Citation

Bailey AK, Washington PE. J. Gilded Age Progress. Era 2021; 20(1): 74-80.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, Cambridge University Press)

DOI

10.1017/s1537781420000481

PMID

33889058

Abstract

Scholars who research lynching--and indeed, all social and historical processes--are often sequestered into disciplinary "camps," with few opportunities to exchange insights and a dearth of strategies to breach the gap. The intellectual "silos" created by these divisions place a material limitation on the advancement of human knowledge. Barriers to sharing information and accelerating the process of discovery were no less real thirty years ago. One of the major contributions of Lynching in the New South is the way it encouraged cross-disciplinary pollination in the study of mob violence--most commonly targeting African Americans--in American history. It is fitting, then, that the first essay in this special issue is written by sociologists. Certainly, Brundage's seminal book helped to ignite a radical methodological change in research on lynching by historians. It also advanced a more sophisticated understanding, embraced by sociologists and historians alike, of the multiple forms of expression that constituted the systematic campaign of violent suppression waged against Black Americans. 1 The most durable contribution of Lynching in the New South, however, may have been the way it built bridges between social historians and historical sociologists. It is no longer possible to be a historical sociologist without consulting the work of social historians, and we hope--not being social historians, ourselves--it is becoming less common to be a social historian without immersing oneself in the scholarship of historical sociologists.

In the late 1980s, both social historians and historical sociologists were pursuing intensive research projects on racist violence in the Jim Crow-era South...

Language: en

Keywords

interdisciplinary research; lynching; sociology