They left great marks on me : African American testimonies of racial violence from emancipation to World War I / Kidada E. Williams.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Williams, Kidada E.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--History--1863-1877.

African Americans.

History.

African Americans--History--1877-1964.

African Americans--Violence against--History--19th century.

African Americans--Violence against--History--20th century.

Lynching--United States--History.

Lynching.

Racism--United States--History--20th century.

Racism.

African Americans--Violence against.

United States.

Physical Description:

xii, 281 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, [2012]

Summary:

Well after slavery was abolished, its legacy of violence left deep wounds on African Americans' bodies, minds, and lives. For many victims and witnesses of the assaults, rapes, murders, nightrides, lynchings and other bloody acts that followed, the suffering this violence engendered was at once too painful to put into words yet too horrible to suppress. Despite the trauma it could incur, many African Americans opted to publicize their experiences by testifying about the violence they endured and witnessed.

In this, evocative and deeply moving study, Kidada E. Williams examines African Americans' testimonies about racial violence. In the years between Emancipation and the Progressive Era, victims and witnesses verbally described acts of .violence to friends, family, agents of the Freedmen's Bureau, and members of Congress. For those who could read and write, testimonies appeared in black newspapers, periodicals, and pamphlets. By using both oral and print culture to testify about violence, African Americans and their allies hoped they would be able to graphically disseminate enough knowledge about its occurrence that federal officials and the American people would be inspired to bear witness to their suffering and support their demands for justice. In the process of testifying, these people created a vernacular history of the violence they endured and witnessed. This history fostered an oppositional consciousness to racial violence that inspired African Americans to form and support campaigns to end violence. The resulting crusades against racial violence became one of the political training grounds for the civil rights movement. Book jacket.

Contents:

The "special object(s) of hatred and persecution" : the terror of emancipation

"A long series of oppression, injustice, and violence" : the purgatory of sectional reconciliation

"Lynched, burned alive, Jim-Crowed in my country" : shaping responses to the descent to hell

"If you can, the colored needs help" : reaching out from local communities

"It is not for us to run away from violence" : fueling the NAACP's antilynching

Crusade

Epilogue : closer to the promised land.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780814795354

0814795358

9780814795361

0814795366

9780814795378

0814795374

9780814784860

0814784860

OCLC:

733232567