eBook

Living with Lynching

Mitchell, Koritha

2011,2012

Overview

Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890-1930 demonstrates that popular lynching plays were mechanisms through which African American communities survived actual and photographic mob violence. Often available in periodicals, lynching plays were read aloud or acted out by black church members, schoolchildren, and families. Koritha Mitchell shows that African Americans performed and read the scripts in community settings to certify to each other that lynching victims were not the isolated brutes that dominant discourses made them out to be. Instead, the play scripts often described victims as honorable heads of households being torn from model domestic units by white violence. _x000B__x000B_In closely analyzing the political and spiritual uses of black theatre during the Progressive Era, Mitchell demonstrates that audiences were shown affective ties in black families, a subject often erased in mainstream images of African Americans. Examining lynching plays as archival texts that embody and reflect broad networks of sociocultural activism and exchange in the lives of black Americans, Mitchell finds that audiences were rehearsing and improvising new ways of enduring in the face of widespread racial terrorism. Images of the black soldier, lawyer, mother, and wife helped readers assure each other that they were upstanding individuals who deserved the right to participate in national culture and politics. These powerful community coping efforts helped African Americans band together and withstand the nation's rejection of them as viable citizens. _x000B__x000B_The Left of Black interview with author Koritha Mitchell begins at 14:00._x000B__x000B__x000B__x000B_An interview with Koritha Mitchell at The Ohio Channel._x000B_

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Subject: 19th century / 20th century / African American authors / African Americans in literature / American drama / American drama -- 19th century -- History and criticism / American drama -- 20th century -- History and criticism / American drama -- African American authors -- History and criticism / Citizenship in literature / Drama / History and criticism / Language & Literature / LITERARY CRITICISM / Lynching in literature / One-act plays, American / One-act plays, American - History and criticism / Performing Arts / Sociology / Violence in literature
• ISBN: 0252036492, 9780252036491, 9780252093524, 0252093526, 9780252078804, 0252078802