A Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in America

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Description

On a hot summer night in 1930, three black teenagers accused of murdering a young white man and raping his girlfriend waited for justice in an Indiana jail. A mob dragged them from the jail and lynched two of them. No person in Marion, Indiana was once ever punished for the murders. In this gripping account, James H. Madison refutes the preferred perception that lynching was once confined to the South, and clarifies 20th century The united states’s painful encounters with race, justice, and memory.
Indiana University professor James H. Madison tells the story at the back of one of The united states’s most infamous photographs: the image of two black teenagers dangling from a tree after a 1930 lynching in Marion, Indiana. The photo, reproduced on the cover, draws its power not only from the dead boys but also from the “shameless faces” of the white onlookers. The lynching itself involved three black teenagers accused of killing a white man and raping a white woman. Two of the alleged perpetrators were dragged from their jail cells in a while after they supposedly confessed to the crimes; the third, James Cameron, survived only because the crowd came to its senses. He was once in the end convicted of voluntary manslaughter (but not murder or rape), served his time, went on to lead a productive life, and was once pardoned by the governor in 1993. No member of the lynch mob, alternatively, was once ever brought to justice–although their acts were captured on film and witnessed by thousands. There are holes in the story–whether Mary Ball in reality was once raped “will likely never be known,” says Madison–but A Lynching in the Heartland succeeds at providing a detailed look at a horrible incident and its aftermath. –John Miller

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