Lynching in American Literature and Journalism is a collection of historical and critical discussions of lynching in America that reflects the shameful, unmoral policies of lynching. Through twelve essays, the book explores writing about lynching as an American tragedy.

Lynching in American Literature and Journalism consists of twelve essays investigating the history and development of writing about lynching as an American tragedy and the ugliest element of national character. According to the Tuskegee Institute, 4,743 people were lynched between 1882 and 1968 in the United States, including 3,446 African Americans and 1,297 European Americans. More than 73 percent of the lynchings in the Civil War period occurred in the Southern states. The Lynchings increased dramatically in the aftermath of the Reconstruction, after slavery had been abolished and free men gained the right to vote. The peak of lynching occurred in 1882, after Southern white Democrats had regained control of the state legislators. This book is a collection of historical and critical discussions of lynching in America that reflects the shameful, unmoral policies, and explores the topic of lynching within American history, literature, and journalism.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter One: The ‘Girl-Reporter’ Confronts the Lynch Mob: Miriam Michaelson’s A Yellow Journalist

Debbie Lelekis

Chapter Two: Theodore Dreiser’s ‘Nigger Jeff’: The Development of an Aesthetic

Donald Pizer

Chapter Three: Theodore Dreiser’s ‘Nigger Jeff,’ “Richard Wright’s ‘Big Boy Leaves Home,’ and Lynching

Michael Sanders

Chapter Four: Lynching as an American Tragedy in Theodore Dreiser’s Literary Works

Kiyohiko Murayama

Chapter Five: Faulkner on Lynching

Neil R. McMillen and Noel Polk

Chapter Six: Lynching in Richard Wright’s ‘Big Boy Leaves Home”

Toru Kiuchi

Chapter Seven: “Lynching in Modern American Short Stories and Sexual Crime in Classic Myth”

Yoshinobu Hakutani

Chapter Eight: The Southern Ritual of Lynching in Faulkner’s Light in August and Ellison’s Three Days before the Shooting

Robert Butler

Chapter Nine: The Electric Execution of Bigger Thomas in Richard Wright’s Native Son

Yoshinobu Hakutani

Chapter Ten: Lynching as Surrealism: Leon Forrest’s “The Vision”

Keith Byerman

Chapter Eleven: “Lynching in African American Poetry

Toru Kiuchi

Chapter Twelve: Depictions of Racial Violence in the Work of Paul Laurence Dunbar

Debbie Lelekis

About the Contributors