The C.O.W.S. w/ Amy Louise Wood: Lynching And Spectacle

The Context of White Supremacy welcomes Amy Louise Wood. An associate professor of history at Illinois State University, Wood is a U.S. cultural historian of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We’ll discuss her 2009 publication, Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940. This book was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in History. Wood examines how Whites bearing witness to the mutilation of black bodies helped unify  the White race and legitimized, sanctified the barbarism White Supremacy required. She dissects the significance of the 1915 masterpiece, Birth Of A Nation, lynching postcards and photographs, and the ritual scavenging of body parts by Racist spectators. We’ll compare this barbaric practice to the 21st century flood of footage of enforcement officers brutalizing and slaughtering black citizens. The racial theater has extended to the presidential election as black attendees have been harassed and assaulted repeatedly.