Items related to The Making of a Lynching Culture: Violence and Vigilantism...

The Making of a Lynching Culture: Violence and Vigilantism in Central Texas, 1836-1916 - Softcover

Carrigan, William D.

 
9780252074301: The Making of a Lynching Culture: Violence and Vigilantism in Central Texas, 1836-1916
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0252074300 ISBN 13: 9780252074301
Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2006

Synopsis

How a culture of violence legitimized lynching among ordinary people

On May 15, 1916, a crowd of fifteen thousand witnessed the lynching of an eighteen-year-old black farm worker named Jesse Washington. Most central Texans of the time failed to call for the punishment of the mob’s leaders. In The Making of a Lynching Culture, now in paperback, William D. Carrigan seeks to explain not how a fiendish mob could lynch one man but how a culture of violence that nourished this practice could form and endure for so long among ordinary people.

Beginning with the 1836 independence of Texas, The Making of a Lynching Culture reexamines traditional explanations of lynching, including the role of the frontier, economic tensions, and political conflicts. Using a voluminous body of court records, newspaper accounts, oral histories, and other sources, Carrigan shows how notions of justice and historical memory were shaped to glorify violence and foster a culture that legitimized lynching.

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About the Author

William D. Carrigan is an associate professor of history at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey, and the editor of Lynching Reconsidered: New Directions in the Study of Mob Violence.

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Publisher
University of Illinois Press
Publication date
2006
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0252074300
ISBN 13 
9780252074301
Binding
Paperback
Edition number
1
Number of pages
328