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At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America
by Dray, Philip
- Used
- very good
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Very Good/Very Good
- ISBN 10
- 0375503242
- ISBN 13
- 9780375503245
- Seller
-
Southampton, New York, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Random House, 2002. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. First Edition, First Printing. Not price-clipped ($35.00 price intact). Published by Random House, 2002. Octavo. Brown cloth over tan boards stamped in gold. Book is very good; with no writing or names. Sharp corners and spine straight. Binding tight and pages crisp. Light spotting to page ends. Dust jacket is very good with light shelf wear. 528 pages. ISBN: 9780375503245. 100% positive feedback. 30 day money back guarantee. NEXT DAY SHIPPING! Excellent customer service. Please email with any questions or if you would like a photo. All books packed carefully and ship with free delivery confirmation/tracking. All books come with free bookmarks. Ships from Southampton, New York. We Buy Books! Individual titles, libraries, collections. Message us if you have books to sell!
Synopsis
It is easy to shrink from our country's brutal history of lynching. Lynching is called the last great skeleton in our nation's closet: It terrorized all of black America, claimed thousands upon thousands of victims in the decades between the 1880s and the Second World War, and leaves invisible but deep scars to this day. The cost of pushing lynching into the shadows, however--misremembering it as isolated acts perpetrated by bigots on society's fringes--is insupportably high: Until we understand how pervasive and socially accepted the practice was--and, more important, why this was so--it will haunt all efforts at racial reconciliation."I could not suppress the thought," James Baldwin once recalled of seeing the red clay hills of Georgia on his first trip to the South, "that this earth had acquired its color from the blood that had dripped down from these trees." Throughout America, not just in the South, blacks accused of a crime--or merely of violating social or racial customs--were hunted by mobs, abducted from jails, and given summary "justice" in blatant defiance of all guarantees of due process under law. Men and women were shot, hanged, tortured, and burned, often in sadistic, picnic-like "spectacle lynchings" involving thousands of witnesses. "At the hands of persons unknown" was the official verdict rendered on most of these atrocities.The celebrated historian Philip Dray shines a clear, bright light on this dark history--its causes, perpetrators, apologists, and victims. He also tells the story of the men and women who led the long and difficult fight to expose and eradicate lynching, including Ida B. Wells, James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, and W.E.B. Du Bois. If lynching is emblematic of what is worst about America, their fight may stand for what is best: the love of justice and fairness and the conviction that one individual's sense of right can suffice to defy the gravest of wrongs. This landmark book follows the trajectory of both forces over American history--and makes the history of lynching belong to us all.From the Hardcover edition.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Southampton Books
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 105835
- Title
- At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America
- Author
- Dray, Philip
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Jacket Condition
- Very Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First Edition
- ISBN 10
- 0375503242
- ISBN 13
- 9780375503245
- Publisher
- Random House
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 2002
- Keywords
- , , , , , , , ,
Terms of Sale
Southampton Books
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
Southampton Books
Biblio member since 2022
Southampton, New York
About Southampton Books
Southampton Books & Sag Harbor Books - Independent bookstores located in the villages of Southampton & Sag Harbor, New York. Selling new and collectible books in all categories. We Buy Books! Do you have books to sell? Call or email or visit our website. Collections - Libraries - Individual Titles.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Cloth
- "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
- Octavo
- Another of the terms referring to page or book size, octavo refers to a standard printer's sheet folded four times, producing...
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
- Crisp
- A term often used to indicate a book's new-like condition. Indicates that the hinges are not loosened. A book described as crisp...
- Shelf Wear
- Shelf wear (shelfwear) describes damage caused over time to a book by placing and removing a book from a shelf. This damage is...
- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
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