Description
"Mary Turner and the Rhetoric of Lynching" examines responses of activists, artists, writers, and local residents to the 1918 lynching of a pregnant woman named Mary Turner. Turner, one of eleven African Americans to die during a week-long spree of racial violence near Valdosta, Georgia, threatened to press charges against the mob that killed her husband. Her subsequent lynching has been described as one of the most brutal on record. The gruesome details circulated over national news wires, prompted an NAACP investigation, galvanized activists, and over the next decade inspired several works of art, poetry, and fiction. Although the episode disappeared from most local records and is rarely discussed in the area today, the widespread outpouring of response during the 1920s points to the ways that artists, writers, and activists kept alive a story that many would prefer to bury. Turner's death--typical in some ways, yet atypical in others--offers a unique perspective for studying the complex, often contradictory, ways that lynching has been discussed. "Mary Turner and the Rhetoric of Lynching" makes several important contributions to the field of lynching studies. Unique in its focus on a female victim, it also goes beyond a narrative of victimization to study both Turner's and others' vocal resistance to mob violence. The book takes an interdisciplinary approach to the topic, bringing together journalism, literature, visual art, political documents and archival work. And, finally, by providing a case study of reactions to racial violence, the book offers a new angle to a broad, ongoing national conversation on the topic.
