Mary Turner and the memory of lynching /
Armstrong, Julie Buckner.
Athens, Ga. : University of Georgia Press,
c2011.
This book traces the reactions of activists, artists, writers, and local residents to the brutal lynching of a pregnant woman near Valdosta, Georgia. In 1918, the murder of a white farmer led to a week of mob violence that claimed the lives of at least eleven African Americans, including Hayes Turner. When his wife, May vowed to press charges against the killers, she too fell victim to the mob. Mary Turner's lynching was particularly brutal and involved the grisly death of her eight-month-old fetus. It led to both an entrenched local silence and a widespread national response in newspaper and magazine accounts, visual art, film, literature, and pubic memorials. Turner's story became a centerpiece of the Anti-Lynching Crusader's campaign for the 1922 Byer Bill, which sought to make lynching a federal crime. The author explores the complex and contradictory ways this horrific event was remembered. -- from Back Cover
Includes bibliographical references (p. [219]-247) and index.
Birth and nation: Mary Turner and the discourse of lynching -- Silence, voice, and motherhood: constructing lynching as a Black woman's issue -- Brutal facts and split-gut words: constructing lynching as a national trauma -- Contemporary confrontations: recovering the memory of Mary Turner -- Conclusion: marking a collective past -- Appendixes: selected creative and documentary responses to the 1918 Brooks-Lowndes lynchings -- Appendix 1. "Hamp Smith murdered; young wife attacked by negro farm hands" -- Appendix 2. "Her talk enraged them: Mary Turner taken to Folsom's bridge and hanged" -- Appendix 3. Joseph B. Cumming, letter to the editor -- Appendix 4. The colored welfare league (Augusta, Georgia), "Resolutions adopted and sent to Governor Dorsey urging that he exercise his authority against such acts of barbarism" -- Appendix 5. Colored federated clubs of Georgia, "Resolutions expressive of feelings sent to president and governor" -- Appendix 6. Memorandum for Governor Dorsey from Walter F. White -- Appendix 7. Carrie Williams Clifford, "Little mother (upon the lynching of Mary Turner)" -- Appendix 8. Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, "dirty south moon".
This book traces the reactions of activists, artists, writers, and local residents to the brutal lynching of a pregnant woman near Valdosta, Georgia. In 1918, the murder of a white farmer led to a week of mob violence that claimed the lives of at least eleven African Americans, including Hayes Turner. When his wife, May vowed to press charges against the killers, she too fell victim to the mob. Mary Turner's lynching was particularly brutal and involved the grisly death of her eight-month-old fetus. It led to both an entrenched local silence and a widespread national response in newspaper and magazine accounts, visual art, film, literature, and pubic memorials. Turner's story became a centerpiece of the Anti-Lynching Crusader's campaign for the 1922 Byer Bill, which sought to make lynching a federal crime. The author explores the complex and contradictory ways this horrific event was remembered. -- from Back Cover
Lynching
Murder
African Americans