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Lynchings in America
A History Not Known By Many
When I was a boy growing up in New Orleans, Louisiana,
the word lynching was hardly ever mentioned. My
parents only said these "mean" acts happened
in the country (rural areas) with
white men in white gowns (the
KKK).
In all my schooling, through high school and on to
college, lynching was never part of a lecture or
connected with American history. I knew of the word,
lynching, but never, never the scope of this
violent, hateful act.
On Thursday, January 13, 2000, an article
entitled, "An Ugly Legacy Lives on, Its Glare
Unsoftened by Age," by Robert Smith was published
in the New York Times. This excellent article
revealed a world not known by many Americans living
today and especially by me. Without my explaining
here, it should be read by all persons, especially as
it pertains to race and hate. Without
understanding this past evil history, we cannot
understand why hate is on the rise today in this
year of 2000.
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After reading the New York Times article, I
wanted to know more about lynching and what could
possibly be presented on this squeamish subject. It
turned out that an exhibit of rare collected photo
postcards
were on display featuring lynchings as they took place
in
America from 1883-1960. I saw this
exhibit. It was on view at the Roth Horowitz
Gallery in New York City until February 12, 2000.
This small gallery took in only about fifteen people at
a time, and the line was long. Watching the viewers as
they exited revealed what was inside: people with
tears, some with anguish, some looked surprised with
the horror they had seen.
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This New York exhibition presented the collected
photocards of Mr. James Allen, a white Atlanta resident
who, for fifteen years, sought out these images of
racial horror and self-righteous vigilante acts as rare
finds. Since most of these photocards were kept as
"keepsakes" by some families, Mr. Allen had
to solicit ads for purchase. He paid from fifteen
dollars to as much as thirty thousand dollars for
individual cards.
The sixty photo postcards and other
material were temporarily housed in the
library at Emory University to allow scholars to
have access to it, but are now being held by their owner at
withoutsanctuary.org.
Melvin
Sylvester, Feb. 2000
- Photographs:
- 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana
- Photo from the official 1977 Citadel yearbook
- 1919 lynching William Brown in Douglas County, Nebraska
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1935 lynching of Rubin Stacy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
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Lynching In America
A Book on the Subject
This book,
Without
Sanctuary: Lynching
photography in America (by James
Allen, Hilton Als, Leon F. Litwack, with a forward by
Congressman John Lewis; Twin Palms Publishers,
2000), is a new, startling book on this shocking
topic of lynching in America. This book is an
extension of the exhibit held at the Roth Horowitz
Gallery and the collected photo postcards of Mr.
James Allen of Atlanta, Georgia. Pages of actual real
life
lynchings are captured with photos and dates with
explanatory texts about where these dastardly acts
occurred. Mr. Allen says, "Without
Sanctuary is a grim reminder that a part of the
American past we would prefer for various reasons to
forget we need very much to remember." The book
is a vivid account of the existence of lynching on
American soil. On view in the book are ninety-eight
plates of lynchings and the victims and the people
surrounding the actual executions. A few were white; a
few were women; but most were African-American men used
as prime targets for lynch mobs. To see this book is
to try and understand, but it is not for the squeamish
viewer or persons not able to transcend reasons why
these acts should never have happened.
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1936 lynching of Lint Shaw in Royston, Georgia
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For Further Reading
- About Lynching
/ Robert L. Zangrando, John F. Callahan, and Dickson D. Bruce, Jr.
Modern American Poetry : An Online Journal and Multimedia Companion to
Anthology of Modern American Poetry.
Urbana, IL : Department of English of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2002.
- The aesthetics and politics of the crowd in American
literature /
Mary. Esteve.
Cambridge, U.K. ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2003.
PS169.C75E88 2003
- Covers lynching in literature
- American lynching : a documenatry feature
/ Gode Davis and James M. Fortier.
Herndon, VA : Bitter Fruit Productions, 2005.
- "This documentary explores racist events and attitudes indigenous
to the Northern and Southern states that either condoned or
condemned lynching as a practice."
- American Negro short stories /
John Henrik Clarke.
New York : Hill and Wang, 1966.
PS647.A35C55 1966x
- Includes "The lynching of Jube Benson" by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
- Anatomy of a lynching : the killing of Claude Neal /
James R. McGovern.
Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, 1982.
HV6465.F6M35 1982
- And the dead shall rise : the murder of Mary Phagan and the
lynching of Leo Frank /
Steve Oney.
New York : Pantheon Books, 2003.
HV6534.A7O54 2003
- Anti-lynching crusaders helped free our country /
Philip Dray.
