Between 1880 and 1940, more than 4,000 African Americas were lynched in the U.S. And Scholar Amy Wood says they were mostly committed in public, with huge crowds celebrating with photos and souvenirs.
Between 1880 and 1940, more than 4,000 African Americans were lynched in the U.S. And to add to the atrocities of the murders, historian Amy Wood says they were mostly committed in public, with huge crowds celebrating with photos and souvenirs. Wood wanted to understand how it was that ordinary people came to commit acts of such extraordinary violence. She joins us Monday to talk about the history of lynching in America and what it says about fear, vengeance, and political terror.
Amy Wood is a professor of history at Illinois State University and the author of Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1880-1940 [Indie bookstores|Amazon]
Other resources:
- Lynching in America, multi-media website from Equal Justice Initiative
- The National Memorial for Peace and Justice
- Without Sanctuary: Photographs and Postcards from Lynching in America
