| Review | Journal of Social History, 39.2

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| Review | Journal of Social History, 39.2 | The History Cooperative

REVIEWS

The Making of a Lynching Culture: Violence and Vigilantism in Central Texas, 1836–1916. By William D. Carrigan (Champaign, Il: University of Illinois Press, 2004. xi plus 308 pp. $35.00).
With The Making of a Lynching Culture, William D. Carrigan makes important contribution to our knowledge of Southern violence in addressing the controversial question of the character and the role of the lynch mob between 1836 and 1916 in Central Texas. In the process, he provides a comprehensive account of the evolution of the culture of lynching at the local level. He shows how local mobs acted as a quasi legitimate agency of local communities and local insitutions. The most innovative aspect of the book is the inclusion of large blocks of material that show how local memory, constantly shaped and reshaped by specific events and particular groups, played a major role in forming a lynching culture. Finally, he demonstrates the importance of studying this social phenomenon at the local level, since vigilantism and lynching could vary tremendously from one place to another and from time to time even in regions dominated by similar ethnic groups that shared common cultural backgrounds.	1
The author divides his study in seven chapters which follow a chronological order, three dealing with the antebellum period and four with the post Civil War period and the early 20th century. The study is enriched by the fact that each chapter largely stands on its own since each chapter examines a particular theme. In so far as there is a connecting argument, it has to do with the local development of lynching culture as a local response to alleged social and political threat. However, partly because this book is so tighly constructed, the tension between thematic diversity and overall coherence is sometimes strained.	. . .

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