The Lynching of Cleo Wright
The Lynching of Cleo Wright

Author: Dominic J. CapeciJr.

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2014-10-17

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 0813156467

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On January 20, 1942, black oil mill worker Cleo Wright assaulted a white woman in her home and nearly killed the first police officer who tried to arrest him. An angry mob then hauled Wright out of jail and dragged him through the streets of Sikeston, Missouri, before burning him alive. Wright's death was, unfortunately, not unique in American history, but what his death meant in the larger context of life in the United States in the twentieth-century is an important and compelling story. After the lynching, the U.S. Justice Department was forced to become involved in civil rights concerns for the first time, provoking a national reaction to violence on the home front at a time when the country was battling for democracy in Europe. Dominic Capeci unravels the tragic story of Wright's life on several stages, showing how these acts of violence were indicative not only of racial tension but the clash of the traditional and the modern brought about by the war. Capeci draws from a wide range of archival sources and personal interviews with the participants and spectators to draw vivid portraits of Wright, his victims, law-enforcement officials, and members of the lynch mob. He places Wright in the larger context of southern racial violence and shows the significance of his death in local, state, and national history during the most important crisis of the twentieth-century.

Coding Freedom
Coding Freedom

Author: E. Gabriella Coleman

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 0691144613

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Who are computer hackers? What is free software? And what does the emergence of a community dedicated to the production of free and open source software--and to hacking as a technical, aesthetic, and moral project--reveal about the values of contemporary liberalism? Exploring the rise and political significance of the free and open source software (F/OSS) movement in the United States and Europe, Coding Freedom details the ethics behind hackers' devotion to F/OSS, the social codes that guide its production, and the political struggles through which hackers question the scope and direction of copyright and patent law. In telling the story of the F/OSS movement, the book unfolds a broader narrative involving computing, the politics of access, and intellectual property. E. Gabriella Coleman tracks the ways in which hackers collaborate and examines passionate manifestos, hacker humor, free software project governance, and festive hacker conferences. Looking at the ways that hackers sustain their productive freedom, Coleman shows that these activists, driven by a commitment to their work, reformulate key ideals including free speech, transparency, and meritocracy, and refuse restrictive intellectual protections. Coleman demonstrates how hacking, so often marginalized or misunderstood, sheds light on the continuing relevance of liberalism in online collaboration.

The Life and Death of the Solid South
The Life and Death of the Solid South

Author: Dewey W. Grantham

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2014-07-11

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0813148723

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Southern-style politics was one of those peculiar institutions that differentiated the South from other American regions. This system—long referred to as the Solid South—embodied a distinctive regional culture and was perpetuated through an undemocratic distribution of power and a structure based on disfranchisement, malapportioned legislatures, and one-party politics. It was the mechanism that determined who would govern in the states and localities, and in national politics it was the means through which the South's politicians defended their region's special interests and political autonomy. The history of this remarkable institution can be traced in the gradual rise, long persistence, and ultimate decline of the Democratic Party dominance in the land below the Potomac and the Ohio. This is the story that Dewey W. Grantham tells in his fresh and authoritative account of the South's modern political experience. The distillation of many years of research and reflection, is both a synthesis of the extensive literature on politics in the recent South and a challenging reinterpretation of the region's political history.