Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies

The question that many fail to ask when observing historical photographs of mobs of angry, drunken white men surrounding the hanging corpses of African-American men, women, and/or children is how much of an effect did America’s “hidden pastime” have on the “innocent” white youth of the Jim Crow South? The goal of this essay is to position the physical black body within a conversation between Lewis R. Gordon’s philosophy on antiblack racism as a form of Sartearn bad faith and Kristina DuRocher’s historical examination of the socialization of white children in the Jim Crow South.