The hidden past of racial violence is illuminated in this skillfully selected compendium of articles from a wide range of papers large and small, radical and conservative, black and white. Through these pieces, readers witness a history of racial atrocities and are provided with a sobering view of American history.

Gruesome photographs document the victims of lynchings and the society that allowed mob violence.

On July 9, 1883, twenty men stormed the jail in Morehouse Parish, Louisiana, kidnapped Henderson Lee, a black man charged with larceny, and hanged him. Events like this occurred thousands of times across the American South in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, yet we know scarcely more about any of these other victims than we do about Henderson Lee. Drawing on new sources to provide the most comprehensive portrait of the men and women lynched in the American South, Amy Bailey and Stewart Tolnay's revealing profiles and careful analysis begin to restore the identities of--and lend dignity to--hundreds of lynching victims about whom we have known little more than their names and alleged offenses. Comparing victims' characteristics to those of African American men who were not lynched, Bailey and Tolnay identify the factors that made them more vulnerable to being targeted by mobs, including how old they were; what work they did; their marital status, place of birth, and literacy; and whether they lived in the margins of their communities or possessed higher social status. Assessing these factors in the context of current scholarship on mob violence and reports on the little-studied women and white men who were murdered in similar circumstances, this monumental work brings unprecedented clarity to our understanding of lynching and its victims.

This visual and textual study of lynchings that took place in California between 1850 and 1935 shows that race-based lynching in the United States reached far beyond the South.

On the evening of June 15, 1920, in Duluth, Minnesota, three young black men, accused of the rape of a white woman, were pulled from their jail cells and lynched by a mob numbering in the thousands. Yet for years the incident was nearly forgotten. This updated, second edition of The Lynchings in Duluth includes a new preface by the author, additional research and notes, and suggestions for further reading. “This account of racial violence in the early twentieth century is a genuinely startling and illuminating contribution to our understanding of racial justice in the United States in the twenty-first. Many Americans have found it convenient to think that episodes like this come only from the Jim Crow–era Deep South. The Lynchings in Duluth is a powerful reminder of the broader American pattern.” James Fallows, The Atlantic “A chilling reconstruction of a 1920 racial tragedy. . . . Combining hour-by-hour, day-by-day narrative with expert scholarship based on interviews, suppressed documents and news reports, Fedo skillfully portrays Northern prejudice and violence.” Los Angeles Times “This tense book punches out a story of devastating fury. . . . As pointed as a Klansman’s cap, this book conveys the horror of mob action—and the disturbing truth that it knows no region.” Milwaukee Journal

This finely detailed statistical study of lynching in ten southern states shows that economic and status concerns were at the heart of that violent practice. Stewart Tolnay and E. M. Beck empirically test competing explanations of the causes of lynching, using U.S. Census and historical voting data and a newly constructed inventory of southern lynch victims. Among their surprising findings: lynching responded to fluctuations in the price of cotton, decreasing in frequency when prices rose and increasing when they fell.