Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930

by W. Fitzhugh Brundage

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252053733
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	08/15/2022
Series:	Blacks in the New World
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
File size:	2 MB

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.

Table 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

Editorial Reviews

Considered a particularly American, preponderately racial form of lawlessness, lynching--mob-based, vigilante murder--was rampant in former Confederate states around the turn of this century. Brundage focuses this academic study on the two states with the most (Georgia) and least (Virginia) lynchings to determine specific societal causes of these crimes. To this end, Brundage analyzes the types of mobs, their locational variation in style and number, and the opposition that eventually brought about a decline. The result is a readable account that focuses less on the sensationalistic details of lynchings than on the patterns and factors. Unfortunately, this sizable book will most likely be approached only by those with a solid interest in this rather shameful passage of America's history.

Angus Trimnell

Winner of the Merle Curti Social History Award given by the Organization of American Historians, 1994.

"The research is formidable, the analysis sophisticated. Clearly, this is the best work ever written on lynching."—Numan V. Bartley, author of The Rise of Massive Resistance: Race and Politics in the South during the 1950s

From the Publisher