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I wanted to let you know about a nationally-renown speaker and author who is presenting at our school on February 8 at 7:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public, and I thought the members of your organization might be interested.
Koritha Mitchell, author if “LIVING WITH LYNCHING:AFRICAN AMERICAN DRAMA AND CITIZENSHIP," is a literary historian and cultural critic. She specializes in African American literature, racial violence throughout U.S. literature and culture, and black drama & performance. She examines how
texts, both written and performed, have helped terrorized families and communities survive and thrive.
She is author ofLiving with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890 -1930 (University of Illinois Press, 2011). Currently an associate professor of English at Ohio State University, Mitchell earned her PhD at the University of Maryland-College Park, and her research has been
supported by the Ford Foundation and the American Association of University Women.
Our event information is:
The Wellington School
3650 Reed Road, Columbus, OH 43220
Response email:
events@wellington.org
614-457-7883
Christine Conkle
www.wellington.org
Here is a brief summary of her discussion on February 8:
Between 1890 and 1930, mobs lynched African Americans and proudly circulated pictures of the mutilated corpses. With these gruesome photographs regularly appearing in the nation’s newspapers, and sometimes as picture postcards, the message was clear: blacks are not citizens. How did African Americans survive this era? How did they maintain a dignified sense of self when photographs of lynch victims entered their homes along with the news? When the mob was a palpable threat to their own bodies, families, and communities, how did they manage “to keep on keeping on”? And, how did they continue to believe in their status as U.S. citizens?
While the country of their birth tolerated the race’s slaughter, African Americans needed tools for viewing themselves in ways that did not depend on mainstream messages. In the 1910s and 1920s, black authors began writing plays about lynching, providing their communities with scripts that affirmed their self-conceptions and allowed them to mourn their losses. These scripts became mechanisms through which African Americans survived the height of mob violence—and its photographic representation—still believing in their right to full citizenship.
Posted By: kristi simone
Wednesday, February 1st 2012 at 9:25AM
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