Description
Book SynopsisThroughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the U.S. Congress engaged in bitter debates on whether to enact a federal law that would prosecute private citizens who lynched black Americans. In Getting Away with Murder, the fundamental question under scrutiny is whether Southern Democrats' racist attitudes toward black Americans pardoned the atrocities of lynching. The book investigates underlying motives of opposition to Senate filibustering and invites an intellectual discussion on why Southern Democrats thought states' rights were the remedy to lynching, when, in fact, the phenomenon was a baffling national crisis. A rebuttal to this query may include notions that congressional investigations into state-protected rights were deemed unconstitutional. In a unifying theme, the appeal ties into questions of the federalism-civil rights debate by noting intervals that warrant research and advancing new perspectives intended to accentuate the matrices of race-based politics.
Table of ContentsIntroduction. States’ Rights, States’ Wrongs I. The Conduit to Getting Away with Murder II. “No” with Authority, the Solid South in Congress III. Blaming Racism and the Democratic Solidarity in the Senate IV. White Supremacy, the Unwritten Law of the Land V. The Disappointment, Stymied by Old Southern Politics Appendix A: Profiles of the 51st-82nd Congress Appendix B: Southern Democratic Senators, 51st-82nd Congress
