03/21/2022
The shocking 1892 lynching of a Black man in a small town 65 miles northwest of New York City is recounted in this vivid and well-researched chronicle from historian Dray (There Is Power in a Union). “Seen as a portent that lynching, then surging uncontrollably below the Mason-Dixon Line, was about to extend its tendrils northward,” the case helped spark an antilynching crusade, according to Dray. He meticulously reconstructs the events leading up to the murder, detailing how Lena McMahon, the manager of a local confectionery, was seen struggling with a light-skinned Black man on the bank of the Neversink River; how hotel worker Robert Lewis, who was apprehended on a “slow-moving coal barge” headed out of town, allegedly told his captors that Lena’s white boyfriend, Philip Foley, had “urged him to commit the act”; and how a mob “wrested control” of Lewis before he could be turned over to the police, and slipped a noose over his head “within seconds.” Dray also delves into the history of Port Jervis, profiles bystanders who tried to stop the lynching, recounts the inquest that acquitted eight men of assault and incitement to riot, and doggedly sorts through theories about what really occurred between McMahon, Foley, and Lewis. The result is an illuminating and distressing look at America’s history of racial violence. (May)
"Dray is an excellent and conscientious storyteller." —Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times
"For enlarging our understanding of America’s enduring enthrallment with the violence, guns and control of white supremacy, A Lynching at Port Jervis is superlative." —Michael Henry Adams, The Guardian (US)
"Fascinating [and] horrifying . . . Deeply immersed in the horrific history of lynching in America, this book exposes that this violence is not merely a Southern aberration, but rather deeply woven into the national culture." —National Book Review
"A cleareyed, powerful account . . . riveting . . . the author is diligent and rigorous in his depiction of the racial animosity undergirding the entire ordeal . . . An important historical study of a topic that remains sadly relevant."
—Kirkus
"Vivid and well-researched . . . An illuminating and distressing look at America’s history of racial violence."
—Publishers Weekly
"A Lynching at Port Jervis paints a vividly disturbing picture of northern racism in the Gilded Age, reminding readers of the pervasiveness of anti-Black terrorism and its lethal consequences for Black Americans."
—Booklist
“Philip Dray’s A Lynching at Port Jervis excavates the details of a rarely discussed 1892 horrific event in the American North, dispelling many of our preconceived notions that lynchings only occurred in the South. Yet what makes Dray even more than a faithful chronicler of this nation’s troubling and troubled past—and trust that we do require chroniclers—is his extraordinary, artful storytelling. Dray eases his readers into this difficult history, displaying so much empathy for our eventual, truth-facing moments.”
—Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
“In this riveting, beautifully written book, Philip Dray shines a spotlight on the forgotten national dimensions of southern barbarism, lynching. He effortlessly weaves the story of a place, a crime, a people, and recovers its broader historical significance. Like his previous work, A Lynching at Port Jervis illustrates the terror of racism as well as the long fight against it. A timely and important book.”
—Manisha Sinha, author of The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition (2016)
“Impassioned and painfully relevant, Philip Dray’s A Lynching at Port Jervis probes with gripping precision and deep humanity the hidden, ongoing injuries of the American past.”
—Brenda Wineapple, author of The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation
“In this outstanding study of a northern lynching, Philip Dray shows us that the violent practice was/is no southern aberration but lies at the heart of our national culture.”
—Paula J. Giddings, author, IDA, A Sword Among Lions, Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching, EA Professor, Emerita, Smith College
“African Americans have been victims of extrajudicial killings since their first arrival on America’s shores. Plantation owners murdered their enslaved workers, white southern mobs lynched thousands after Reconstruction and in recent years police killings of African Americans have become shockingly common. In this gripping account of the lynching of Robert Lewis in a small New York town during the Gilded Age, we can observe in devastating detail how ordinary people can engage in the most horrific acts. Guided by Philip Dray’s humanity and wisdom, this beautifully written account takes us deep into the politics, ideas and terrifying consequences of northern racism.”
—Sven Beckert, Laird Bell Professor of History, Harvard University
On June 2, 1892, Robert Lewis, a young Black man, was captured by a mob of men intent on stringing him up for assault of a white woman, for which he was never convicted. Listeners are transported to that day by narrator Dion Graham, who delivers an electrifying performance of the activities before and after this heinous crime. Port Jervis was a bucolic town in upstate New York, where violence like this was not supposed to happen. Graham’s portrayal of this little known racist incident is scarily prescient for today’s listeners. His passion ripples through the words he speaks, and his expertise in creating suspenseful and shocking moments makes the graphic descriptions all too real. E.E.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
2022-04-13
An award-winning historian investigates a shocking incident of “spontaneous vigilantism” that “was seen as a portent that lynching, then surging uncontrollably below the Mason-Dixon Line, was about to extend its tendrils northward.”
In his latest, Dray—the author of At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America and other works of American history—offers a cleareyed, powerful account of the lynching of Robert Lewis, a Black man, in the railroad town of Port Jervis, New York, amid a riot on June 2, 1892. As the author shows throughout his riveting text, while the heinous crime “lacked the ritualistic staging typical of many Southern lynchings…it was grounded in the same white insecurities that characterized the practice in warmer climes.” Although only White (mainly newspaper) accounts of the lynching and aftermath remain in the record, the actual story, as the author unravels, was yet another example of a horrible mishandling of justice regarding a Black citizen. Lewis, who had worked in town as a respected laborer, was accused of sexually assaulting a local young White woman, and Dray chronicles how Lewis would suffer the consequences of the toxic stew of rumors, gossip, and deeply ingrained racism that existed in Port Jervis. After his death, the town’s citizens unfurled a host of justifications, but the author is diligent and rigorous in his depiction of the racial animosity undergirding the entire ordeal. In the second part of the book, Dray examines the shameful legal ramifications and the crusading anti-lynching work of journalist Ida B. Wells and other activists as well as the fiction of Port Jervis–born Stephen Crane, whose brother had tried to intervene in the mob that lynched Lewis. In his later work, Crane would confront an essential question: “How should a conscientious white person respond to the most egregious forms of racial prejudice?”
An important historical study of a topic that remains sadly relevant.
