In the Shadow of the Gallows: Race, Crime, and American Civic Identity
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
From Puritan Execution Day rituals to gangsta rap, the black criminal has been an enduring presence in American culture. To understand why, Jeannine Marie DeLombard insists, we must set aside the lenses of pathology and persecution and instead view the African American felon from the far more revealing perspectives of publicity and personhood. When the Supreme Court declared in Dred Scott that African Americans have "no rights which the white man was bound to respect," it overlooked the right to due process, which ensured that black offenders—even slaves—appeared as persons in the eyes of the law. In the familiar account of African Americans' historical shift "from plantation to prison," we have forgotten how, for a century before the Civil War, state punishment affirmed black political membership in the breach, while a thriving popular crime literature provided early America's best-known models of individual black selfhood. Before there was the slave narrative, there was the criminal confession.
Placing the black condemned at the forefront of the African American canon allows us to see how a later generation of enslaved activists—most notably, Frederick Douglass—could marshal the public presence and civic authority necessary to fashion themselves as eligible citizens. At the same time, in an era when abolitionists were charging Americans with the national crime of "manstealing," a racialized sense of culpability became equally central to white civic identity. What, for African Americans, is the legacy of a citizenship grounded in culpable personhood? For white Americans, must membership in a nation built on race slavery always betoken guilt? In the Shadow of the Gallows reads classics by J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Edgar Allan Poe, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, George Lippard, and Edward Everett Hale alongside execution sermons, criminal confessions, trial transcripts, philosophical treatises, and political polemics to address fundamental questions about race, responsibility, and American civic belonging.
Jeannine Marie DeLombard
Jeannine Marie DeLombard is associate professor of English at the University of Toronto, where she is affiliated with the Centre for the Study of the United States and the Collaborative Program in Book History and Print Culture.
Read more from Jeannine Marie De Lombard
Slavery on Trial: Law, Abolitionism, and Print Culture Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn the Shadow of the Gallows: Race, Crime, and American Civic Identity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to In the Shadow of the Gallows
Related ebooks
Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Polk Conspiracy: Murder and Cover-Up in the Case of CBS News Correspondent George Polk Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Press and Slavery in America, 1791–1859: The Melancholy Effect of Popular Excitement Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Underground Railroad: Authentic Narratives and First-Hand Accounts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blake; or The Huts of America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heroes of the Underground Railroad Around Washington, D. C. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Colonial Phantoms: Belonging and Refusal in the Dominican Americas, from the 19th Century to the Present Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Story of America: Essays on Origins Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Early Black American Writers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fabrication of American Literature: Fraudulence and Antebellum Print Culture Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRunaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gift of Black Folk Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsI Was Born a Slave: An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In the Shadow of Liberty: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and Five Black Lives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Patriots' Dilemma: White Abolitionism and Black Banishment in the Founding of the United States of America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Great Stain: Witnessing American Slavery Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Day the Klan Came to Town Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Negro in the American Rebellion: His Heroism and His Fidelity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInventing Equality: Reconstructing the Constitution in the Aftermath of the Civil War Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom: A Comprehensive History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Twelve Years a Slave and Other Slave Narratives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Woman's Life in Colonial Days Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reimagining the Republic: Race, Citizenship, and Nation in the Literary Work of Albion W. Tourgée Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ragged Road to Abolition: Slavery and Freedom in New Jersey, 1775-1865 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVoices Beyond Bondage: An Anthology of Verse by African Americans of the 19th Century Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmerican Lynching Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHugo Black: The Alabama Years Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSex and Race, Volume 2: Negro-Caucasian Mixing in All Ages and All Lands -- The Old World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Literary Criticism For You
A Reader’s Companion to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As I Lay Dying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.by Brené Brown | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Lincoln Lawyer: A Mysterious Profile Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 48 Laws of Power: by Robert Greene | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killers of the Flower Moon: by David Grann | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Man's Search for Meaning: by Viktor E. Frankl | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/512 Rules For Life: by Jordan Peterson | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Circe: by Madeline Miller | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Seduction: by Robert Greene | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Virtues Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letters to a Young Poet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain | Conversation Starters Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5A Court of Thorns and Roses: A Novel by Sarah J. Maas | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Great Alone: by Kristin Hannah | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Verity: by Colleen Hoover | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for In the Shadow of the Gallows
0 ratings0 reviews