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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.
On the night of February 8, 1968, South Carolina state highway
patrolmen fired on civil rights demonstrators in front of South
Carolina State College, a historically black institution in the
town of Orangeburg. Three young black men--Samuel Hammond, Delano
Middleton, and Henry Smith--were killed, and twenty-seven other
protestors were injured. Preceding the infamous events at Kent
State University by more than two years, the Orangeburg Massacre,
as it came to be known, was one of the first violent civil rights
confrontations on an American college campus. The patrolmen
involved were exonerated while victims and their families were left
still seeking justice. To this day the community of Orangeburg
endeavors to find resolution and reconciliation.
In Blood and Bone, Orangeburg native Jack Shuler offers a
multifaceted examination of the massacre and its aftermath,
uncovering a richer history than the one he learned as a white
youth growing up in Orangeburg. Shuler focuses on why events
unfolded and escalated as they did and on the ramifications that
still haunt the community.
Despite the violence of the massacre and its contentious legacy,
Orangeburg is a community of people living and working together.
Shuler tells their fascinating stories and pays close attention to
the ways in which the region is shaping a new narrative on its own,
despite the lack of any official reexamination of the massacre. He
also explores his own efforts to understand the tragedy in the
context of Orangeburg's history of violence. His native connections
gave him access to individuals, black and white, who have
previously not spoken out publicly. Blood and Bone breaks new
ground as an investigation of the massacre and also as a reflection
by a proud Orangeburg native on the meanings of Southern
community.
Shuler concludes that the history of race and violence in
Orangeburg mirrors the history of race relations in the United
States--a murky and contested narrative, complicated by the
emotions and motivations of those who have shaped the story and of
those who have refused to close the book on it. Orangeburg, like
the rest of the nation, carries the historical burdens of slavery,
war, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and civil rights. Blood and Bone
exposes the ways in which historical memory affects the lives of
ordinary Americans. Shuler explores how they remember the
Orangeburg Massacre, what its meaning holds for them now, and what
it means for the future of the South and the nation.
On Sunday, September 9, 1739, twenty Kongolese slaves armed
themselves by breaking into a storehouse near the Stono River south
of Charleston, South Carolina. They killed twenty-three white
colonists, joined forces with other slaves, and marched toward
Spanish Florida. There they expected to find freedom. One report
claims the rebels were overheard shouting, ""Liberty!"" Before the
day ended, however, the rebellion was crushed, and afterwards many
surviving rebels were executed. South Carolina rapidly responded
with a comprehensive slave code. The Negro Act reinforced white
power through laws meant to control the ability of slaves to
communicate and congregate. It was an important model for many
slaveholding colonies and states, and its tenets greatly inhibited
African American access to the public sphere for years to come. The
Stono Rebellion serves as a touchstone for Calling Out Liberty, an
exploration of human rights in early America. Expanding upon
historical analyses of this rebellion, Jack Shuler suggests a
relationship between the Stono rebels and human rights discourse in
early American literature. Though human rights scholars and policy
makers usually offer the European Enlightenment as the source of
contemporary ideas about human rights, this book repositions the
sources of these important and often challenged American ideals.
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