PROJECT HAL – READING SOURCES draft of 2/13/12 page 3 of 4

NOTE:  indicates seminal or definitive contribution, in the view of Hines and/or Steelwater. Entries and annotations to be added ongoing. We solicit reader suggestions; please provide full reference, copies of short works.

Monte Akers, Flames After Midnight: Murder, Vengeance, and the Desolation of a Texas Community (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), 220pp

case study of a lynching outbreak in one community

location: Kirven, Texas

time period: May-June 1922

lynching incidents: >3

Charles C. Alexander, The Ku Klux Klan in the Southwest (Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, 1995 [1965]), 288pp

 James Allen, Hilton Als, et al., Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America (Santa Fe, New Mexico: Twin Palms Publishers, 2000), 209pp

pictorial work with essays by Als, Jon Lewis, and Leon F. Litwack

NOTE: Selected photos can be viewed at http://withoutsanctuary.org/main.html

E. M. Beck, “Strangers, Miscreants, or Locals: Who Were the Black Victims of White Violence?” Historical Methods 35:2 (Spring 2002), 77-83

mathematical test of the hypothesis that lynching victims tended to be community outsiders; concludes that victims were indiscriminately chosen during most of the study period

location: Georgia

time period: 1882-1930

lynching incidents: 435

Patricia Bernstein, The First Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse Washington and the Rise of the NAACP (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2005), 252pp

Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice : A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age (New York: H. Holt, 2004), 415pp

W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Lynching in the New South, Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 375pp

James Cameron, A Time of Terror: A Survivor's Story (Baltimore: Black Classics Press, 1994 [1982]), 201pp

first-person account by lone survivor of attempted lynching of three African Americans in Marion, Indiana, 1930; also see James H. Madison, below

William D. Carrigan, The Making Of A Lynching Culture: Violence And Vigilantism In Central Texas, 1836-1916 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 308pp

William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb, "The Lynching of Persons of Mexican Origin or Descent in the United States, 1848 to 1928, Journal of Social History 27:2 (Winter 2003)

tabulation and assessment of ethnic Mexican lynching incidents; some cases in detail from Western states

thesis: racism as Mexican lynching dynamic, comparable to African-American lynchings; does not account for white-on-white vigilantism

location: nationwide, focusing on Southwest

time period: 1848-1928

lynching incidents: 597

David S. Cecelski and Timothy B. Tyson, Democracy Betrayed : The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and its Legacy (Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 301pp

Daniel J. Flanigan, The Criminal Law of Slavery and Freedom (New York: Garland, 1987), 510pp

atrocities against newly freed slaves during the largely ineffectual military occupation of the postbellum South

other: economic and political conditions in Southern states after the Civil War

Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 690pp

 Stanley Horn, Invisible Empire; The Story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866-1871, 2nd ed enlarged (Montclair, N.J., Patterson Smith, 1969 [1939]), 452pp

James H. Madison, A Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in America

(Palgrave MacMillan, 2001), 204pp

account of the James Cameron (see above) lynching and its aftereffects on community in Marion, Indiana


Jonathan Markovitz , Legacies of Lynching: Racial Violence and Memory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 227pp

examines recent events (such as Tawana Brawley incident and Hill-Thomas hearings) and their interpretation as lynchings

NAACP, Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889-1918 (New York: Arno Press, 1969; reprinted from 1919 original); 105 pp

list and tabular analyses of lynching victims has omissions and inaccuracies but is only nationwide compilation

other: contains 100 accounts of individual lynchings

time period: 1889-1918

location: 43 states and future states; no cases from NH, VT, MA, RI, CN, UT, HI, DC

lynching incidents: 3,224

Madeleine M. Noble, The White Caps of Harrison and Crawford County Indiana: A Study in the Violent Enforcement of Morality (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Dissertation Services, facsimile of Ph.D. thesis, 1973), 201pp

chiefly white-on-white vigilantism including fatal and non-fatal incidents; has table with names, dates, locations

other: relates lynching to social and economic conditions of the locale

time period: 1873-1893

lynching incidents: 80

Steve Oney, And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank (New York: Pantheon, 2003), 742pp

case study of subjects in subtitle

other: Georgia social conditions and politics; Ku Klux Klan; anti-Semitism; Jewish community in Atlanta and nationally

location: Atlanta, Marietta, and Milledgeville, Georgia

time period: 1913-1915

lynching incidents: 1

Michael J. Pfeifer, Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society, 1874-1947 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 245pp

thesis: lynching versus legal execution played out as a class conflict between working class/farmers and the emerging middle class

Robert M. Senkewicz, Vigilantes in Gold-Rush San Francisco (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1985), 272pp, ill, bibliographic essay

meticulously researched account and analysis of vigilante uprisings

other: economic and political conditions in San Francisco during the Gold Rush

location: San Francisco CA

time period: 1851, 1856

lynching incidents: 10

Stewart E. Tolnay and E. M. Beck, A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 298pp

statistical analysis of lynching incidents; verified count; some cases in detail

thesis: Southern lynching of African-Americans was rooted in economic conditions

location: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee

time period: 1882-1930

lynching incidents: 2,805

Allen W. Trelease, White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 557pp

Timothy B. Tyson, Blood Done Sign My Name : A True Story (New York: Crown Publishers, 2004) 355pp

memoir of author’s upbringing and black-white relations in North Carolina

Christopher Waldrup, "War of Words: The Controversy over the Definition of Lynching, 1899-1940," Journal of Southern History 66 (February 2000), 75-100

Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 597pp

account of the James Foster case, a non-fatal lynching, pages 462-495

thesis: 18th and 19th century Southern society as based on personal honor

location: Natchez, Mississippi, and vicinity

time period (Foster case): 1834-1835