Living with Lynching

African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890-1930

Dados Bibliográficos

ID20007056
AutoresKoritha Mitchell (autor correspondente)
Ano2011
Páginas251
Data de publicação2011-10-01
Open AccessNão
TipoBOOK
PeriódicoLiving with lynching (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditoraUniversity of Illinois Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.5406/illinois/9780252036491.001.0001
OpenAlexW2252250160
Open LibraryOL24842407M
ISBN9780252036491
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas22

This book demonstrates that popular lynching plays were mechanisms through which African American communities survived actual and photographic mob violence. Often available in periodicals, lynching plays were read aloud or acted out by black church members, schoolchildren, and families. This book shows that these community performances and readings presented victims as honorable heads of households being torn from model domestic units by white violence, counter to the dominant discourses that depicted lynching victims as isolated brutes. Examining lynching plays as archival texts that embody broad networks of sociocultural exchange in the lives of black Americans, the author finds that audiences were rehearsing and improvising new ways of enduring in the face of widespread racial terrorism. Images of the black soldier, lawyer, mother, and wife helped readers assure each other that they were upstanding individuals who deserved the right to participate in national culture and politics. These powerful community coping efforts helped African Americans band together and withstand the nation's rejection of them as viable citizens

Criminology · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Sociocultural evolution · Sociology · Terrorism · White (mutation) · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society · 19th century · 20th century · African American authors · African americans in literature · American drama · American drama, african american authors · American drama, african american authors, history and criticism · American drama, history and criticism · Citizenship in literature · History and criticism · Lynching · Lynching in literature · One-act plays · One-act plays, American · Violence in literature