Lynched - by Angela D Sims (Paperback)

About the Book

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 the narrative of hope within a renewed possibility for justice.

Book Synopsis

Lynched chronicles the history and aftermath of lynching in America. By rooting her work in oral histories, Angela D. Sims gives voice to the 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. Sims examines the relationship between lynching and the interconnected realities of race, gender, class, and other social fragmentations that ultimately shape a person's--and a community's--religious self-understanding. Through this understanding, she explores how the narrators reconcile their personal and communal memory of lynching with their lived Christian experience. Moreover, Sims unearths the community's truth that this is sometimes a story of words and at other times a story of silence.

Revealing the bond between memory and moral formation, Sims discovers 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 the narrative of hope within a renewed possibility for justice.

Review Quotes

Lynched is a noteworthy and useful contribution to African American studies. Undergraduate or graduate students would benefit from reading Sims's work...

--Hollie A. Teague "Journal of African American History"

As a whole, Lynched is a groundbreaking work of theology that deserves a wide reading. Three specific aspects of Sims's book are worth highlighting. First, the testimonies about lynching that Sims collects are intrinsically valuable. Second, Sims masterfully connects these testimonies to contemporary events, a connection that many of the participants in her oral history project make themselves.... Third and finally, Sims offers words of wisdom for white readers.

--Ryan Andrew Newson "Perspectives in Religious Studies"

I applaud Sims for her courage, and for her reasoned responses to the horrors and narratives of which she has become the keeper. This is a book for anyone who hopes to see areas such as memory studies step out of the shadows and into a limelight of ways of collecting, archiving, and ultimately dealing with historical narratives of trauma and terror for the next generations.

--Raymond W. Radford "Journal of Religious History"

Simply for the way it collects and preserves the stories of dozens of African American survivors of the lynching era, Angela D. Sims' Lynched should be considered required reading for every US citizen. But in explicating the theological, sacramental, ethical, and ecclesiological significance of these memories, Sims makes a vital contribution to the field of theology as well.

--Katie Grimes "Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society"

Sims offers ethical insights that shed light on lynching culture and how we continue to experience its effects today.

--James L. Gorman "Reading Religion"

Sims reveals how memories of violence and damage inflicted by whites help African Americans understand contemporary American culture not as having ended the peril of violence but as having continued it in different ways.

--Donald G. Mathews "Journal of Ecclesiastical History"

Using oral histories, Sims provides the Christian community with a canon of testimonies that illustrate the scriptural imperative to walk by faith and not by sight. The testimonies of the African American elders are replete with biblical allusions and comparisons, such as the failure to love one's neighbor, the suffering servant, the road to Calvary, and the trek to the lynching tree.

--Marcia Y. Riggs "Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology"

About the Author

Angela D. Sims is President of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School.