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In 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. The character of white domination in Georgia, however, was symbolized by nearly five hundred lynchings and became the measure of race relations in the Deep South. By focusing on these two states, Brundage addresses three central questions ignored by previous studies: How can the variation in lynching over space and time be explained? To what extent was lynching a social ritual that affirmed traditional values? What were the causes of the decline of lynching? An original aspect of the work is that it demonstrates the role blacks played in combatting lynching, whether by flight, overt protest, or other strategies. The most lasting of these were efforts to organize opposition to lynching, efforts that culminated in the expansion of the NAACP throughout the South. The book's multidisciplinary approach and the significant issues it addresses will interest historians of African-American history, the South, and American violence. At the same time, it will remind a more general audience of a tradition of violence that poisoned American life, and especially southern life.
List of contents
Acknowledgments / xi
Introduction / 1
1 Mobs and Ritual / 17
2 "To Draw the Line": Crimes and Victims / 49
3 "When White Men Merit Lynching" / 86
4 The Geography of Lynching in Georgia / 103
5 The Geography of Lynching in Virginia / 140
6 "We Live in an Age of Lawlessness": The Response to Lynching in Virginia / 161
7 The Struggle against Lynching in Georgia, 1880-1910 / 191
8 Turning the Tide: Opposition to Lynching in Georgia, 1910-30 / 208
Epilogue The Passing of a Tradition / 245
Appendixes / 261
Notes / 303
Index / 369
About the author
W. Fitzhugh Brundage is William Umstead Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina. His books include
Civilizing Torture: An American Tradition and
The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory.
