENCE AGAINST MEXICANS IN THE UNITED STATES.