James T. Scott's 1923 lynching in the college town of Columbia, Missouri, was precipitated by a case of mistaken identity. Falsely accused of rape, the World War I veteran was dragged from jail by a mob and hanged from a bridge before 1000 onlookers. Patricia L. Roberts lived most of her life unaware that her aunt was the girl who erroneously accused Scott, only learning of it from a 2003 account in the University of Missouri's school newspaper. Drawing on archival research, she tells Scott's full story for the first time in the context of the racism of the Jim Crow Midwest.

James T. Scott's 1923 lynching in the college town of Columbia, Missouri, was precipitated by a case of mistaken identity. Falsely accused of rape, the World War I veteran was dragged from jail by a mob and hanged from a bridge before 1000 onlookers. Patricia L. Roberts lived most of her life unaware that her aunt was the girl who erroneously accused Scott, only learning of it from a 2003 account in the University of Missouri's school newspaper. Drawing on archival research, she tells Scott's full story for the first time in the context of the racism of the Jim Crow Midwest.

In 2004, Doug Hunt published "A Course in Applied Lynching," an essay that drew national attention to the 1923 murder of James T. Scott in front of several hundred witnesses, few of whom would testify honestly when the prominent citizen who led the lynch mob went to trial. In 2010 he republished the essay as a short book (Summary Justice) that supported a community-wide effort to understand the Scott lynching and its legacy. The volume presented here includes an expanded version of the 2004 essay, along with two companion essays about racism and justice in Columbia, Missouri--a heartland city that in many ways typifies all of America. "Names" takes us back to the 1830s to tell the remarkable story of one black couple's fight to free its children from bondage. "Watching the Watchers" takes us forward to 2010 and puts us in the jury box at the trial of a young black man who has been tasered and beaten during a routine traffic stop, and who now faces a charge of refusing to obey a police order. Taken together, the three essays give us a way of thinking more clearly about race and justice in American society, about where we stand now, and through what difficulties we got there.

On January 20, 1942, black oil mill worker Cleo Wright assaulted a white woman in her home and nearly killed the first police officer who tried to arrest him. An angry mob then hauled Wright out of jail and dragged him through the streets of Sikeston, Missouri, before burning him alive. Wright's death was, unfortunately, not unique in American history, but what his death meant in the larger context of life in the United States in the twentieth-century is an important and compelling story. After the lynching, the U.S. Justice Department was forced to become involved in civil rights concerns for the first time, provoking a national reaction to violence on the home front at a time when the country was battling for democracy in Europe. Dominic Capeci unravels the tragic story of Wright's life on several stages, showing how these acts of violence were indicative not only of racial tension but the clash of the traditional and the modern brought about by the war. Capeci draws from a wide range of archival sources and personal interviews with the participants and spectators to draw vivid portraits of Wright, his victims, law-enforcement officials, and members of the lynch mob. He places Wright in the larger context of southern racial violence and shows the significance of his death in local, state, and national history during the most important crisis of the twentieth-century.

In recent decades, scholars have explored much of the history of mob violence in the American South, especially in the years after Reconstruction. However, the lynching violence that occurred in American regions outside the South, where hundreds of persons, including Hispanics, whites, African Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans died at the hands of lynch mobs, has received less attention. This collection of essays by prominent and rising scholars fills this gap by illuminating the factors that distinguished lynching in the West, the Midwest, and the Mid-Atlantic. The volume adds to a more comprehensive history of American lynching and will be of interest to all readers interested in the history of violence across the varied regions of the United States. Contributors are Jack S. Blocker Jr., Brent M. S. Campney, William D. Carrigan, Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, Dennis B. Downey, Larry R. Gerlach, Kimberley Mangun, Helen McLure, Michael J. Pfeifer, Christopher Waldrep, Clive Webb, and Dena Lynn Winslow.

From the assembled work of fifteen leading scholars emerges a complex and provocative portrait of lynching in the American South. With subjects ranging in time from the late antebellum period to the early twentieth century, and in place from the border states to the Deep South, this collection of essays provides a rich comparative context in which to study the troubling history of lynching. Covering a broad spectrum of methodologies, these essays further expand the study of lynching by exploring such topics as same-race lynchings, black resistance to white violence, and the political motivations for lynching. In addressing both the history and the legacy of lynching, the book raises important questions about Southern history, race relations, and the nature of American violence. Though focused on events in the South, these essays speak to patterns of violence, injustice, and racism that have plagued the entire nation. The contributors are Bruce E. Baker, E. M. Beck, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Joan E. Cashin, Paula Clark, Thomas G. Dyer, Terence Finnegan, Larry J. Griffin, Nancy MacLean, William S. McFeely, Joanne C. Sandberg, Patricia A. Schechter, Roberta Senechal de la Roche, Stewart E. Tolnay, and George C. Wright.