Witnessing Lynching: American Writers Respond
Item
Title
Witnessing Lynching: American Writers Respond
This edition
"Witnessing Lynching: American Writers Respond". Ed. Anne P. Rice. Foreword by Michele Wallace. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2003. xv+324 pp.
Table of contents
Illustrations
● Michele Wallace / Foreword: Passing, lynching, and Jim Crow
Acknowledgments
● Anne P. Rice / Introduction: The Contest over Memory
[Non-African American authors marked with an asterisk (*)]
1889-1900:
● Charles W. Chesnutt / The Sheriff's Children (1889)
● Frederick Douglass / Lynch Law in the South (1892)
● Frances Ellen Watkins Harper / An Appeal to My Countrywomen (1896)
● Ida B. Wells-Barnett / Excerpt from "Mob Rule in New Orleans" (1900)
● Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins / Will Smith's Defense of His Race (from "Contending Forces") (1900)
1901-1910:
● Susie Baker King Taylor / Thoughts on the Present Conditions (from "Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd United States Colored Troops Late 1st S.C. Volunteers") (1902)
● Alice French* (Octave Thanet) / Beyond the Limit (1903)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / The Haunted Oak (1903)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / The Lynching of Jube Benson (1904)
● Mary Church Terrell / Excerpt from Lynching from a Negro's Point of View (1904)
● Sutton E. Griggs / The Blaze (from "The Hindered Hand; or, The Reign of the Repressionist") (1905)
● W. E. B. Du Bois / A Litany at Atlanta (1906)
● Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer / Jim Crow Cars (1907)
1911-1920:
● Bertha Johnston* / I Met a Little Blue-Eyed Girl (1912)
● James Weldon Johnson / Excerpt from "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" (1912)
● James Weldon Johnson / Brothers (1916)
● French Wilson / Jimmy (1914)
● [Elisabeth Freeman*] / The Waco Horror (supplement to "The Crisis") (July 1916)
● Theodore Dreiser* / Nigger Jeff (1918)
● Carl Sandburg* / Excerpts from "The Chicago Race Riots, July 1919" (1919)
● Carl Sandburg* / Man, the Man-Hunter (1920)
● Mary Powell Burrill / "Aftermath" (1919)
● Claude McKay / If We Must Die (1919)
● Claude McKay / The Lynching (1922)
● Angelina Weld Grimké / Goldie (1920)
1921-1930:
● William Pickens / Excerpt from "Lynching and Debt Slavery" (1921)
● Leslie Pinckney Hill / So Quietly (1921)
● Carrie Williams Clifford / The Black Draftee from Dixie (1922)
● Countee Cullen / Christ Recrucified (1922)
● Langston Hughes / The South (1922)
● Jean Toomer / Portrait in Georgia (1923)
● Jean Toomer / Blood-Burning Moon (1923)
● Anne Spencer / White Things (1923)
● Floyd C. Calvin / The Present South (1923)
● Robert Bagnall / The Unquenchable Fire (1924)
● Lola Ridge / Morning Ride (1927)
● Angelina Weld Grimké / Tenebris (1927)
● Walter Francis White / I Investigate Lynchings (1929)
1931-1935:
● Sterling Brown / He Was a Man (1932)
● Sterling Brown / Let Us Suppose (1935)
● Langston Hughes / Christ in Alabama (1932)
● Nancy Clara Cunard* / (Excerpt from) Scottsboro--and Other Scottsboros (1934)
● Esther Popel / Flag Salute (1934)
● Erskine Caldwell* / Kneel to the Rising Sun (1935)
● Richard Wright / Between the World and Me (1935)
Bibliography
Permissions
Index
● Michele Wallace / Foreword: Passing, lynching, and Jim Crow
Acknowledgments
● Anne P. Rice / Introduction: The Contest over Memory
[Non-African American authors marked with an asterisk (*)]
1889-1900:
● Charles W. Chesnutt / The Sheriff's Children (1889)
● Frederick Douglass / Lynch Law in the South (1892)
● Frances Ellen Watkins Harper / An Appeal to My Countrywomen (1896)
● Ida B. Wells-Barnett / Excerpt from "Mob Rule in New Orleans" (1900)
● Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins / Will Smith's Defense of His Race (from "Contending Forces") (1900)
1901-1910:
● Susie Baker King Taylor / Thoughts on the Present Conditions (from "Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd United States Colored Troops Late 1st S.C. Volunteers") (1902)
● Alice French* (Octave Thanet) / Beyond the Limit (1903)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / The Haunted Oak (1903)
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / The Lynching of Jube Benson (1904)
● Mary Church Terrell / Excerpt from Lynching from a Negro's Point of View (1904)
● Sutton E. Griggs / The Blaze (from "The Hindered Hand; or, The Reign of the Repressionist") (1905)
● W. E. B. Du Bois / A Litany at Atlanta (1906)
● Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer / Jim Crow Cars (1907)
1911-1920:
● Bertha Johnston* / I Met a Little Blue-Eyed Girl (1912)
● James Weldon Johnson / Excerpt from "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" (1912)
● James Weldon Johnson / Brothers (1916)
● French Wilson / Jimmy (1914)
● [Elisabeth Freeman*] / The Waco Horror (supplement to "The Crisis") (July 1916)
● Theodore Dreiser* / Nigger Jeff (1918)
● Carl Sandburg* / Excerpts from "The Chicago Race Riots, July 1919" (1919)
● Carl Sandburg* / Man, the Man-Hunter (1920)
● Mary Powell Burrill / "Aftermath" (1919)
● Claude McKay / If We Must Die (1919)
● Claude McKay / The Lynching (1922)
● Angelina Weld Grimké / Goldie (1920)
1921-1930:
● William Pickens / Excerpt from "Lynching and Debt Slavery" (1921)
● Leslie Pinckney Hill / So Quietly (1921)
● Carrie Williams Clifford / The Black Draftee from Dixie (1922)
● Countee Cullen / Christ Recrucified (1922)
● Langston Hughes / The South (1922)
● Jean Toomer / Portrait in Georgia (1923)
● Jean Toomer / Blood-Burning Moon (1923)
● Anne Spencer / White Things (1923)
● Floyd C. Calvin / The Present South (1923)
● Robert Bagnall / The Unquenchable Fire (1924)
● Lola Ridge / Morning Ride (1927)
● Angelina Weld Grimké / Tenebris (1927)
● Walter Francis White / I Investigate Lynchings (1929)
1931-1935:
● Sterling Brown / He Was a Man (1932)
● Sterling Brown / Let Us Suppose (1935)
● Langston Hughes / Christ in Alabama (1932)
● Nancy Clara Cunard* / (Excerpt from) Scottsboro--and Other Scottsboros (1934)
● Esther Popel / Flag Salute (1934)
● Erskine Caldwell* / Kneel to the Rising Sun (1935)
● Richard Wright / Between the World and Me (1935)
Bibliography
Permissions
Index
Publisher's description
● "Witnessing Lynching: American Writers Respond is the first anthology to gather poetry, essays, drama, and fiction from the height of the lynching era (1889-1935). During this time, the torture of a black person drew thousands of local onlookers and was replayed throughout the nation in lurid newspaper reports. The selections gathered here represent the courageous efforts of American writers to witness the trauma of lynching and to expose the truth about this uniquely American atrocity. Included are well-known authors and activists such as Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Ida B. Wells, and Theodore Dreiser, as well as many others. These writers responded to lynching in many different ways, using literature to protest and educate, to create a space of mourning in which to commemorate and rehumanize the dead, and as a cathartic release for personal and collective trauma. Their words provide today's reader with a chance to witness lynching and better understand the current state of race relations in America" (book jacket).
Reviews and notices of anthology
● Robeson, Elizabeth. "Journal of Southern History" 72.1 (2006): 215-16.
Item Number
A0586