ABSTRACT
More than a century ago, sociologist James Cutler asserted that ‘Our country's national crime is lynching.’ 1 Yet, only in recent years have either scholars or the broader public displayed any sustained interest in the history of lynching in America. As recently as 15 years ago a collection of new essays on lynching in the South, let alone in the United States, would have been inconceivable. Who would have contributed? In 2002 when Emory University hosted a multi-day conference on lynching hundreds of scholars from around the world were in attendance. Such a gathering would have been inconceivable before 1985, perhaps even 1990. Little of the scholarship of the first three quarters of the twentieth century presaged the current scholarly and popular interest in lynching. That this collection is now appearing, that a major southern university hosted a major conference on lynching, that a traveling display of lynching photographs attracted large crowds of viewers, and that the United States Senate issued in 2005 an apology for its historic failure to pass anti-lynching legislation all warrant reflection.
