4 Comments

Good reminder and hopefully this law will never be repealed!

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Franklin Zimring published a book in 2003, entitles "The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment". https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/426490?journalCode=ssr

I immediately thought of it reading your piece, because Zimring painstakingly traces the correlation between those States in the U.S. where lynchings were "acceptable" in the past, and their continued use of capital punishment today. Conclusion? It hasn't really abated much, the form and process has just changed to make it seem less morally blameworthy.

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Yeah, I think that's overdone. And a more recently analysis that tries to disentangle the legacies of lynching and slavery finds support for the latter, not the former: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00027162211016277

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Another terrific essay. Much that vexes our souls even today but this is a genuine cause for rejoicing. I grew up when the young Freedom Riders were travelling from the north to the south. The Supreme Court of 1946 had banned segregation. Some met terrible ends. Justice was nowhere to be found. The way the southern gentlemen you note defended lynching is an object lesson for us all.Thank you.

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