This is not Dixie : racist violence in Kansas, 1861-1927 /
Brent M. S. Campney.
- Urbana : University of Illinois Press, (c)2015.
- 1 online resource
Includes bibliographies and index.
"Light is bursting upon the world!" -- "Negroes are the favorites of the government" -- "Kansas has an ample supply of darkies" -- "A day more dreadful than any that we have yet experienced" -- "Some finely tuned spring-release trap" -- "The life of no colored man is safe" -- "Sowing the seed of hatred and prejudice" -- "Peace at home is the most essential thing".
Often defined as a mostly southern phenomenon, racist violence existed everywhere. Brent M.S. Campney explodes the notion of the Midwest as a so-called land of freedom with an in-depth study of assaults both active and threatened faced by African Americans in post Civil War Kansas. Campney's capacious definition of white-on-black violence encompasses not only sensational demonstrations of white power like lynchings and race riots, but acts of threatened violence and the varied forms of pervasive routine violence - property damage, rape, forcible ejection from towns - used to intimidate African Americans. As he shows, such methods were a cornerstone of efforts to impose and maintain white supremacy. Yet Campney's broad consideration of racist violence also lends new insights into the ways people resisted threats.