
At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America
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Winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
This extraordinary account of lynching in America, by acclaimed civil rights historian Philip Dray, shines a clear, bright light on American history's darkest stain—illuminating its causes, perpetrators, apologists, and victims. Philip Dray also tells the story of the men and women who led the long and difficult fight to expose and eradicate lynching, including Ida B. Wells, James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, and W.E.B. Du Bois. If lynching is emblematic of what is worst about America, their fight may stand for what is best: the commitment to justice and fairness and the conviction that one individual's sense of right can suffice to defy the gravest of wrongs. This landmark book follows the trajectory of both forces over American history—and makes lynching's legacy belong to us all.
Liked At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America? Here’s where I’d start.
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“People who read At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America tend to reach for these next.”
“If you want more of the same (history about race), start with these.”
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Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow
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Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900
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Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights: 1919-1950
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Telling Memories Among Southern Women: Domestic Workers and Their Employers in the Segregated South
