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| Book Review | Indiana Magazine of History, 103.1 | The History Cooperative
103.1  
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March, 2007
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Reviews

Our Town
A Heartland Lynching, a Haunted Town, and the Hidden History of White America

By Cynthia Carr
(New York: Random House, 2006. Pp. x, 501. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95.)

Our Town takes readers along on Cynthia Carr's tortuous return to Marion, Indiana, site of the infamous lynching of Abe Smith and Tom Shipp on August 7, 1930. As a child, Carr often visited her grandparents in Marion; here, she returns to uncover possible family connections to this event, to find out what "really" happened, and to understand how this horrific event continues to haunt the city. Our Town emerges out of a growing interest in engaging these murderous events in the nation's past through a kind of symbolic archaeology, digging out such toxic stories so that communities can "come to terms" with them, settle accounts, make amends, and exorcise a variety of demons. In addition to a burgeoning body of scholarly and popular literature and a range of highly publicized museum exhibitions, many of the communities scarred by these events struggle with diverse forms of memorial expression: cleaning gravesites, requesting pardons for those unjustly convicted by kangaroo courts, creating interracial rituals of reconciliation, and building physical memorials. . . .
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