Lynching in American Literature and Journalism

Yoshinobu Hakutani

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9781978795495
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Historical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Lynching in American Literature and Journalism consists of twelve essays investigating the history and development of writing about lynching as an American tragedy and the ugliest element of national character. According to the Tuskegee Institute, 4,743 people were lynched between 1882 and 1968 in the United States, including 3,446 African Americans and 1,297 European Americans. More than 73 percent of the lynchings in the Civil War period occurred in the Southern states. The Lynchings increased dramatically in the aftermath of the Reconstruction, after slavery had been abolished and free men gained the right to vote. The peak of lynching occurred in 1882, after Southern white Democrats had regained control of the state legislators. This book is a collection of historical and critical discussions of lynching in America that reflects the shameful, unmoral policies, and explores the topic of lynching within American history, literature, and journalism.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• The “Girl Reporter” Confronts the Lynch Mob
• Theodore Dreiser’s “Nigger Jeff”
• Theodore Dreiser’s “Nigger Jeff,” Richard Wright’s “Big Boy Leaves Home,” and Lynching
• Lynching as an American Tragedy in Theodore Dreiser’s Literary Works
• Faulkner on Lynching
• Lynching in Richard Wright’s “Big Boy Leaves Home”
• Lynching in Modern American Short Stories and Sexual Crime in Classic Myth
• The Southern Ritual of Lynching in Faulkner’s Light in August and Ellison’s Three Days before the Shooting
• The Electric Execution of Bigger Thomas in Wright’s Native Son
• Lynching as Surrealism
• Lynching in African-American Poetry
• Depictions of Racial Violence in the Work of Paul Laurence Dunbar
• Index
• About the Contributors