Lynched: The Power of Memory in a Culture of Terror

Lynched chronicles the history andaftermath of lynching in America. By rooting her work in oral histories, Angela D. Sims gives voice tothe memories of African American elders who remember lynching not only as individual acts but as a culture of violence, domination, and fear. Lynched preserves memory even while it provides an analysis of the meaning of those memories.Simsexamines the relationship between lynching and the interconnected realities of race, gender, class,and other social fragmentations that ultimately shape a person'saand a community'sareligiousself-understanding. Through this understanding,she explores how the narrators reconcile their personal and communalmemory of lynching with their livedChristian experience. Moreover, Simsunearths the community'struth that this is sometimes a story of words and at other times a story of silence. Revealing the bond between memory and moral formation, Simsdiscovers the courage and hope inherent in the power of recall.By tending to the words of these witnesses, Lynched exposes not only a culture of fear and violence but the practice of story and memory, as well as thenarrative ofhope within a renewed possibility for justice.