Lynching in the West: 1850–1935

by Ken Gonzales-Day

Duke University Press, 2006
Cloth: 978-0-8223-3781-2 | eISBN: 978-0-8223-8824-1 | Paper: 978-0-8223-3794-2
Library of Congress Classification HV6468.C2G66 2006
Dewey Decimal Classification 364.134

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Accounts of lynching in the United States have primarily focused on violence against African Americans in the South. Ken Gonzales-Day reveals racially motivated lynching as a more widespread practice. His research uncovered 350 instances of lynching that occurred in the state of California between 1850 and 1935. The majority were perpetrated against Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans; more Latinos were lynched in California than were persons of any other race or ethnicity.

An artist and writer, Gonzales-Day began this study by photographing lynching sites in order to document the absences and empty spaces that are emblematic of the forgotten history of lynching in the West. Drawing on newspaper articles, periodicals, court records, historical photographs, and souvenir postcards, he attempted to reconstruct the circumstances surrounding the lynchings that had occurred in the spaces he was photographing. The result is an unprecedented textual and visual record of a largely unacknowledged manifestation of racial violence in the United States. Including sixteen color illustrations, Lynching in the West juxtaposes Gonzales-Day’s evocative contemporary photographs of lynching sites with dozens of historical images.

Gonzales-Day examines California’s history of lynching in relation to the spectrum of extra-legal vigilantism common during the nineteenth century—from vigilante committees to lynch mobs—and in relation to race-based theories of criminality. He explores the role of visual culture as well, reflecting on lynching as spectacle and the development of lynching photography. Seeking to explain why the history of lynching in the West has been obscured until now, Gonzales-Day points to popular misconceptions of frontier justice as race-neutral and to the role of the anti-lynching movement in shaping the historical record of lynching in the United States.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Ken Gonzales-Day is Professor and Chair of the Department of Studio Art at Scripps College. A practicing artist, he has held fellowships at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Smithsonian Institution. His work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in cities including Los Angeles, Guadalajara, Mexico City, and New York.

REVIEWS

“Lynching in the West is an important and groundbreaking book, which revises the racialized history of lynching in the United States. Ken Gonzales-Day’s argument is based on extensive archival research, and his careful, nuanced reading of images provides a beautiful example of how cultural historians can use photographs as primary evidence in exciting new ways.”—Shawn Michelle Smith, author of Photography on the Color Line: W. E. B. Du Bois, Race, and Visual Culture

“In this meticulously researched and innovative study, Ken Gonzales-Day brings to light the history of lynching in California. As an artist, Gonzales-Day renders a stunning visual record of an absent history. As a scholar, he assembles the documents that reveal the racial violence that undergirds the development of the Golden State, the West, and the American Dream.”—Chon A. Noriega, Professor and Director, UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, and Adjunct Curator, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

“Lynching in the West uses myriad resources, both written and visual. As a result, the book is also a thought provoking example of methodology. . . . Lynching in the West is a valuable example of an approach to visual, as well as historical, research.”

-- Albert S. Fu Visual Studies

“In Ken Gonzales-Day’s historic and moving work, what we learn is this: the trees are not as innocent as they seem. They present disturbing details, hide valuable fragments of history, and figure prominently in the world of racial injustice.”

-- Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education

“The author’s archival research is to be commended. . . . The book is also innovative for what it suggests about the racial ascription and categorization of Latinos. . . . Although more attention has been paid to African Americans, their plight against state-sanctioned racial violence deserves even more scrutiny and should raise even more alarm than it already does. Gonzales-Day strengthens this cause by better revealing the depth and breadth of white supremacist ideology and history in the United States and by providing an intellectual logic for solidarity among groups of color united in a common struggle. In so doing, his book is one among many recent publications that reinforce the need for more comparative and relational approaches to studying race and its social salience.”

-- John D. Márquez Latino Studies

“This interesting book documents our current fascination with lynching and reminds us that violence reached into every ethnic corner of America.”

-- Christopher Waldrep Western Historical Quarterly

"An innovative, critical study of images, art, and archives that shows how the visual evidence of extralegal violence toward Latinos in California has been erased from the historiography of lynching. . . . Lynching in the West points toward the urgent need to revise the history of lynching in the United States. . . . It is clear that the book will become a seminal work on the cultural history of lynching in the West."

-- José Luis Benavides Aztlán

"Remarkable and unsettling. . . . Ken Gonzales-Day is a talented writer, and the book is at points highly readable, filled with crisp and evocative prose. The visual images, including a dozen pages of color plates, are bracing as well. . . . Gonzales-Day has made a major contribution to fields such as Chicano history and western history.”

-- Pablo Mitchell Pacific Historical Review

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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