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Lynching in the West |
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| book description from the book additional images | |
| Lynching in the West 1850-1935 | ||||||
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There have been many books published on lynching in the United States but only a handful include more than a cursory glance to the Western region of the nation. When they do, the information is usually out of date or inaccurate. Lynching in the West began as an effort to expand the historical record in one of these states, and in doing so, discovered that contrary to the vast majority of published texts and histories on California, that frontier justice and vigilantism were not always a racially neutral set of practices. The book includes a detailed appendix, assembled by the author, of individual cases of lynching and other forms of public execution. The appended case lists reveals that in California, along with the many persons of Anglo, European, Asian, African, and Native American discent who were lynched, that Latinos of Mexican and Latin American were more likely to be lynched than any other racial, ethnic or national group. |
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The book also considers how eighteenth and nineteenth century theories of race, nationality and ethnicity, may have contributed to this history. From the vigilance committee to the antilynching movement, lynching touched nearly every community in the United States, and continues to serve as a catalyst for thinking about race, ethnicity, and national identity today. In revisiting this seemingly distant past, contemporary readers will be surprised to learn that debates about securing national boarders, racial and ethnic identity, and even questions of equality under the law, are anything but new. |
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REVIEWS of Lynching in the West: Brown, Ray B. “Lynching in the West, 1850-1935.” The Journal of American Culture, June
2007, 30. 2: 248. Wood, Amy Louise. “Lynching in the West: 1850–1935.” New Mexico Historical Review, Summer 2008, 83.3: 388-389. |