**WINNER OF THE SOUTHERN BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR NONFICTION - "A
landmark work of unflinching scholarship."--*The New York Times
This extraordinary account of lynching in America, by acclaimed civil
rights historian Philip Dray, shines a clear, bright light on American
history's darkest stain--illuminating its causes, perpetrators,
apologists, and victims. Philip Dray also tells the story of the men and
women who led the long and difficult fight to expose and eradicate
lynching, including Ida B. Wells, James Weldon Johnson, Walter White,
and W.E.B. Du Bois. If lynching is emblematic of what is worst about
America, their fight may stand for what is best: the commitment to
justice and fairness and the conviction that one individual's sense of
right can suffice to defy the gravest of wrongs. This landmark book
follows the trajectory of both forces over American history--and makes
lynching's legacy belong to us all.
Praise for At the Hands of Persons Unknown
"In this history of lynching in the post-Reconstruction South--the most
comprehensive of its kind--the author has written what amounts to a
Black Book of American race relations."**--*The New Yorker
"A powerfully written, admirably perceptive synthesis of the vast
literature on lynching. It is the most comprehensive social history of
this shameful subject in almost seventy years and should be recognized
as a major addition to the bibliography of American race
relations."--David Levering Lewis
**
"An important and courageous book, well written, meticulously
researched, and carefully argued."--*The Boston Globe
"You don't really know what lynching was until you read Dray's ghastly
accounts of public butchery and official complicity."--Time
