The End of Public Execution - Race, Religion, and Punishment in the American South (Paperback)

Before 1850, all legal executions in the South were performed before crowds that could number in the thousands; the last legal public execution was in 1936. This study focuses on the shift from public executions to ones behind barriers, situating that change within our understandings of lynching and competing visions of justice and religion. Intended to shame and intimidate, public executions after the Civil War had quite a different effect on southern Black communities. Crowds typically consisting of as many Black people as white behaved like congregations before a macabre pulpit, led in prayer and song by a Black minister on the scaffold. Black criminals often proclaimed their innocence and almost always their salvation. This turned the proceedings into public, mixed-race and mixed-gender celebrations of Black religious authority and devotion. In response, southern states rewrote their laws to eliminate these crowds and this Black authority, ultimately turning to electrocutions in the bowels of state penitentiaries. In just the same era when a wave of lynchings crested around the turn of the twentieth century, states transformed the ways that the South's white-dominated governments controlled legal capital punishment, making executions into private affairs witnessed only by white people.

General

Imprint:	The University of North Carolina Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	November 2022
Authors:	Michael Ayers Trotti
Dimensions:	235 x 155 x 23mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	266
ISBN-13:	978-1-4696-7041-6
Categories:	Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > General Books > Humanities > History > American history > General Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Ethnic studies > General Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Ethical issues & debates > General Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Crime & criminology > Penology & punishment > Capital punishment Books > History > American history > General Books > Religion & Spirituality > General
LSN:	1-4696-7041-0
Barcode:	9781469670416

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