Liberalizing lynching: building a new racialized state
In: Oxford scholarship online
In: Political science
This study explores the relationship between the American liberal regime and the illiberal act of lynching. It explores the federal government's pattern of non-intervention regarding the lynchings of African Americans from the late 19th century to the 1960s. Although popular belief holds that the federal government was unable to address racial violence in the South, Kato argues that its actions and decisions show that federal inaction was not primarily a consequence of institutional or legal incapacities, but rather a decision supported and maintained by all three branches of the federal government.