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Race, Rhetoric, and Media Series
Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric, and American Identity
Winner of the 2020 Rhetoric Society of America Book Award
While victims of antebellum lynchings were typically white men, postbellum lynchings became more frequent and more intense, with the victims more often black. After Reconstruction, lynchings exhibited and embodied links between violent collective action, American civic identity, and the making of the nation.
Ersula J. Ore investigates lynching as a racialized practice of civic engagement, in effect an argument against black inclusion within the changing nation. Ore scrutinizes the civic roots of lynching, the relationship between lynching and white constitutionalism, and contemporary manifestations of lynching discourse and logic today. From the 1880s onward, lynchings, she finds, manifested a violent form of symbolic action that called a national public into existence, denoted citizenship, and upheld political community.
Grounded in Ida B. Wells’s summation of lynching as a social contract among whites to maintain a racial order, at its core, Ore’s book speaks to racialized violence as a mode of civic engagement. Since violence enacts an argument about citizenship, Ore construes lynching and its expressions as part and parcel of America’s rhetorical tradition and political legacy.
Drawing upon newspapers, official records, and memoirs, as well as critical race theory, Ore outlines the connections between what was said and written, the material practices of lynching in the past, and the forms these rhetorics and practices assume now. In doing so, she demonstrates how lynching functioned as a strategy interwoven with the formation of America’s national identity and with the nation’s need to continually restrict and redefine that identity. In addition, Ore ties black resistance to lynching, the acclaimed exhibit Without Sanctuary , recent police brutality, effigies of Barack Obama, and the killing of Trayvon Martin.
While victims of antebellum lynchings were typically white men, postbellum lynchings became more frequent and more intense, with the victims more often black. After Reconstruction, lynchings exhibited and embodied links between violent collective action, American civic identity, and the making of the nation.
Ersula J. Ore investigates lynching as a racialized practice of civic engagement, in effect an argument against black inclusion within the changing nation. Ore scrutinizes the civic roots of lynching, the relationship between lynching and white constitutionalism, and contemporary manifestations of lynching discourse and logic today. From the 1880s onward, lynchings, she finds, manifested a violent form of symbolic action that called a national public into existence, denoted citizenship, and upheld political community.
Grounded in Ida B. Wells’s summation of lynching as a social contract among whites to maintain a racial order, at its core, Ore’s book speaks to racialized violence as a mode of civic engagement. Since violence enacts an argument about citizenship, Ore construes lynching and its expressions as part and parcel of America’s rhetorical tradition and political legacy.
Drawing upon newspapers, official records, and memoirs, as well as critical race theory, Ore outlines the connections between what was said and written, the material practices of lynching in the past, and the forms these rhetorics and practices assume now. In doing so, she demonstrates how lynching functioned as a strategy interwoven with the formation of America’s national identity and with the nation’s need to continually restrict and redefine that identity. In addition, Ore ties black resistance to lynching, the acclaimed exhibit Without Sanctuary , recent police brutality, effigies of Barack Obama, and the killing of Trayvon Martin.
196 pages, Hardcover
Published March 28, 2019
18 people are currently reading
119 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 19, 2020
Read this book. It’s so important.
June 3, 2020
Because of my research interests in nineteenth century Ida B. Wells, known for her brilliant crusade to end lynching in the U.S., I wanted to read Ore's 2019 work extending Wells's legacy. Ore's argument is that the lynching of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has merely changed form, not formula; the New Jim Crow is being practiced throughout the U.S. despite the PC mantra of colorblindness. This book is important because of its excellent work in exposing hate crimes and anti-black rhetoric across time providing a much-needed civic lesson. Additionally, Ore's careful explication of the rhetorics used to perpetuate and excuse lynching, along with the rationale that "we're past all that" is not only interesting but impactful in helping readers assess their own critical thinking--or lack thereof. The strength of Ore's book is the powerful "evidence of a changing same" that all Americans must admit and work together to rectify. I finished reading it with a renewed commitment to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.
