
San Francisco Chronicle Extra: “Kidnappers Lynched!” Royce Brier’s eyewitness account of the lynchings in the left-hand column, “Mob Storms Jail, Hangs Slayers in San Jose Square,” won the Pulitzer Prize for Reporting.
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Although most Americans probably equate the term “lynch mob” with an image of a band of Southern whites hell-bent on punishing their black victims, readers of Swift Justice [1992] quickly learn that dark skin and southern geography are not prerequisites for the hangman’s noose. Power, prestige, and the press played critical roles. — Book review in 5 Western Legal History 256 (Summer/Fall 1992). (more…)