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On the Courthouse Lawn by Sherrilyn Ifill
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On the Courthouse Lawn

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On the Courthouse Lawn by Sherrilyn Ifill
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Aug 14, 2018 | ISBN 9780807023044

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Praise

“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

Table Of Contents

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

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