Beginning in the late nineteenth century, white supremacists used lynching to terrorize and, by extension, oppress African Americans. Despite anti-lynching activists’ best efforts, this lethal form of policing Black people continued through the mid-twentieth century, culminating in the 1955 lynching of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till. This horrific but key chapter in our national story warrants continued and careful attention. Dr. Brenna Greer traces how and why lynching became a tool of white supremacy following the end of slavery and how this development shaped the life on both sides of the color line. She details aspects of this history that are often overlooked, including the relationship of racial terror lynchings to early American leisure, consumer and visual culture, shifting demographics in the twentieth-century United States, present-day law enforcement, and teaching.
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