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INTRODUCTION With its incessant demand for labor and its elarion call for democracy, World War II penetrated the remotest corners of American society. Most notably in the South, it affected race relations more powerfully than any event since the Civil War almost one hundred years earlier. Changes occurred as blacks, as well as "'hites, fought in the armed forces, migrated in large numbers within and outside the region, switched jobs, joined unions, and sometimes improved their living standard. African Americans also heard a national rhetoric intoning freedom and equality, while their own press called for a Double-V, victory at home as well as abroad. As these alterations transpired, blacks and whites developed very different expectations about postwar society. More than ever, African Americans determined that they should have fair and equitable treatment, and even cautious southern black leaders expressed opposition to segregation and demanded an end to discrimination in all phases of American life. In contrast, as members of the dominant group, most whites remained oblivious to problems faced by black Americans in a segregated society and blithely assumed that the postwar world would look much like the prewar world. Some whites were adamant that this would happen. Determined to put blacks, especially returning veterans and civilians whose material circumstances had improved, "in their place," white racists mounted a postwar campaign of terror. The year 1946 saw an increase in lynchings, an attempted revival of the Ku Klux Klan, and two race "riots" in which black people and property were attacked. Yet despite this initial surge in violent activity, which was preceded by a wave of riots throughout the country in 1943, extralegal violence in the aftermath ofWorld War II never reached the high levels that it had attained after the Civil War and World War 1. Ku Klux Klan revitalization efforts sputtered despite avid recruitment drives in 1946 and 1949, while 1952 , 1953, and 1954 represented the first lynching-free years since recordkeeping had begun in 1882. In addition, no race riots occurred in the South until the 196os, beyond an alleged one in Columbia, Tennessee, in February 1946 and another in Athens, Alabama, in August of that year. Moreover, the sixties riots were strikingly different from the forties riots, with blacks rather than whites taking the initiativc, and with property rather than persons representing the target. This study asks why the violent proclivities ofsome whites erupted at the war's end and, even more important, why extralegal violence did not have the scope and duration that many feared it would follmving the conflict. It then explores the implications oflimited white lawlessness for black Americans and the criminal justice system. Did diminished white violence in the wake of the war mean that public officials were protecting African Americans better than they had in the past? Or did authorities assume a greater responsibility for social control as crowd violence lessened, with the result that unequal enforcement ofthe law worsened? The vehicle used for exploring these issues is an averted lynching, known in the parlance of the times as the "Columbia, Tennessee, Race Riot," and the subsequent state actions and legal proceedings that flowed from it. The actions and proceedings included the stationing of the Tennessee Highway Patrol and State Guard in Columbia; a federal grand jury hearing involving alleged civil rights violations by state law officers while in Columbia; and two state trials ofAfrican Americans on charges ofshooting local and state police. In this study, I attempt to marry "the concreteness and contingency" ofa historical case study with "the analytic explicitness and comparative grounding ofsociological analyses." As historian Larry]. Griffin and his associates at Vanderbilt University explain so well: "Events, finally, are analytic composites that fuse the historically particular and the theoretically gencral so thoroughly that the distinction between the two is largely moot."1 In keeping with this perspective, the first chapter ofthis book narrates the averted lynching and the actions and proceedings that emanated from it, while the remaining chapters unpack the various stages ofthe episode. The chapters disassembling the event roam widcly, from the streets ofColumbia across the nation and around the globe. In time, they stretch backward to the Civil War and forward to the present. Throughout, the Columbia affair serves as an anchor, guiding the analysis and, hopefully, rendering it concrete and accessible, but its exposition is not the end in itself. Instead, this work at its most fundamental level focmes on historical processes at work in 2 Introduction [3.143.9.115] Project...

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