In the Shadow of the Gallows

Race, Crime, and American Civic Identity

Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism, Black, American
Cover of the book In the Shadow of the Gallows by Jeannine Marie DeLombard, University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Jeannine Marie DeLombard ISBN: 9780812206333
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc. Publication: July 24, 2012
Imprint: University of Pennsylvania Press Language: English
Author: Jeannine Marie DeLombard
ISBN: 9780812206333
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Publication: July 24, 2012
Imprint: University of Pennsylvania Press
Language: English

From Puritan Execution Day rituals to gangsta rap, the black criminal has been an enduring presence in American culture. To understand why, Jeannine Marie DeLombard insists, we must set aside the lenses of pathology and persecution and instead view the African American felon from the far more revealing perspectives of publicity and personhood. When the Supreme Court declared in Dred Scott that African Americans have "no rights which the white man was bound to respect," it overlooked the right to due process, which ensured that black offenders—even slaves—appeared as persons in the eyes of the law. In the familiar account of African Americans' historical shift "from plantation to prison," we have forgotten how, for a century before the Civil War, state punishment affirmed black political membership in the breach, while a thriving popular crime literature provided early America's best-known models of individual black selfhood. Before there was the slave narrative, there was the criminal confession.

Placing the black condemned at the forefront of the African American canon allows us to see how a later generation of enslaved activists—most notably, Frederick Douglass—could marshal the public presence and civic authority necessary to fashion themselves as eligible citizens. At the same time, in an era when abolitionists were charging Americans with the national crime of "manstealing," a racialized sense of culpability became equally central to white civic identity. What, for African Americans, is the legacy of a citizenship grounded in culpable personhood? For white Americans, must membership in a nation built on race slavery always betoken guilt? In the Shadow of the Gallows reads classics by J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Edgar Allan Poe, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, George Lippard, and Edward Everett Hale alongside execution sermons, criminal confessions, trial transcripts, philosophical treatises, and political polemics to address fundamental questions about race, responsibility, and American civic belonging.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

From Puritan Execution Day rituals to gangsta rap, the black criminal has been an enduring presence in American culture. To understand why, Jeannine Marie DeLombard insists, we must set aside the lenses of pathology and persecution and instead view the African American felon from the far more revealing perspectives of publicity and personhood. When the Supreme Court declared in Dred Scott that African Americans have "no rights which the white man was bound to respect," it overlooked the right to due process, which ensured that black offenders—even slaves—appeared as persons in the eyes of the law. In the familiar account of African Americans' historical shift "from plantation to prison," we have forgotten how, for a century before the Civil War, state punishment affirmed black political membership in the breach, while a thriving popular crime literature provided early America's best-known models of individual black selfhood. Before there was the slave narrative, there was the criminal confession.

Placing the black condemned at the forefront of the African American canon allows us to see how a later generation of enslaved activists—most notably, Frederick Douglass—could marshal the public presence and civic authority necessary to fashion themselves as eligible citizens. At the same time, in an era when abolitionists were charging Americans with the national crime of "manstealing," a racialized sense of culpability became equally central to white civic identity. What, for African Americans, is the legacy of a citizenship grounded in culpable personhood? For white Americans, must membership in a nation built on race slavery always betoken guilt? In the Shadow of the Gallows reads classics by J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Edgar Allan Poe, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, George Lippard, and Edward Everett Hale alongside execution sermons, criminal confessions, trial transcripts, philosophical treatises, and political polemics to address fundamental questions about race, responsibility, and American civic belonging.

More books from University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.

Cover of the book Slavery's Capitalism by Jeannine Marie DeLombard
Cover of the book American Gandhi by Jeannine Marie DeLombard
Cover of the book The Oldest Revolutionary by Jeannine Marie DeLombard
Cover of the book Free Speech on Campus by Jeannine Marie DeLombard
Cover of the book Women in Medieval Society by Jeannine Marie DeLombard
Cover of the book The Americas in the Spanish World Order by Jeannine Marie DeLombard
Cover of the book Body and Emotion by Jeannine Marie DeLombard
Cover of the book First Lady of Letters by Jeannine Marie DeLombard
Cover of the book Toussaint Louverture and the American Civil War by Jeannine Marie DeLombard
Cover of the book This Is Our Music by Jeannine Marie DeLombard
Cover of the book Public Education Under Siege by Jeannine Marie DeLombard
Cover of the book Tragicomic Redemptions by Jeannine Marie DeLombard
Cover of the book Dearest Wilding by Jeannine Marie DeLombard
Cover of the book Natural Law by Jeannine Marie DeLombard
Cover of the book Tax and Spend by Jeannine Marie DeLombard
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy