American lynching / Ashraf H.A. Rushdy.

"A history of lynching in America over the course of three centuries, from colonial Virginia to twentieth-century Texas. Some called the 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr. in Texas a lynching, while others denied that the racially charged term was applicable to the killing of the forty-nine-year-old African American man by three white men. To gain an objective grasp of this tragedy, Ashraf Rushdy concluded that an understanding of the long history of lynching in the United States was necessary. In this meticulously researched and accessibly written interpretive history. Rushdy shows how lynching in America has endured, evolved, and changed in meaning over the course of three centuries, from its origins in early Virginia to the present day. Rushdy argues that we can understand what lynching means in American history by examining its evolution - that is, by seeing how the practice changed in both form and meaning over the past three centuries, analyzing the rationales its advocates have made in its defense, and, finally, explicating its origins. The best way of understanding what lynching has meant in different times, and for different populations, during the course of American history is by seeing both the continuities in the practice over time and the particular features in different forms of lynching in different eras."--Book Jacket.