Lynching in Nineteenth-Century Literature: Critical Essay by Bruce E. Baker

SOURCE: Baker, Bruce E. “North Carolina Lynching Ballads.” In Under Sentence of Death: Lynching in the South, edited by W. Fitzhugh Brundage, pp. 219-45. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

In the following essay, Baker examines ballads associated with three lynchings in North Carolina and contends that, more than novels and poetry, folk music offers insight into attitudes toward lynching in the communities where they occurred.