Foreword
Introduction
PART 1: A SEASON OF MADNESS: TWENTIETH-CENTURY LYNCHING ON THE
EASTERN SHORT
CHAPTER 1
A Conversation on Race: Lynching and the Courthouse Lawn
CHAPTER 2
Mob Rule on the Shore, 1931–1933
CHAPTER 3
A Conspiracy of Silence: Ordinary People and Complicity in
Lynching
CHAPTER 4
“The Law in All Its Majesty”
CHAPTER 5
“Serving the Peninsula”: Local Newspapers and Lynching
PART 2: TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION FOR LYNCHING IN THE
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
CHAPTER 6
Reconciliation and Lynching in International Context
CHAPTER 7
Breaking the Silence: “Words Are the Most Powerful Tools of
All”
CHAPTER 8
Confronting the Role of Institutions in Racial/Ethnic Violence
CHAPTER 9
Reconciliation in the Twenty-First Century
Afterword to the Tenth-Anniversary Edition
Petition to the Governor of Maryland Regarding the George Armwood
Lynching at Princess Anne, MD, October 18, 1933
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Sherrilyn A. Ifill is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law. She is also a civil rights lawyer and a regular speaker on race, public policy, and law. She lives in Baltimore.
“As has been powerfully detailed in Sherrilyn A. Ifill’s
extraordinary work on lynching, there is an urgent need to
challenge the absence of recognition in the public space on the
subject of lynching.”—Equal Justice Initiative
“Sherrilyn Ifill’s seminal work exposing the brutality of the
abhorrent, barbaric practice of lynching is as important today as
it was ten years ago when it was first published—perhaps more so.
Ms. Ifill persuasively argues that this country should confront its
sordid history of lynching through a truth and reconciliation
process. Inspired by her work, many have begun that process. On the
Courthouse Lawn should be read, and re-read, by anyone interested
in racial justice and healing in this country.”—Angela J. Davis,
author of Arbitrary Justice
“This pathbreaking book by Sherrilyn Ifill shows how the ugliest
messages from our racial history and politics can hide openly in
the public square. Her unflinching memory restores hope for the
common good.”—Taylor Branch, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of
Parting the Waters
"Ifill offers a new approach to addressing the history of lynching
in America. . . One legacy [of racial violence] is the difficulty
blacks and whites have even of discussing it, since few really want
to remember what, for most on both sides of the divide, were
traumatizing events. Yet remembering is essential. An intriguing,
immodest proposal that itself warrants discussion—and action.
—Kirkus Review, starred review
"A sobering and eye-opening book on one of America's darkest
secrets. A must read for anyone willing to examine our history
carefully and learn from it." —Professor Charles J. Ogletree, Jr.,
executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for
Race and Justice
"A thoroughly researched, unflinching account of the ugly history
of the Eastern Shore's early-twentieth-century lynchings."—Petula
Caesar, Baltimore City Paper
"Elegantly written and persuasively argued . . . Ifill explores the
possibilities and offers concrete advice on how truth and
reconciliation could be widely employed in the United States."—Mary
Frances Berry, Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social
Thought and professor of history, University of Pennsylvania
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