Examines the symbols of the cross and the lynching tree in African americans daily life, spiritual life and history.

"A history of lynching in America over the course of three centuries, from colonial Virginia to twentieth-century Texas. Some called the 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr. in Texas a lynching, while others denied that the racially charged term was applicable to the killing of the forty-nine-year-old African American man by three white men. To gain an objective grasp of this tragedy, Ashraf Rushdy concluded that an understanding of the long history of lynching...

"Journalist, speaker, and early civil rights leader Ida B. Wells was one of the most outspoken and famous women in the United States. Her powerful speeches on the injustices of lynching in America meant she was subjected to threats on her own life. Her 1909 speech to the newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) addresses the social and political circumstances that led to lynching. Her fact-based analysis dispels...

"Drawing from the fields of history, philosophy, cognitive science, sociology, and literary theory, and quoting chilling contemporary accounts, historian Guy Lancaster argues that the act of lynching encompasses five distinct but overlapping types of violence"--

Presents the life and accomplishments of the activist, educator, writer, journalist, suffragette, and pioneering voice against the horrors of lynching who set out to better the lives of African-Americans long before the Civil Rights Movement.