Newsday, A39 (741 words), June 15, 2005.
- An apology for old form of terror : Senate expected to vote tomorrow
on resolution regarding its failure to help end practice of lynching /
Martin C. Evans.
Newsday, A34 (600 words), June 12, 2005.
- At the hands of persons unknown : the lynching of Black
America /
Philip Dray.
New York : Random House, 2002.
HV6464.D73 2002
- The awful truth: a photography exhibition unearths the painful history of lynching in America
/ Danny Postel.
Chronicle of Higher Education, 48(44):A14 (3 pages), July 12, 2002.
- Black manhood on the silent screen /
Gerald R. Butters.
Lawrence : University Press of Kansas, 2002.
PN1995.9.N4B88 2002
- Includes "Oscar Micheaux: From Homestead to Lynch Mob"
- Call for reconciliation : Minister attacked by Klansmen seeks understanding
as alleged mastermind in triple killing faces trial /
John Moreno Gonzales.
Newsday, A07 (733 words), June 13, 2005.
- Crime, but no punishment : Georgia town is still divided over the murders
of four blacks nearly 60 years ago /
Tina Susman.
Newsday, A30 (1633 words), March 30, 2005.
- Dangerous liaisons : gender, nation, and postcolonial
perspectives /
Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohat.
Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
JC312.D36 1997
- Includes "On the threshold of woman's era : lynching, empire, and
sexuality in Black feminist theory" by Hazel V. Carby
- The Duluth Lynchings Online Resource :
a collection of historical documents relating to the tragic events of June 15, 1920.
Minnesota Historical Society. St. Paul, MN : The Society, 2003.
- "This web site facilitates access to over 2,000 pages of scanned documents
to provide an in-depth and scholarly resource of primary source
materials on the subject, designed also for those unfamiliar with this tragic event."
- The Duluth Lynchings Online Resource: historical documents relating to the
tragic events of June 15, 1920
/ Scott Ellsworth.
Journal of American History, 91(1):349-350, June 2004.
- Discusses the website:
http://collections.mnhs.org/duluthlynchings/
- Ebony rising : short fiction of the greater Harlem
Renaissance era /
Craig Gable.
Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2004.
PS647.A35E24 2004
- Includes "Lynching for profit" by George S. Schuyler
- Elite Georgia's dark secret
/ Linda Kulman.
U.S. News & World Report, 135(13):49, (800 words), Oct 20, 2003.
- 1915 lynching of Leo Frank
- Etiquette, lynching, and racial boundaries in southern history: a Mississippi example
/ J. William Harris.
American Historical Review, 100(2):387 (24 pages), April 1995.
- Exorcising blackness : historical and literary lynching and
burning rituals /
Trudier Harris.
Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1984.
PS153.N5H28 1984
- F.B.I. discovers trial transcript in Emmett Till case /
Shaila Dewan and Ariel Hart.
New York Times, A14 (917 words), May 18, 2005.
- A festival of violence : an analysis of Southern lynchings,
1882-1930 /
Stewart Emory Tolnay and E. M., Beck.
Urbana : University of Illinois Press, 1995.
HV6464.T65 1995
 The first
Waco horror : the lynching of Jesse Washington and the rise of the NAAC
/ Patricia Bernstein.
Houston, TX : Patriciabernstein.com, 2005.
- Website to accompany the book.
- Fresh outrage in Waco at grisly lynching of 1916 /
Ralph Blumenthal.
New York Times, A26 (1598 words), May 1, 2005.
- Gender, class, race, and reform in the progressive era /
Noralee Frankel and Nancy Schrom Dye.
Lexington, KY : University Press of Kentucky, 1991.
HQ1419.G46 1991
- Includes "African-American women's networks in the
anti-lynching crusade" by Rosalyn Terborg-Penn
- Go down, Moses : the miscegenation of time /
Arthur F. Kinney.
New York : Twayne Publishers ; London : Prentice HallInternational, 1996.
PS3511.A86G6349 1996
- Treatment of lynching in the William Faulkner work
- Jasper, Tex., and the ghosts of lynchings past.
New York Times, A26 (576 words), Feb 25, 1999.
- Revulsion at the death of James Byrd Jr. demonstrates a sea
change in public sentiment toward lynchings
- Judge Lynch: his first hundred years /
Frank Shay and Arthur Franklin Raper.
Montclair, NJ : Patterson Smith, 1969.
HV6457.S5 1969b
- The killing season: a history of lynching in America
/ Philip Dray.
The New Crisis, 109(1):41 (3 pages), January-February 2002.
