Democracy Abroad, Lynching At Home


Democracy Abroad, Lynching At Home: Racial Violence In Florida is a 2015 history book by Tameka Bradley Hobbs that discusses how lynchings have changed in the United States, with a focus on the mid 20th century Florida lynchings of Arthur C. Williams, Cellos Harrison, Willie James Howard, and Jesse James Payne. The book won a 2015 Bronze Florida Book Award and the 2016 Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Award from the Florida Historical Society.

Synopsis

Hobbs reviews how lynchings have been conducted in United States with a focus on four African American men and boys lynched in Florida between 1941 and 1945: Arthur C. Williams, Cellos Harrison, Willie James Howard, and Jesse James Payne. Hobbs argues World War II shifted public opinion and behavior in the United States, leading to private mob violence against African Americans instead of public lynchings, and to what Hobbs describes as "legal lynchings."

Reception

In a review for The Journal of American History, W. Fitzhugh Brundage writes "Tameka Bradley Hobbs makes a convincing argument that these lynchings reveal important insights into the evolution of white supremacy in twentieth-century America." In a review for the Journal of Southern History, Mari N. Crabtree writes that Hobbs "provides valuable insights into the devastating impact of lynching on African American families and communities over the past seventy-five years. With so much of the literature on lynching focused on white southerners, her interviews with African American survivors provide a poignant and, at times, gut-wrenching glimpse into the intergenerational trauma of lynching."
Historian Michael Hoffmann writes in a review for The Florida Times-Union, "An important insight of 'Democracy Abroad, Lynching at Home' is the long-term psychological damage suffered by blacks who experienced white violence during the Jim Crow era." In a review for The Florida Historical Quarterly, Billy Townsend writes,
In a review for The American Historical Review, Michael J. Pfeifer writes, "Some scholars of lynching have not focused sufficiently on the responses of African Americans to white mob violence, and Hobbs offers an extremely useful example of how fully incorporating the black response presents a more comprehensive and accurate analysis of the context for these events." Brandon T. Jett writes in a review for H-Net Reviews in the Humanities & Social Sciences that "Hobbs's most important contribution rests in her examination of the short- and long-term effects of lynchings on black communities, and how World War II fundamentally shaped many Americans' and the federal government's response to lynchings."

Awards

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