Promotional Information

Cultural history of the lynching of Latinos in the U.S. West, with an emphasis on photographic and visual representation of lynchings.

Table of Contents

Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Search for California’s Hanging Trees 1
1. Counting the Dead: Frontier Justice and the Antilynching Movement 23
2. The Greatest Good: Capital Punishment or Popular Justice? 63
3. In the Shadow of Photography: Copy Prints in the Archive 93
4. Signifying Bodies: Unblushing and Monstrous 133
5. The Wonder Gaze 173
Conclusion 201
Appendix 1. Case List of Lynchings and Summary Executions 205
Appendix 2. Selected List of Legal and Military Executions 229
Appendix 3. Pardons, 1849–59 237
Notes 239
Bibliography 275
Index 297

About the Author

Ken Gonzales-Day is Professor and Chair of the Department of Studio Art at Scripps College. A practicing artist, he has held fellowships at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Smithsonian Institution. His work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in cities including Los Angeles, Guadalajara, Mexico City, and New York.

Reviews

"Lynching in the West is an important and groundbreaking book, which revises the racialized history of lynching in the United States. Ken Gonzales-Day's argument is based on extensive archival research, and his careful, nuanced reading of images provides a beautiful example of how cultural historians can use photographs as primary evidence in exciting new ways."--Shawn Michelle Smith, author of Photography on the Color Line: W.E.B. Du Bois, Race, and Visual Culture In this meticulously researched and innovative study, Ken Gonzales-Day brings to light the history of lynching in California. As an artist, Gonzales-Day renders a stunning visual record of an absent history. As a scholar, he assembles the documents that reveal the racial violence that undergirds the development of the Golden State, the West, and the American Dream."--Chon A. Noriega, Professor and Director, UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center and Adjunct Curator, Los Angeles County Museum of Art