- Excerpt from "At the Hands of Persons Unknown: the
Lynching of of Black America"
- Kin disagree on exhumation of Emmett Till /
Gretchen Ruethling.
New York Times, A3 (357 words), May 6, 2005.
- The legacy of a lynching
/ Robert F. Worth.
American Scholar, 67(2):65 (13 pages), Spring 1998.
- "Like a violin for the wind to play": lyrical approaches to
lynching by Hughes, Du Bois, and Toomer
/ Kimberly Banks.
African American Review, 38(3):451 (15 pages), Fall 2004.
- Critical essay
- Local sequential patterns: the structure of lynching in the deep South, 1882-1930
/ Karherine Stovel.
Social Forces, 79(3):843 (14134 words), March 2001.
- Lynch-law; an investigation into the history of lynching in the
United States /
James Elbert Cutler.
New York : Negro Universities Press, 1969.
HV6457.C8 1969b
- Lynch Street : the May 1970 slayings at Jackson State
College /
Tim Spofford.
Kent, OH : Kent State University Press, 1988.
F349.J13S66 1988
- Lynching
/ John Simkin. Spartcus Educational.
- Lynching in America :
carnival of death
/ Mark Gado.
Court TV's Crime Library : Criminal Minds and Methods.
New York : Courtroom Television Network, 2005.
- A lynching in the heartland : race and memory in America /
James H. Madison.
New York : Palgrave, 2001.
F534.M34M33 2001
- The lynching of persons of Mexican origin or descent in the United States, 1848 to 1928
/ William D. Carrigan.
Journal of Social History, 37(2):411 (29 pages), Winter 2003.
- Lynching victim is cleared of rape, 100 years later
/ Emily Yellin.
New York Times, Section 1, 24 (912 words), Feb 27, 2000.
- Ed Johnson from Chattanooga, Tennessee
- Masculinity : bodies, movies, culture /
Peter Lehman.
New York : Routledge, 2001.
PN1995.9.M46M34 2001
- Includes "Lynching photography and the 'black beast rapist' in the
southern white masculine imagination" by Amy Louise Wood
- Media, process, and the social construction of crime :
studies in newsmaking criminology /
Gregg Barak.
New York : Garland Pub., 1994.
P96.C74M43 1994
- Includes "Communal violence and the media : lynchings and their news coverage by The
New York Times between 1882 and 1930" by Ira M. Wasserman and Steven Stack
- Minstrel
show; or, The lynching of William Brown /
Max Sparber. The Plays of Max Sparber. New Orleans, LA : Blogger, 2005.
- "Retells the story of the real-life murder of an African-American man in
Omaha, Nebraska, in 1919, through the narration of two fictional African-American blackface performers."
- The murder of Emmett Louis Till, revisited.
/ Brent Staples.
The New York Times, A16 (912 words), Nov 11, 2002.
- New documetary film may cause the
1955 Mississipi case to be reopened
- The NAACP crusade against lynching, 1909-1950 /
Robert L. Zangrando.
Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 1980.
HV6457.Z36
- The Negro
holocaust: lynching and race riots in the United States, 1880-1950
/ Robert A. Gibson.
Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute.
New Haven : Yale University, 1979 ; posted 2005.
- Curriculum unit.
- The old religion /
David Mamet.
New York : Free Press, 1997.
PS3563.A4345O39 1997
- Play about a lynching in Georgia
- On looking: lynching photographs and legacies of Lynching after 9/11
/ Dora Apel.
American Quarterly, 55(3):457-478, Sept 2003.
- On lynchings: Southern horrors, A red record, Mob rule in
New Orleans /
Ida B. Wells-Barnett.
New York : Arno Press, 1969.
HV6457.B37
- Plays of Negro life; a source-book of native American
drama /
Alain LeRoy Locke and Montgomery Gregory.
Westport, CT : Negro Universities Press, 1970.
PS627.N4L6 1970
- Includes "Judge Lynch" by J. W. Rogers, Jr.
- Race, rape, and lynching : the red record of American
literature, 1890-1912 /
Sandra Gunning.
New York : Oxford University Press, 1996.
PS173.N4G86 1996
- Racial violence and representation: performance strategies in lynching dramas of the 1920s
/ Judith L. Stephens.
African American Review, 33(4):655 (10281 words), Winter 1999.
- Racial violence on trial : a handbook with cases, laws, and
documents /
Christopher Waldrep.
Santa Barbara, CA : ABC-CLIO, 2001.
KF221.M8W35 2001
- Reading rape : the rhetoric of sexual violence in American
literature and culture, 1790-1990 /
Sabine Sielke.
Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2002.
PS374.R35S54 2002
- Includes
"'The one crime' and 'the real 'one crime'' : rape, lynching, and mimicry
in Sutton E. Griggs's 'The Hindered hand'"
- Remember, and learn : the lessons of racism's ugly history.
Newsday, A38 (223 words), June 15, 2005.
- Revolt against chivalry : Jessie Daniel Ames and the
women's campaign against lynching /
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall.
New York : Columbia University Press, 1979.
HV6457.H34
- Rope and faggot /
Walter Francis White.
New York : Arno Press, 1969.
HV6457.W45 1969
- Rough justice : lynching and American society, 1874-1947 /
Michael J. Pfeifer.
Urbana : University of Illinois Press, 2004.
HV6457.P44 2004
- Selected works of Ida B. Wells-Barnett /
Ida B.Wells-Barnett ; Trudier Harris, editor.
New York : Oxford University Press, 1991.
E185.97.W55A2 1991
- Includes:
"Southern horrors : lynch law in all its phases" ;
"A red record : tabulated statistics and alleged causes of lynching in the United States, 1892-1893-1894" ;
"Mob rule in New Orleans : Robert Charles and his fight to the death"
- Senate issues apology over failure on antilynching law /
Sheryl Gay Stolberg.
New York Times, A15 (739 words), June 14, 2005.
- Senate remorse over lynchings /
India Autry.
Newsday, A27 (232 words), June 14, 2005.
- Senators introduce lynching apology.
New York Times, A13 (176 words), February 2, 2005.
- The shadow of hate a film [video] /
Charles Guggenheim and Julian Bond.
Washington, D.C. : Guggenheim Productions, Inc., 1995.
IMC Video E184.A1S564 1995bx
- Includes the Leo Frank lynching in Georgia in 1913
- Strange fruit : plays on lynching by American women /
Kathy A. Perkins and Judith L. Stephens.
Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1998.
PS627.L95S73 1998
- Their majesties, the mob /
John Walton Caughey.
Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1960.
HV6791.C38
- Over 50 documents republished from various sources
- Thirty years of lynching in the United States, 1889-1918 /
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
New York : Negro Universities Press, 1969.
HV6457.N3 1969
- The tragedy of lynching /
Arthur Franklin Raper and the Southern Commission on the Study of Lynching
New York : Negro Universities Press, 1969.
HV6464.R3 1969b
- An ugly legacy lives on, its glare unsoftened by age : critic's notebook /
Roberta Smith.
New York Times, E1 (1445 words), January 13, 2000.
- Discusses an exhibit of lynching photographs at the Roth Horowitz Gallery.
- Under sentence of death : lynching in the South /
W. Fitzhugh Brundage.
Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
HV6464.U49 1997
- Unnatural selections : eugenics in American modernism and
the Harlem Renaissance /
Daylanne K. English.
Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2004.
PS228.E84E54 2004
- Includes "Blessed are the barren : lynching, reproduction, and the
drama of new Negro womanhood, 1916-1930"
- War of words: the controversy over the definition of lynching, 1899-1940
/ Christopher Waldrep.
Journal of Southern History, 66(1):75 (2 pages), February 2000.
- We are coming : the persuasive discourse of
nineteenth-century Black women /
Shirley W. Logan.
Carbondale, IL : Southern Illinois University Press, 1999.
E185.86.L57 1999
- "'Out of their own mouths' : Ida Wells and the presence of lynching"
- We charge genocide : the historic petition to the United
Nations for relief from a crime of the United States
Government against the Negro people /
Civil Rights Congress (U.S.).
New York : Civil Rights Congress, 1952.
E185.61.C592 1952x
- Whispered consolations : law and narrative in African
American life /
Jon Christian Suggs.
Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2000.
KF4757.S84 2000
- Includes "Lynchings and passing"
- "With the past let these be buried": the 1873 mob massacre of the
Hill family in Springtown, Texas
/ Helen McLure.
Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 105(2):293 (29 pages), October 2001.
- Without sanctuary : lynching photography in America /
James Allen.
Santa Fe, NM : Twin Palms, 2000.
HV6459.W57 2000
- Official website: http://withoutsanctuary.org/
- Without sanctuary: lynching photography in America
/ Grace Elizabeth Hale.
Journal of American History, 89(3):989-994, December 2002.
- Witnessing lynching : American writers respond /
Anne P. Rice.
New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, 2003.
PS509.L94W58 2003
- Wounds not scars: lynching, the national conscience and the American historian
/ Joel Williamson.
Journal of American History, 83(4):1221 (33 pages), March 1997.
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