Popular Justice

Manfred Berg traces the history of lynching in America from the colonial era to the present. Berg focuses on lynching as extralegal communal punishment performed by "ordinary" people. He confronts racially fragmented historical memory and legacies of popular justice to help the reader make better sense of lynching as part of American history. Berg analyzes lynching cases with victims ranging from African American men to white women to cattle rustlers as he explores the concepts of "frontier justice" and "popular justice."