This Is Not Dixie: Racist Violence in Kansas, 1861-1927

by Brent M.S. Campney

Overview

Often defined as a mostly southern phenomenon, racist violence existed everywhere. Brent M. S. Campney explodes the notion of the Midwest as a so-called land of freedom with an in-depth study of assaults both active and threatened faced by African Americans in post–Civil War Kansas. Campney's capacious definition of white-on-black violence encompasses not only sensational demonstrations of white power like lynchings and race riots, but acts of threatened violence and the varied forms of pervasive routine violence—property damage, rape, forcible ejection from towns—used to intimidate African Americans. As he shows, such methods were a cornerstone of efforts to impose and maintain white supremacy. Yet Campney's broad consideration of racist violence also lends new insights into the ways people resisted threats. African Americans spontaneously hid fugitives and defused lynch mobs while also using newspapers and civil rights groups to lay the groundwork for forms of institutionalized opposition that could fight racist violence through the courts and via public opinion. Ambitious and provocative, This Is Not Dixie rewrites fundamental narratives on mob action, race relations, African American resistance, and racism's grim past in the heartland.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252039508
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	08/20/2015
Edition description:	1st Edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Brent M. S. Campney is an associate professor in the Department of History and Philosophy at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley (formerly the University of Texas-Pan American).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

A Note on the Use of the Federal Censuses ix

Introduction 1

1 "Light Is Bursting upon the World!" 27

2 "Negroes Are the Favorites of the Government" 45

3 "Kansas Has an Ample Supply of Darkies" 63

4 "A Day More Dreadful Than Any That We Have Yet Experienced" 88

5 "Some Finely Tuned Spring-Release Trap" 116

6 "The Life of No Colored Man Is Safe" 132

7 "Sowing the Seed of Hatred and Prejudice" 156

8 "Peace at Home Is the Most Essential Thing" 179

Conclusion 201

Appendix 1 Incidents of Racist Violence in Kansas, 1861-1927 220

Appendix 2 Incidents of Jailhouse Defenses and Police Resistance Against Racist Violence in Kansas, 1890-1916 239

Notes 244

Selected Bibliography 273

Index 277

Editorial Reviews

"A compelling and exhaustive work that examines the long history of anti-black violence and racism in Kansas, as well as the myriad efforts of African Americans to resist white supremacy."—H-Net
  "A potent portrait of dramatically unequal but also complicated, highly contested, and geographically fragmented racial power relations in one Midwestern state during the rise and consolidation of the Jim Crow era." —Journal of African American History


"A significant contribution to the field of racial violence and the understanding of the history of Kansas in the post-Civil War period…This Is Not Dixie secures the University of Illinois Press’s dominance as a publisher of scholarship on racial violence in the post-Civil War era. Highly recommended.”—Choice

"When discussing lynching, race riots, and other forms of racist violence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the emphasis often turns southward. Brent Campney's This Is Not Dixie builds on current historiography by challenging these assumptions… This work provides timely insights into racist violence in the North."—Civil War Book Review
 


"Campney exposes the shameful extent of violence in our past and also highlights the episodes of actions against such violence by law enforcement officers and by the African American community. Others should follow his lead to rediscover the world of law, race, and violence that shaped the past and continues to shape the present."—American Historical Review

"Campney has written an amazing and profound book that challenges many assumptions regarding racist violence in America, putting both the Midwest and the South in a deeper, richer context. This Is Not Dixie will no doubt inspire similar state-level studies."—Journal of Southern History

From the Publisher