In December 2018, the United States Senate unanimously passed the
nation's first antilynching act, the Justice for Victims of Lynching
Act. For the first time in US history, legislators, representing the
American people, classified lynching as a federal hate crime.
While lynching histories and memories have received attention among
communication scholars and some interdisciplinary studies of traditional
civil rights memorials exist, contemporary studies often fail to examine
the politicized nature of the spaces. This volume represents the first
investigation of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the
Legacy Museum, both of which strategically make clear the various links
between America's history of racial terror and contemporary mass
incarceration conditions, the mistreatment of juveniles, and capital
punishment.
Racial Terrorism: A Rhetorical Investigation of Lynching focuses on
several key social agents and organizations that played vital roles in
the public and legal consciousness raising that finally led to the
passage of the act. Marouf A. Hasian Jr. and Nicholas S. Paliewicz argue
that the advocacy of attorney Bryan Stevenson, the work of the Equal
Justice Initiative (EJI), and the efforts of curators at Montgomery's
new Legacy Museum all contributed to the formation of a rhetorical
culture that set the stage at last for this hallmark lynching
legislation. The authors examine how the EJI uses spaces of remembrance
to confront audiences with race-conscious messages and measure to what
extent those messages are successful.
