Vigilantes and Lynch Mobs

Vigilantes and Lynch Mobs PDF Author: Lisa Arellano
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781439908457
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 190

Get Book Here

Book Description
Looking at the narrative accounts of mob violence produced by vigilantes and/or their advocates as "official" histories, Lisa Arellano shows how these non-fiction narratives conform to a common formula whose purpose is to legitimate frontier justice and lynching. InVigilantes and Lynch Mobs, Arellano closely examines such narratives as well as the work of western historian and archivist Hubert Howe Bancroft, who was sympathetic to them and that of Ida B. Wells, who wrote in fierce opposition to lynching. Tracing the creation, maintenance, and circulation of dominant, alternative, and oppositional vigilante stories from the 19th century frontier through the Jim Crow South, she casts new light on the role of narrative in creating a knowable past. Demonstrating how these histories ennoble the actions of mobs and render their leaders and members as heroes, Arellano presents a persuasive account of lynching's power to create the conditions favourable to its own existence.

Vigilantes and Lynch Mobs

Vigilantes and Lynch Mobs PDF Author: Lisa Arellano
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781439908457
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 190

Get Book Here

Book Description
Looking at the narrative accounts of mob violence produced by vigilantes and/or their advocates as "official" histories, Lisa Arellano shows how these non-fiction narratives conform to a common formula whose purpose is to legitimate frontier justice and lynching. InVigilantes and Lynch Mobs, Arellano closely examines such narratives as well as the work of western historian and archivist Hubert Howe Bancroft, who was sympathetic to them and that of Ida B. Wells, who wrote in fierce opposition to lynching. Tracing the creation, maintenance, and circulation of dominant, alternative, and oppositional vigilante stories from the 19th century frontier through the Jim Crow South, she casts new light on the role of narrative in creating a knowable past. Demonstrating how these histories ennoble the actions of mobs and render their leaders and members as heroes, Arellano presents a persuasive account of lynching's power to create the conditions favourable to its own existence.

Crime without Punishment

Crime without Punishment PDF Author: Lawrence M. Friedman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108588816
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 155

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this compelling book, Lawrence M. Friedman looks at situations where killing is condemned by law but not by social norms and, therefore, is rarely punished. He shows how penal codes categorize homicides by degree of intent, which are in turn based on society's sense of moral outrage. Despite being officially defined as murder, many homicides have historically gone unpunished. Friedman looks at early vigilante justice, crimes of passion, murder of necessity, mercy killings, and assisted suicides. In his explorations of these unpunished homicides, Friedman probes what these circumstances tell us about conflicts in social and cultural norms, and the interaction of law and society.

Forgotten Dead

Forgotten Dead PDF Author: William D. Carrigan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199717702
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book Here

Book Description
Mob violence in the United States is usually associated with the southern lynch mobs who terrorized African Americans during the Jim Crow era. In Forgotten Dead, William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb uncover a comparatively neglected chapter in the story of American racial violence, the lynching of persons of Mexican origin or descent. Over eight decades lynch mobs murdered hundreds of Mexicans, mostly in the American Southwest. Racial prejudice, a lack of respect for local courts, and economic competition all fueled the actions of the mob. Sometimes ordinary citizens committed these acts because of the alleged failure of the criminal justice system; other times the culprits were law enforcement officers themselves. Violence also occurred against the backdrop of continuing tensions along the border between the United States and Mexico aggravated by criminal raids, military escalation, and political revolution. Based on Spanish and English archival documents from both sides of the border, Forgotten Dead explores through detailed case studies the characteristics and causes of mob violence against Mexicans across time and place. It also relates the numerous acts of resistance by Mexicans, including armed self-defense, crusading journalism, and lobbying by diplomats who pressured the United States to honor its rhetorical commitment to democracy. Finally, it contains the first-ever inventory of Mexican victims of mob violence in the United States. Carrigan and Webb assess how Mexican lynching victims came in the minds of many Americans to be the "forgotten dead" and provide a timely account of Latinos' historical struggle for recognition of civil and human rights.

