The hangman's knot is a simple thing to tie, just a rope carefully
coiled around itself up to thirteen times. But in those thirteen
turns lie a powerful symbol, one of the most powerful in history,
and particularly in America, whose relationship to the noose is all
too deep and complicated.
Our history with hangings is shockingly recent. The last man to be
hanged in the United States was Billy Bailey, who was executed in
Delaware in 1996 for committing a double murder. Hanging has since
been disallowed in that state, but it is still legal, in certain
situations, in New Hampshire and Washington. An incident in Jena,
Louisiana, in 2006, in which nooses were used to symbolically
menace black students, is a fresh reminder of just how potent this
emblem of racism and savage violence still is.
All that meaning, and all that history, is a lot to see in a coiled
rope. But the fact is, that meaning is felt by all of us. And Jack
Shuler, a professor of American literature and black studies, is
the right man to explore it: from Judas Iscariot, perhaps the most
infamous hanged man, to the killing of Perry Smith and Richard
Hickock, the murderers at the heart of Capote's "In Cold Blood,"
and beyond. Shuler goes era by era, tracing the evolution of this
dark practice in episodes, and revealing the ways each one impacted
the society around it. As he investigates the death of John Brown
and the 1930 lynching that inspired the song "Strange Fruit," his
travels take him across America--and not just the South--uncovering
our deep secrets and searching for meaning.
Shuler's account is a kind of shadow history of America: for all
the celebrated strides we've made towards integration and harmony,
those victories are hollow without an appreciation for what they
vanquished. "The Thirteenth Turn" is a courageous and searching
book that reminds us where we come from, and what is lost if we
forget.
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