{"product_id":"lynching-at-port-jervis-book-philip-dray-9780374194413","title":"A Lynching at Port Jervis","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn account of a lynching that took place in New York in 1892, forcing the North to reckon with its own racism.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e On June 2, 1892, in the small, idyllic village of Port Jervis, New York, a young Black man named Robert Lewis was lynched by a violent mob. The twenty-eight-year-old victim had been accused of sexually assaulting Lena McMahon, the daughter of one of the town's well-liked Irish American families. The incident was infamous at once, for it was seen as a portent that lynching, a Southern scourge, surging uncontrollably below the Mason-Dixon Line, was about to extend its tendrils northward. What factors prompted such a spasm of racial violence in a relatively prosperous, industrious upstate New York town, attracting the scrutiny of the Black journalist Ida B. Wells, just then beginning her courageous anti-lynching crusade? What meaning did the country assign to it? And what did the incident portend?\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Today, it's a terrible truth that the assault on the lives of Black Americans is neither a regional nor a temporary feature, but a national crisis. There are regular reports of a Black person killed by police, and Jim Crow has found new purpose in describing the harsh conditions of life for the formerly incarcerated, as well as in large-scale efforts to make voting inaccessible to Black people and other minority citizens. The \"mobocratic spirit\" that drove the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol--a phrase Abraham Lincoln used as early as 1838 to describe vigilantism's corrosive effect on America--frightfully insinuates that mob violence is a viable means of effecting political change. These issues remain as deserving of our concern now as they did a hundred and thirty years ago, when America turned its gaze to Port Jervis.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e An alleged crime, a lynching, a misbegotten attempt at an official inquiry, and a past unresolved. In \u003ci\u003eA Lynching at Port Jervis\u003c\/i\u003e, the acclaimed historian Philip Dray revisits this time and place to consider its significance in our communal history and to show how justice cannot be achieved without an honest reckoning.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50038983819537,"sku":"CIN0374194416VG","price":4.51,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50348218220817,"sku":"CIN0374194416G","price":6.05,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50981424431377,"sku":"CIN0374194416A","price":4.39,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0374194416.jpg?v=1750878502","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/products\/lynching-at-port-jervis-book-philip-dray-9780374194413","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}