Throughout the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, lynching took place across the country, even if we think of it as a phenomenon exclusive to southern states. Acclaimed historian and author of civil rights Philip Dray tells a different story, of a lynching in New York that rocked the small town of Port Jervis. The murder of Robert Lewis by a mob has great significance for how we remember the past and consider the present day.

Essential Reading:

Philip Dray, A Lynching at Port Jervis: Race and Reckoning in the Gilded Age (2022).

Philip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America (2003).

Recommended Reading:

Richard Brown, Strains of Violence: Historical Studies of Violence and Vigilantism (1975).

Dan Carter, Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South (1979).

A.J. Williams-Myers, Long Hammering: Essays on the Forging of an African-American Presence in the Hudson River Valley (1994).

Jacqueline Goldsby, A Spectacular Secret: Lynching in American Life and Literature (2006).

Michael J, Pfeifer, Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society 1847-1947 (2004).

Amy Wood, Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940 (2009).

Heather Cox Richardson, The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor and Politics in the Post Civil War North, 1865-1901 (2001).

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