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Selected Books
- Rope and Faggot: A Biography of Judge Lynch byCall Number: Africana Library HV6457 .W45x 2001In 1926, Walter White, assistant secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, broke the story of a horrific lynching in Aiken, South Carolina, in which three African Americans were murdered while more than one thousand spectators watched. Because of his light complexion, blonde hair, and blue eyes, White, an African American, was able to investigate first-hand more than forty lynchings and eight race riots. Following the lynchings in Aiken, White took a leave of absence from the NAACP and, with help from a Guggenheim grant, spent a year in France writing Rope and Faggot. Ironically subtitled "A Biography of Judge Lynch," Rope and Faggot is a compelling example of partisan scholarship and is based on White's first-hand investigations. It was first published in 1929.
- Witnessing Lynching: American Writers Respond byCall Number: Olin Library Oversize; + PS509.L94 W58 2003Witnessing Lynching: American Writers Respond is the first anthology to gather poetry, essays, drama, and fiction from the height of the lynching era (1889-1935). During this time, the torture of a black person drew thousands of local onlookers and was replayed throughout the nation in lurid newspaper reports. The selections gathered here represent the courageous efforts of American writers to witness the trauma of lynching and to expose the truth about this uniquely American atrocity.
- Lynching In America: A History In Documents byCall Number: Olin Library Oversize; + HV6457 .L95 2006Ranging from personal correspondence to courtroom transcripts to journalistic accounts, Christopher Waldrep has extensively mined an enormous quantity of documents about lynching, which he arranges chronologically with concise introductions. He reveals that lynching has been part of American history since the Revolution, but its victims, perpetrators, causes, and environments have changed over time. From the American Revolution to the expansion of the western frontier, Waldrep shows how communities defended lynching as a way to maintain law and order
- A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930 byCall Number: Africana Library HV6464 .T65 1995This finely detailed statistical study of lynching in ten southern states shows that economic and status concerns were at the heart of that violent practice. Stewart Tolnay and E. M. Beck empirically test competing explanations of the causes of lynching, using U.S. Census and historical voting data and a newly constructed inventory of southern lynch victims. Among their surprising findings: lynching responded to fluctuations in the price of cotton, decreasing in frequency when prices rose and increasing when they fell.
- Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching byCall Number: Olin Library HV6250.4.W65 F43 2009Between 1880 and 1930, close to 200 women were murdered by lynch mobs in the American South. Many more were tarred and feathered, burned, whipped, or raped. In this brutal world of white supremacist politics and patriarchy, a world violently divided by race, gender, and class, black and white women defended themselves and challenged the male power brokers. Crystal Feimster breaks new ground in her story of the racial politics of the postbellum South by focusing on the volatile issue of sexual violence.
- 100 years of Lynchings byCall Number: Africana Library HV6457 .G49 1969Ginzburg compiles vivid newspaper accounts from 1886 to 1960 to provide insight and understanding of the history of racial violence.
- The Tragedy of Lynching byCall Number: Law Library HV6464 .R21Thorough accounts and analyses of more than 20 lynchings that occurred in America during 1930, prepared by a commission composed of Southern scholars and investigators. Each lynching is examined in detail, including the formation of the mob, behavior of the police, and economic background of the area where the crime occurred
- The Changing Character of Lynching; Review of Lynching, 1931-1941, With a Discussion of Recent Developments in This Field byCall Number: Africana Library HV6457 .A55 1973
- Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930 byCall Number: Africana Library HV6465.G4 B78x 1993In 1905, the sociologist James Cutler observed, "It has been said that our country's national crime is lynching." If lynching was a national crime, it was a southern obsession. Based on an analysis of nearly six hundred lynchings, this volume offers a new, full appraisal of the complex character of lynching. In Virginia, the southern state with the fewest lynchings W. Fitzhugh Brundage found that conditions did not breed endemic mob violence.