Vincent Vinikas\' Review of Dominic J. Capeci\'s

¶ … Vincent Vinikas' review of Dominic J. Capeci's The Lynching of Cleo Wright takes a critical stance toward Capeci's account of the case of Cleo Wright, a black man who was lynched in Missouri in 1942. Rather than examining the underlying causes concerning why lynching took place (particularly as late as 1942), Vinikas restricts his focus to elucidating logical fallacies that hinder Capeci's article. Vinikas argues that it is lamentable that even in books that purportedly reveal information concerning actual lynching cases, the true facts involved in such cases is never truthfully revealed, such that the public is still not privy to crucial information that colors America's history. In contrast, in her article "An Outrageous Proceeding: A Northern Lynching and the Enforcement of Anti-Lynching Legislation in Illinois, 1905-1910" Stacy Pratt McDermott applies a more comprehensive approach, determining the cultural forces that promoted lynching and made it incredibly difficult to abolish. Consequently, McDermott's article provides a more thorough explication of exactly why lynching took place and the forces that made its popularity difficult to overthrow.

Vinikas' article begins with a basic summary of the lynching of Cleo Wright. The author provides particularly graphic details of the incident, including that Wright's leg was attached to the back of an automobile and driven through the streets, as well as the fact that Wright was stripped, covered in gasoline, and subsequently burned. The decision to provide such graphic details is particularly shocking, and to a degree, this validates Vinikas' approach in the article to decry how the specific details concerning who was to blame in the Cleo Wright case have never been fully unearthed. Vinikas criticizes Capeci for claiming to provide authoritative information concerning the case while never revealing the identity of the actual lynchers. However, it is perhaps excessive to liken Capeci to the complacent sheriff in the Cleo Wright case: "A practical result of Capeci's posture seems not too different from that of Sheriff John Hobbs, who faced the federal grand jury that wanted to know more regarding the affair" (Vinikas, 1999, p.907). Furthermore, Vinikas' rhetoric is confusing; it is unclear how exactly likening Capeci's rhetorical strategy with the abhorrent conduct of Sheriff Hobbs constitutes a "practical" example.

To his credit, Vinikas provides a brief description (via Capeci) of the cultural effect of the Cleo Wright case. He mentions that the Cleo Wright lynching was particularly notable because it was used as fodder for an anti-America campaign issued by Japan during World War Two. However, Vinikas also argues that the failure to address the historical relevance of the Cleo Wright case is the foremost limitation of Capeci's book. Indeed, he states that "Few of the details that Dominic Capeci relates in The Lynching of Cleo Wright would distinguish this atrocity from thousands that had preceded it over the course of the fifty years" (Vinikas, 1999, 907).

While it is understandable that Vinikas criticizes Capeci for fictionalizing the names of those involved, making it such that it is difficult to discern who exactly committed the crime, this perhaps distracts Vinikas from placing greater emphasis on Capeci's deplorable statement that "Wright beckoned his own destroyers, and they complied" (Vinikas, 1999, 908). This statement suggests that Wright was, in effect, responsible for his own death and implies that Capeci is not even sympathetic to the plight of the African-Americans who were lynched. By emphasizing Capeci's apparent dishonesty and reticence in providing specific details concerning the case, Vinikas distracts himself from addressing the flagrant issue at hand concerning Capeci's lack of sympathy toward a lynching victim.

Unlike Vinikas, Stacy Pratt McDermott takes a far more thorough approach, although this is in some respects the natural result of the fact that she writes an expository article rather than a book review. Similar to Vinikas, the article begins with a description of an actual lynching that took place, although McDermott's description is far more comprehensive than that of Vinikas. McDermott's article concerns a lynching case in Cairo, Illinois in 1908, in which William "Froggie" James was arrested and lynched for the raping of a white girl even while he may have been innocent. Subsequently, McDermott's article touches on a number of different areas related to lynching, including the cultural climate of Illinois around the turn of the century, the burgeoning newspaper press and the role it played in the changing public perception of lynchings, and the ways in which the vestiges of the Civil War can be seen even in geographic locales that are purportedly northern, and therefore "anti-lynching."

McDermott argues that even though the lynching of William James occurred nearly 50 years following the conclusion of the Civil War, the cultural atmosphere of the United States was decidedly prejudiced against African-Americans, and that this very same discrimination prevented the African-American press from more swiftly elevating the issue of rape in the public consciousness. She writes, "For Cairo, Illinois, may have been a town geographically northern, yet on one night it was a town mentally and spiritually as southern as Mississippi or Alabama" (McDermott, 1999, p.61). Stating that Cairo, Illinois became southern "on one night" is misleading since the rest of the article delineates specific ways in which Illinois was very much a racist locale even after the advent of the 20th century. Specifically, McDermott mentions that Cairo was a rough river town, with vast amounts of illicit activity and that there had been racial complications since the Civil War and the Underground Railroad that served to transport slaves from the southern states to the northern ones. McDermott buries her most salient point -- made on page 67 -- that "ironically, few in thi age of progressivism undertood the underlying racial causes of lynching nor came to grips with the impact of American society's racist foundations and the institutional injustices inflicted upon an entire race" (McDermott, 1999, p.67). Thus, despite the fact that northern states such as Illinois played lip service to racial equality, there existed cultural forces that relegated African-Americans to subservient status.