Lynching to Belong: Claiming Whiteness through Racial Violence (review)

With her assertion that European immigrant groups—the Italians, the Irish, and the Bohemians—“came to realize the social and economic advantages of white skin” (7) through the lynching of blacks, Cynthia Skove Nevels posits an intriguing premise for Lynching to Belong. Emphasizing the 1890s and drawing on newspapers, local histories, election registries, and censuses, she sets her study in Brazos County, Texas, where, from the Civil War through the turn of the century, a substantial influx of immigrants joined a population evenly divided between whites and blacks, and troubled by a long history of racially and politically motivated violence.

Unfortunately, Nevels does not execute effectively. First, while her title promises an examination of lynching, only two of the three incidents examined actually fit the bill. The third was a legal execution which she describes, with apparent discomfort, as “similar to a ‘legal lynching’” (118). Yet, while the case she describes, involving a black man sentenced to death for the murder of a ‘white’ Bohemian, certainly betrayed the racism which marked inter-racial ‘justice’ in the Jim Crow South, it bore only modest resemblance to the mob atmosphere associated with the ‘legal lynchings’ described by George C. Wright whom she cites.

Second, the author claims more than her evidence permits. Because immigrants composed neither of the mobs which she considers, she can scarcely claim that they were asserting their whiteness by ‘lynching to belong’ or that this violence persuaded native-born whites to expand their definitions of whiteness. Furthermore, in claiming that women played a central role in one lynching, she strains credulity with her interpretation of the role of three wealthy sisters who hosted a ball on the same night. “There is no evidence to suggest that the Parker sisters or their family had anything to do with the lynching,” she admits. “But it must be remembered that their lavish party occurred at exactly the same time. It is possible that some of their male guests were dancing with the Parker sisters . . . Their minds would have been filled with idealized images of white southern womanhood, and some of these guests may have slipped away from the festivities to join an established ritual of southern white racial hierarchy occurring only a few blocks away. At least on a symbolic level, the Parkers’ party provided a vivid backdrop to the violent celebration of white dominance” (91).

Finally, Nevels frequently deviates from her ostensible objective, an examination of expanding ‘whiteness.’ It often seems that this objective is subordinate to the exploration of the minutiae of county politics which, she claims, created the atmosphere in which immigrants could seize their whiteness. However, the relationship is often tenuous, unclear, or unpersuasive. Additionally, her organization and her digressions repeatedly interrupt the flow of the narrative, creating redundancy and discontinuity. Her insertion of comments, such as “before her story can be told, a few words first need to be said about [. . .]” (77), often signal these unwelcome digressions.