"Light is bursting upon the world!" -- "Negroes are the favorites of the government" -- "Kansas has an ample supply of darkies" -- "A day more dreadful than any that we have yet experienced" -- "Some finely tuned spring-release trap" -- "The life of no colored man is safe" -- "Sowing the seed of hatred and prejudice" -- "Peace at home is the most essential thing"
Summary
Often defined as a mostly southern phenomenon, racist violence existed everywhere. Brent M.S. Campney explodes the notion of the Midwest as a so-called land of freedom with an in-depth study of assaults both active and threatened faced by African Americans in post Civil War Kansas. Campney's capacious definition of white-on-black violence encompasses not only sensational demonstrations of white power like lynchings and race riots, but acts of threatened violence and the varied forms of pervasive routine violence - property damage, rape, forcible ejection from towns - used to intimidate African Americans. As he shows, such methods were a cornerstone of efforts to impose and maintain white supremacy. Yet Campney's broad consideration of racist violence also lends new insights into the ways people resisted threats
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 273-276) and index
Notes
English
Description based on online resource; (viewed 2020-05-15)