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Book Cover
Book
Author Brundage, W. Fitzhugh (William Fitzhugh), 1959-

Title Lynching in the New South : Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930 / W. Fitzhugh Brundage
Published Urbana : University of Illinois Press, ©1993

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Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 MELB  364.134 Bru/Lit  AVAILABLE
Description xii, 375 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
Series Blacks in the New World
Contents 1. Mobs and Ritual -- 2. "To Draw the Line": Crimes and Victims -- 3. "When White Men Merit Lynching" -- 4. The Geography of Lynching in Georgia -- 5. The Geography of Lynching in Virginia -- 6. "We Live in an Age of Lawlessness": The Response to Lynching in Virginia -- 7. The Struggle against Lynching in Georgia, 1880-1910 -- 8. Turning the Tide: Opposition to Lynching in Georgia, 1910-30 -- Epilogue: The Passing of a Tradition
Summary 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
Analysis Georgia Race relations
Lynching Georgia History
Lynching Virginia History
Virginia Race relations
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 304-368) and index
Subject Lynching -- Georgia -- History
Lynching -- Virginia -- History
Crime.
Lynching.
Race relations.
Lynchjustiz
Crime.
SUBJECT Georgia -- Race relations
Virginia -- Race relations
Subject Georgia.
Virginia.
Georgia
Virginia
Georgia.
Genre/Form History.
LC no. 92026034
ISBN 0252063457
9780252063459
0252019873
9780252019876