I felt uncomfortable with the racial binary which ironically stereotyped whites similar to the black stereotyping of which Ore objects. I also felt that Ore's logic was lacking in her analysis of white response to Barack Obama because many U.S. politicians, all white, have been lynched in effigy, including Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. And to claim that lynching is "as American as apple pie," implying its a uniquely American invention and practice, is simply wrong. Lynching is as old as the written record, showing up in Homer's Odyssey and practiced world-wide from Egypt to Canada. But aside from Ore's over-reachings to make her point, this is an introspective book about the disenfranchisement of black America and our nation's failure to live up to its constitutional commitments. While reading this book, I could easily have substituted "women" for "black" as the subject of America's political prejudice and rhetorical victimization. In the end, I believe this book is historically significant, rhetorically powerful, and an essential contemplation of how Americans must re-think their definitions of citizenship and human rights. This book has the potential to change society for the better.
I felt uncomfortable with the racial binary which ironically stereotyped whites similar to the black stereotyping of which Ore objects. I also felt that Ore's logic was lacking in her analysis of white response to Barack Obama because many U.S. politicians, all white, have been lynched in effigy, including Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. And to claim that lynching is "as American as apple pie," implying its a uniquely American invention and practice, is simply wrong. Lynching is as old as the written record, showing up in Homer's Odyssey and practiced world-wide from Egypt to Canada. But aside from Ore's over-reachings to make her point, this is an introspective book about the disenfranchisement of black America and our nation's failure to live up to its constitutional commitments. While reading this book, I could easily have substituted "women" for "black" as the subject of America's political prejudice and rhetorical victimization. In the end, I believe this book is historically significant, rhetorically powerful, and an essential contemplation of how Americans must re-think their definitions of citizenship and human rights. This book has the potential to change society for the better.
May 16, 2021
This is an academic book, so if you are not used to reading more formal academic writing it may take some getting used to that style. But it is worth the work reading this book!
Having been aware of Ore's experience with police violence and mistreatment at Arizona State University, I was surprised and humbled that she chose to share that story as bookends to this book. My biggest takeaway from this read is that in reinforced for me how important the language we use matters. My personal goal after reading this is to be intentional about calling out modern-day lynching's and to refer to them as such. As Ore wrote, "Lynching was a form of social control that maintained the racial status quo through its denial of due process of law." and that continues to be true today.
Having been aware of Ore's experience with police violence and mistreatment at Arizona State University, I was surprised and humbled that she chose to share that story as bookends to this book. My biggest takeaway from this read is that in reinforced for me how important the language we use matters. My personal goal after reading this is to be intentional about calling out modern-day lynching's and to refer to them as such. As Ore wrote, "Lynching was a form of social control that maintained the racial status quo through its denial of due process of law." and that continues to be true today.
June 18, 2022
While I do wish Ore’s research expanded into the use of the death penalty as an extension of lynching, her approach to history of lynching combined with rhetorical analysis of how lynching photography has been used epideictically by white supremacists and anti-racists demonstrates the existential horrors of this form of domestic terrorism, how lynching came to be extralegally sanctioned, and how anti-racists have worked to reclaim the identities of lynching victims to refocus our attention on the abject nature of the people who murdered these Black men and women independent of any constitutional rights.
September 7, 2020
A wonderful rhetorical analysis about the history of lynching and it’s present day practice. Winner of the Rhetoric Society of America’s book of the year award. Excellent for teaching rhetoric at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
July 20, 2020
Very informative but u felt at times the author was repeating the same sentences over & over to the point in as getting bored in instead of acknowledging the emphasis.
October 26, 2020
Re-read this for a class this semester and after the racial turmoil in America this book should be a must read. Powerful, gripping, and a must read for the current climate we are in as Black people in a white society.
April 11, 2020
If you are choosing a few important rhetoric books this year, this one should make your list!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews