Mary Turner and the Memory of Lynching

by Julie Buckner Armstrong

Mary Turner and the Memory of Lynching traces the reaction of activists, artists, writers, and local residents to the brutal lynching of a pregnant woman near Valdosta, Georgia. In 1918, the murder of a white farmer led to a week of mob violence that claimed the lives of at least eleven African Americans, including Hayes Turner. When his wife Mary vowed to press charges against the killers, she too fell victim to the mob.

Mary’s lynching was particularly brutal and involved the grisly death of her eight-month-old fetus. It led to both an entrenched local silence and a widespread national response in newspaper and magazine accounts, visual art, film, literature, and public memorials. Turner’s story became a centerpiece of the Anti-Lynching Crusaders campaign for the 1922 Dyer Bill, which sought to make lynching a federal crime. Julie Buckner Armstrong explores the complex and contradictory ways this horrific event was remembered in works such as Walter White’s report in the NAACP’s newspaper the Crisis , the “Kabnis” section of Jean Toomer’s Cane , Angelina Weld Grimké’s short story “Goldie,” and Meta Fuller’s sculpture Mary A Silent Protest against Mob Violence .

Like those of Emmett Till and Leo Frank, Turner’s story continues to resonate on multiple levels. Armstrong’s work provides insight into the different roles black women played in the history of as victims, as loved ones left behind, and as those who fought back. The crime continues to defy conventional forms of representation, illustrating what can, and cannot, be said about lynching and revealing the difficulty and necessity of confronting this nation’s legacy of racial violence.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

264 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2011

Reviews

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

One day I googled my name, and came across the story of Mary Turner's lynching. I never heard about the horrific events that transpired in Georgia, May 1918. I was mesmerized, terrified, and felt an urge to read "Mary Turner and the Memory of Lynching" to learn more; the little I found online wasn't enough to feed my curiosity.

IMO, Julie Buckner Armstrong did an excellent job retelling Georgia's (& the United States) dark-often ignored-bloodstained history. 'We must acknowledge something terrible has happened before we can understand how it affects us today. Because until we acknowledge, explore, and teach one another about our collective past we will be haunted by it.'

[Peter Clegg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not even in fictional horror movies have I heard of a Murder so brutal, so disregarding of human life as the Murder of Mary Turner and her unborn child. We can’t pretend to have amnesia about our past as a country nor act like America is some bastion of morality. How can people do this to there fellow humans?

[Regina Adesanya · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a very sad commentary on the slavery period in America. It's very disturbing to read about the role that lynching played in our country. Caused me to think how the past is being re-enacted today. I would recommend this as very few of us have heard about this lynching (Mary Turner) and know very little about the amount of lynchings that have occurred in the USA.

[Jailyne Maria Hamza · Rating 5 out of 5]

fuck slavery & racism & white people.