The End of Public Execution
Race, Religion, and Punishment in the American South
By Michael Ayers Trotti
266 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 11 tables
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Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-7041-6
Published: December 2022 -
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-7040-9
Published: December 2022 -
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4696-7042-3
Published: November 2022
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- Paperback $32.95
- Hardcover $99.00
- E-Book $26.99
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About the Author
Michael Ayers Trotti is professor of history at Ithaca College. He is the author of The Body in the Reservoir: Murder and Sensationalism in the South.
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Reviews
"[Trotti] weaves a wholly unexpected story for how the New South ended up at the electric chair. His narrative, backed by extensive evidence and data drawn from 1,300 executions carried out in the former Confederate states between the end of the Civil War and 1936, is less a story of the consolidation of state power through technological and political means than a history driven by the agency of Southern African Americans resisting a paranoid and reactive state."—The Civil War Monitor
“This focused study opens up vital questions about religion, public space, and punishment in American life and brings an ignored archive into view for American religion.”—American Religion
"In this thorough exploration of the religious and redemptive significance of executions for African Americans, Trotti examines the complicated historical narrative of capital punishment and contemporary debates over the survival of the practice. Interpretive yet backed by excellent statistical support, this book is an essential read for a wide audience of scholars."—Randolph Roth, author of American Homicide
"Trotti demonstrates how African Americans subverted the didactic component of 'legal' executions and transformed an expression of white authority and terror into a potentially redemptive ceremony. A timely contribution to African American, southern, religious, and criminal justice history."—Jeffrey S. Adler, author of Murder in New Orleans: The Creation of Jim Crow Policing