At the Altar of Lynching
Burning Sam Hose in the American South

Offers a new interpretation of the lynching of Sam Hose through the lens of the religious culture in the evangelical American South.

Donald G. Mathews (Author)

9781107182974, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 September 2017

354 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 2.5 cm, 0.62 kg

'Mathews's account examines the role of religion in justifying and legitimizing extralegal, ritualistic execution that often involved mutilation and torture. … Mathews's dissection of the frightful autoda-fé gang murder and its bloody aftermath makes a compelling case for how all aspects of society coalesced to justify and maintain totalitarian control of the racial hierarchy, with religious faith often at the forefront.' Howard Smead, The American Historical Review

The story of a black day-laborer called Sam Hose killing his white employer in a workplace dispute ended in a lynching of enormous religious significance. For many deeply-religious communities in the Jim Crow South, killing those like Sam Hose restored balance to a moral cosmos upended by a heinous crime. A religious intensity in the mood and morality of segregation surpassed law, and in times of social crisis could justify illegal white violence - even to the extreme act of lynching. In At the Altar of Lynching, distinguished historian Donald G. Mathews offers a new interpretation of the murder of Sam Hose, which places the religious culture of the evangelical South at its center. He carefully considers how mainline Protestants, including women, not only in many instances came to support or accept lynching, but gave the act religious meaning and justification.

1. Before the burning: Southern mastery
2. Sex, danger, and religion: facing a 'savage fury'
3. Kindling the fire
4. Burning Sam Hose
5. Ashes: rape and history
6. Ashes: the blind and sighted
7. At the altar: crucifixion.

Subject Areas: Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], History of the Americas [HBJK]