Lynching in America: A documentary history
Edited by Christopher Waldrep
New York University Press 2006
279 pp
I obtained this because I thought I should learn more about mob violence in America and because it seemed likely to spare me the dreadful pornography of violence, since consists of contemporary records without photographs
It is an extraordinarily informative volume, but as -- the press in the lynching era was often gleeful about recounting the details of mob ritual -- it is still in many parts a bit of a gruesome pornographic slog to read. One reason, perhaps, is that at the height of the lynching era, some newspapers and railroads seem to have colluded in publicizing an upcoming event as a form of entertainment, with the railroads organizing special excursion trains for persons wishing to become spectators or participants
Justifications for lynch law varied regionally: westerners, for example, were often interested in pointing out that western lynch law differed from southern lynch law, western lynchings being a form of justice in places that did not yet had functional courts