This incisive study takes on one of the grimmest secrets in America's national life--the history of lynching and, more generally, the public punishment of African Americans. Jacqueline Goldsby shows that lynching cannot be explained away as a phenomenon peculiar to the South or as the perverse culmination of racist politics. Rather, lynching--a highly visible form of social violence that has historically been shrouded in secrecy--was in fact a fundamental part of the national consciousness whose cultural logic played a pivotal role in the making of American modernity.
To pursue this argument, Goldsby traces lynching's history by taking up select mob murders and studying them together with key literary works. She focuses on three prominent authors--Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Stephen Crane, and James Weldon Johnson--and shows how their own encounters with lynching influenced their analyses of it. She also examines a recently assembled archive of evidence--lynching photographs--to show how photography structured the nation's perception of lynching violence before World War I. Finally, Goldsby considers the way lynching persisted into the twentieth century, discussing the lynching of Emmett Till in 1955 and the ballad-elegies of Gwendolyn Brooks to which his murder gave rise.
An empathic and perceptive work, "A Spectacular Secret" will make an important contribution to the study of American history and literature.

In the modern era, there arose a prolific and vibrant print culture-books, newspapers, and magazines issued by and for diverse, often marginalized, groups. This long-overdue collection offers a unique foray into the multicultural world of reading and readers in the United States. The contributors to this award-winning collection pen interdisciplinary essays that examine the many ways print culture functions within different groups. The essays link gender, class, and ethnicity to the uses and goals of a wide variety of publications and also explore the role print materials play in constructing historical events like the Titanic disaster. Contributors: Lynne M. Adrian, Steven Biel, James P. Danky, Elizabeth Davey, Michael Fultz, Jacqueline Goldsby, Norma Fay Green, Violet Johnson, Elizabeth McHenry, Christine Pawley, Yumei Sun, and Rudolph J. Vecoli

Known only as the Ex-Colored Man, the protagonist in Johnson s novel is forced to choose between celebrating his African American heritage or passing as an average white man in a post-Reconstruction America that is rapidly changing. This Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1912 text. It is accompanied by a detailed introduction, explanatory footnotes, and a note on the text. The appendices that follow the novel include materials available in no other edition: manuscript drafts of the final chapters, including the original lynching scene (chapter 10, ca. 1910) and the original ending (chapter 11, ca. 1908). An unusually rich selection of Backgrounds and Sources focuses on Johnson s life; the autobiographical inspirations for The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man; the cultural history of the era in which Johnson lived and wrote; the noteworthy reception history for the 1912, 1927, and 1948 editions; and related writings by Johnson. In addition to Johnson, contributors include Eugene Levy, W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcy A. Sacks, Carl Van Vechten, Blanche W. Knopf, Victor Weybright, and Cecile Fishbein, among others. The seven critical essays and interpretations in this volume speak to The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man s major themes, among them irony, authorship, passing, and parody. Early assessments (1930s 70s) are provided by Robert A. Bone, Robert Fleming, and Robert B. Stepto. Recent contributors are Jacqueline Goldsby, Samira Kawash, Christina L. Ruotolo, and M. Giulia Fabi. A chronology of Johnson s life and work and a selected bibliography are also included."