A Spectacular Secret: Lynching in American Life and Literature

This incisive study takes on one of the grimmest secrets in America's national life-the history of lynching and, more generally, the public punishment of African Americans. Jacqueline Goldsby shows that lynching cannot be explained away as a phenomenon peculiar to the South or as the perverse culmination of racist politics. Rather, lynching-a highly visible form of social violence that has historically been shrouded in secrecy-was in fact a fundamental part of the national consciousness who...