ABSTRACT
Lynching stories have appeared in at least fourteen of the eighty-three interviews conducted by the Delta Oral History Project between August 1995 and July 1996. Many of the narrators have asserted that their families protected them from the knowledge of such brutality, but could readily recall other stories of whites' exploitation and mistreatment of African-Americans. Among Delta narrators, lynching stories as trauma narratives commonly contain several elements or motifs. The first is a perceived violation of norms, contractual agreements, or prerogatives of whites by an African-American. Whites - usually a mob - then seek vengeance. The prevalence of lynching stories and other accounts of the physical, emotional, and psychological abuse of African-Americans in the Delta suggest that the violence that maintained white supremacy produced a pervasive sense of communal trauma among the black population. Memories of lynchings and other forms of racial violence have, however, left their mark on many narrators' life-stories.
