Lynching Then, Anti-LGBT Violence Now, Know-Your-Place Aggression Always

A month after Living with Lynching was published, I gave a lecture at a community center and was asked a question that stayed with me and demanded a thorough response. Almost two years later, that response now appears in Callaloo as a 30-page article titled "Love in Action: Noting Similarities between Lynching Then and Anti-LGBT Violence Now." Of course, I wrote keenly aware of the tensions that can arise with such comparisons, and I think I did justice to the issues. Further, I think we can all benefit from grappling with these realities. If you get a chance to read it and tell me what you think—good or bad—I would appreciate it. And, if you find any value in it, I hope you'll share widely. 

One of the most striking similarities is know-your-place aggression, most directly discussed on pages 700 - 702 of the article.

The full-text essay can be downloaded from here: 
"Love in Action: Noting Similarities between Lynching Then and Anti-LGBT Violence Now"

Reviewed in Callaloo

The premier journal of African Diaspora literature and culture, Callaloo, offers a review of Living with Lynching by black feminist scholar Courtney Marshall.  Marshall's work centers on the criminalization of black women and promises to make important contributions as many Americans grapple with the ravages of the prison industrial complex. 

Marshall's review carefully engages the work that each chapter of Living with 

Lynching does.  She concludes with an nod toward the book's investment in not 

replicating the violence achieved by gruesome images of lynching victims. "By 

excluding lynching photographs, Mitchell’s book enacts the scholarly move she 

advocates. Her study includes visual images that support her argument that the 

visual archive of lynching photography has dominated the conversations. 

Reproductions of the playbill from Angelina Weld Grimke’s Rachel and the cover 

of The Crisis are powerful antidotes to photographs of broken corpses hanging from 

trees, light poles, and bridges."

 

Callaloo 36.2 (2013): 490 - 92.

Radio Discussion on Trayvon Martin: Racial Violence & the Law

Late on Saturday, July 13, 2013, George Zimmerman was found "not guilty," despite taking the life of innocent teenager Trayvon Martin. That Monday, July 15, I agreed to join a radio discussion on Warren Olney's show To the Point, based in Santa Monica, California.  They titled the show The Zimmerman Verdict Divides a Nation, and the segment begins around 24:27.  For me, it was about how violence against marginalized people is excused in the very letter and spirit of the law. This is made especially clear when Americans feel justified in worrying more about what the supposed "intentions" are rather than caring about what the impact is.

Reviewed in Theatre Journal

The May 2013 issue of Theatre Journal includes a review of Living with Lynching by Stanford University-trained anthropologist Christen Smith.  Smith's work focuses on performance, violence, and black liberation and resistance in the Americas, particularly Brazil and the United States.

Smith:  "As Mitchell demonstrates, lynching plays were integral parts of intensely political discussions among black intellectuals in the early twentieth century. ...Living

with Lynching is a rich, detailed, and riveting examination of these under-studied dramas."

See Theatre Journal 65.2 (May 2013):  296 - 98.

Reviewed in American Literature

The March 2013 issue of American Literature includes a review essay by James Dawes titled "Racism and Violence in Current US Literary and Cultural Criticism" that reviews Living with Lynching along with three other books. Dawes is a very well respected literary and cultural historian who engages violence and trauma. In this review essay, he frames his assessment in terms of theoretical contribution versus historical recuperation. Living with Lynching is viewed as capable of the latter, and the review gives the impression that this is a much more limited contribution because our current historical moment demands the kind of theoretical interventions offered in Jodi Melamed's Represent and Destroy: Rationalizing Violence in the New Racial Capitalism.  I very much admire Melamed's work, but that project is very different from trying to do justice to people who lived and wrote while the mob remained a palpable threat.  

Though the review did not seem very interested in taking my book on its own terms, I appreciate that Living with Lynching got some space in a journal I value and some attention from a scholar I very much respect.

See American Literature 85.1 (March 2013): 177 - 84.