Fall 2010 - University of Illinois Press

Black Studies / Southern History
Troubled Ground
A Tale of Murder, Lynching, and Reckoning
in the New South
Claude A. Clegg III
A deeply personal exploration of a city’s shameful
and forgotten past
“This compelling microhistory of several North Carolina lynchings
adeptly locates the significance of these events in the matrix
of local race relations. Deeply researched and sensitive to nuance
and complexity, Troubled Ground viscerally and appealingly
reconstructs historical events pivotal to an understanding of the
history of lynching and criminal justice.”
—Michael J. Pfeifer, author of Rough Justice: Lynching and
American Society, 1874–1974
Claude A. Clegg III revisits a violent episode in his hometown’s
history that made national headlines in the early twentieth century
but disappeared from public consciousness over the decades.
Moving swiftly between memory and history, between the personal
and the political, Clegg offers insights into southern history,
mob violence, and the formation of American race ideology while
coming to terms on a personal level with the violence of the past.
Three black men were killed in front of a crowd of thousands in
Salisbury, North Carolina, in 1906, following the ax murder of
a local white family for whom the men had worked. One of the
lynchers was prosecuted for his role in the execution, the first
conviction of its kind in North Carolina and one of the earliest in
the country.
Also of Interest
Lynching in the New South
Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930
W. FITZHUGH BRUNDAGE
Paper, 978-0-252-06345-9, $25.00x £16.99
Rough Justice
Lynching and American Society, 1874–1947
MICHAEL J. PFEIFER
Paper, 978-0-252-07405-9, $20.00x £13.99
Yet Clegg, an academic historian who grew up in Salisbury, had
never heard of the case until 2002 and could not find anyone else
familiar with the case. He mined newspaper accounts and government
records and linked the victims of the 1906 case to a double
lynching in 1902, suggesting a long and complex history of lynching
in the area while revealing the determination of the city to rid
its history of a shameful and shocking chapter.
Claude A. Clegg III is a professor of history at Indiana University
and the author of The Price of Liberty: African Americans and the
Making of Liberia and An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah
Muhammad.
NOVEMBER
280 PAGES. 6 x 9 INCHES
28 BLACK & WHITE PHOTOGRAPHS, 8 LINE DRAWINGS
CLOTH (UNJACKETED), 978-0-252-03588-3. $80.00x £55.00
PAPER, 978-0-252-07782-1. $27.00s £18.99
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