Lynching in America

Lynching in America PDF Author: Christopher Waldrep
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814784801
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
Whether conveyed through newspapers, photographs, or Billie Holliday’s haunting song “Strange Fruit,” lynching has immediate and graphic connotations for all who hear the word. Images of lynching are generally unambiguous: black victims hanging from trees, often surrounded by gawking white mobs. While this picture of lynching tells a distressingly familiar story about mob violence in America, it is not the full story. Lynching in America presents the most comprehensive portrait of lynching to date, demonstrating that while lynching has always been present in American society, it has been anything but one-dimensional. Ranging 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. Slavery, the Civil War, and especially Reconstruction marked the ascendancy of racialized lynching in the nineteenth century, which has continued to the present day, with the murder of James Byrd in Jasper, Texas, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s contention that he was lynched by Congress at his confirmation hearings. Since its founding, lynching has permeated American social, political, and cultural life, and no other book documents American lynching with historical texts offering firsthand accounts of lynchings, explanations, excuses, and criticism.

American Lynching

American Lynching PDF Author: Ashraf H. A. Rushdy
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300184743
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

Get Book Here

Book Description
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

The Red Record

The Red Record PDF Author: Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Publisher: Echo Library
ISBN: 1846375924
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 80

Get Book Here

Book Description
Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States

Lynching in the West, 1850-1935

Lynching in the West, 1850-1935 PDF Author: Ken Gonzales-Day
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822337942
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Get Book Here

Book Description
This visual and textual study of lynchings that took place in California between 1850 and 1935 shows that race-based lynching in the United States reached far beyond the South.

Lynching in the New South

Lynching in the New South PDF Author: W. Fitzhugh Brundage
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252053737
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

Get Book Here

Book Description
Lynching was a national crime. But it obsessed the South. W. Fitzhugh Brundage's multidisciplinary approach to the complex nature of lynching delves into the such extrajudicial murders in two states: Virginia, the southern state with the fewest lynchings; and Georgia, where 460 lynchings made the state a measure of race relations in the Deep South. Brundage's analysis addresses three central questions: How can we explain variations in lynching over regions and time periods? To what extent was lynching a social ritual that affirmed traditional white values and white supremacy? And, what were the causes of the decline of lynching at the end of the 1920s? A groundbreaking study, Lynching in the New South is a classic portrait of the tradition of violence that poisoned American life.

On the Courthouse Lawn

On the Courthouse Lawn PDF Author: Sherrilyn Ifill
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807009903
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book Here

Book Description
Nearly 5,000 black Americans were lynched between 1890 and 1960. Over forty years later, Sherrilyn Ifill's On the Courthouse Lawn examines the numerous ways that this racial trauma still resounds across the United States. While the lynchings and their immediate aftermath were devastating, the little-known contemporary consequences, such as the marginalization of political and economic development for black Americans, are equally pernicious. On the Courthouse Lawn investigates how the lynchings implicated average white citizens, some of whom actively participated in the violence while many others witnessed the lynchings but did nothing to stop them. Ifill observes that this history of complicity has become embedded in the social and cultural fabric of local communities, who either supported, condoned, or ignored the violence. She traces the lingering effects of two lynchings in Maryland to illustrate how ubiquitous this history is and issues a clarion call for American communities with histories of racial violence to be proactive in facing this legacy today. Inspired by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as well as by techniques of restorative justice, Ifill provides concrete ideas to help communities heal, including placing gravestones on the unmarked burial sites of lynching victims, issuing public apologies, establishing mandatory school programs on the local history of lynching, financially compensating those whose family homes or businesses were destroyed in the aftermath of lynching, and creating commemorative public spaces. Because the contemporary effects of racial violence are experienced most intensely in local communities, Ifill argues that reconciliation and reparation efforts must also be locally based in order to bring both black and white Americans together in an efficacious dialogue. A landmark book, On the Courthouse Lawn is a much-needed and urgent road map for communities finally confronting lynching's long shadow by embracing pragmatic reconciliation and reparation efforts.

Lynching and Vigilantism in the United States

Lynching and Vigilantism in the United States PDF Author: Norton Moses
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313032025
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 464

Get Book Here

Book Description
Beginning with the 1760s, when lynching and vigilantism came into existence in what is now the United States, this bibliography fills a void in the history of American collective violence. It covers over 4,200 works dealing with vigilante movements and lynchings, including books, articles, government documents, and unpublished theses and dissertations. Following a chapter listing general works, the book is arranged into four chronological chapters, a chapter on the frontier West, a chapter on anti-lynching, and chapters on literature and art. The book opens with a chapter devoted to general works. It then includes chapters on the period from the Colonial era to the Civil War, the Civil War through 1881, and the periods from 1882 to 1916 and 1917 to 1996. The work then turns to the frontier West and to anti-lynching bills, laws, organizations, and leaders. Finally, the book includes chapters on vigilantism in literature and art.