The Lynching of Cleo Wright

The Lynching of Cleo Wright
Author: Dominic J. CapeciJr.
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2014-10-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813156467

On January 20, 1942, black oil mill worker Cleo Wright assaulted a white woman in her home and nearly killed the first police officer who tried to arrest him. An angry mob then hauled Wright out of jail and dragged him through the streets of Sikeston, Missouri, before burning him alive. Wright's death was, unfortunately, not unique in American history, but what his death meant in the larger context of life in the United States in the twentieth-century is an important and compelling story. After the lynching, the U.S. Justice Department was forced to become involved in civil rights concerns for the first time, provoking a national reaction to violence on the home front at a time when the country was battling for democracy in Europe. Dominic Capeci unravels the tragic story of Wright's life on several stages, showing how these acts of violence were indicative not only of racial tension but the clash of the traditional and the modern brought about by the war. Capeci draws from a wide range of archival sources and personal interviews with the participants and spectators to draw vivid portraits of Wright, his victims, law-enforcement officials, and members of the lynch mob. He places Wright in the larger context of southern racial violence and shows the significance of his death in local, state, and national history during the most important crisis of the twentieth-century.

Matthews

Matthews
Author: Edward Calvin Matthews
Publisher:
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2004
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Winner of the 2005 Fred Kniffen Book Award for best-authored book in the field of North American material culture. Awarded the 2006 Governor's Book Award from the Missouri Humanities' Council.

The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes

The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes
Author: Conevery Bolton Valencius
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 471
Release: 2013-09-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 022605392X

From December 1811 to February 1812, massive earthquakes shook the middle Mississippi Valley, collapsing homes, snapping large trees midtrunk, and briefly but dramatically reversing the flow of the continent’s mightiest river. For decades, people puzzled over the causes of the quakes, but by the time the nation began to recover from the Civil War, the New Madrid earthquakes had been essentially forgotten. In The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes, Conevery Bolton Valencius remembers this major environmental disaster, demonstrating how events that have been long forgotten, even denied and ridiculed as tall tales, were in fact enormously important at the time of their occurrence, and continue to affect us today. Valencius weaves together scientific and historical evidence to demonstrate the vast role the New Madrid earthquakes played in the United States in the early nineteenth century, shaping the settlement patterns of early western Cherokees and other Indians, heightening the credibility of Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa for their Indian League in the War of 1812, giving force to frontier religious revival, and spreading scientific inquiry. Moving into the present, Valencius explores the intertwined reasons—environmental, scientific, social, and economic—why something as consequential as major earthquakes can be lost from public knowledge, offering a cautionary tale in a world struggling to respond to global climate change amid widespread willful denial. Engagingly written and ambitiously researched—both in the scientific literature and the writings of the time—The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes will be an important resource in environmental history, geology, and seismology, as well as history of science and medicine and early American and Native American history.

Island No. 10

Island No. 10
Author: Larry J. Daniel
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Total Pages: 216
Release: 1996-04-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0817308164

"This book is useful to historians of the Civil War who wish to draw on it for an authoritative account of this campaign, and Civil War buffs will want it in their libraries". -- James M. McPherson Princeton University

Swift to Wrath

Swift to Wrath
Author: William D. Carrigan
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2013-05-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 081393415X

Scholarship on lynching has typically been confined to the extralegal execution of African Americans in the American South. The nine essays collected here look at lynching in the context of world history, encouraging a complete rethinking of the history of collective violence. Employing a diverse range of case studies, the volume’s contributors work to refute the notion that the various acts of group homicide called "lynching" in American history are unique or exceptional. Some essays consider the practice of lynching in a global context, confounding the popular perception that Americans were alone in their behavior and suggesting a wide range of approaches to studying extralegal collective violence. Others reveal the degree to which the practice of lynching has influenced foreigners’ perceptions of the United States and asking questions such as, Why have people adopted the term lynching—or avoided it? How has the meaning of the word been transformed over time in society? What contextual factors explain such transformations? Ultimately, the essays illuminate, opening windows on ordinary people’s thinking on such critical issues as the role of law in their society and their attitudes toward their own government.

Reiss Dairy

Reiss Dairy
Author: Stephen W. Reiss
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 96
Release: 2009-06-10
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 146786921X

Reiss Dairy is the third book in this series. It is a history of the Reiss Dairy in Sikeston, Missouri which was founded in 1935 by third generation John Reiss and his son-in-law, Lonnie Standley. The dairy is famous for milk bottles featuring poems created by Sikeston citizens to promote Reiss Dairy products. The best of these bottles now sell on eBay for over $200. It Takes A Matriarch was the second of four books about the extended Reiss and Basler families who settled on a small farm in St. Clair County, Illinois in 1834 and 1839, respectively. It includes 780 letters saved by first generation Margaret Basler Reiss Ebert from 1852 to 1888. Some letters were phonetic English but most had to be translated from old German. Authors were Margarets siblings, their spouses, her children, their spouses, her grandchildren, and two friends. They mention serving in the Civil War, personal challenges, life in St. Louis and Sacramento and Davenport, and the lost family fortune. One author was friends with John Wilkes Booth who shot President Lincoln. Quilter, Granger, Grandma, Matriarch was the first of these four books. It is the daily diary of third generation Katie Reiss covering 1949 through 1953. It was published first to give the reader a feel for life on the Reiss Family Farm in the German heritage of southern Illinois. Katie and husband George Reiss doubled the original Reiss/Basler farm to its current 360 acres. Relatives gather for a reunion in June 2009 to celebrate 175 years of the ongoing existence of the Reiss Family Farm. Family, Farming, and Freedom will be the fourth book. It is 55 years of professional and personal writings by fourth generation Irv Reiss from 1949 to 2004. His favorite subjects were family fun and travel, restoring strip mined coal lands to productive farming, and promoting individual freedoms and responsibilities. He was my dad.

The History of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri

The History of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri
Author: Paul W. Bass
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781942613183

"The History of Fort Leonard Wood, MIssouri provides detailed information on the formation of the base in 1940 (and why it was named for General Leonard Wood), then follows base training, objectives and growth during World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War, plus the War on Terrorism beginning in the 1990s through today."--Jacket.