The Lynching of Cleo Wright
- List Price: $40.00
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: Univ Pr of Kentucky
- Publish date: 06/01/1998
Description:
Slightly more than a month after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, a black oil mill worker in Sikeston, Missouri, allegedly assaulted a white woman in her home, nearly killed the first police officer who tried to arrest him, then was burned alive by a furious mob. What led to this act of violence, why did it capture the attention of the entire nation, and what were its repercussions?
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The death of Cleo Wright provoked the response of a nation engaged in a war for democracy, drawing the U.S. Justice Department into this area of civil rights for the first time. Dominic Capeci draws from a wide range of archival sources and oral histories of participants and spectators to reveal the uniqueness and historical significance of this one event within the larger history of lynching in America.
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