Narratives of Racism: Lynchings, Miscarriages of Justice, and Internment Camps in America

In this course, we will study narrative accounts of 20th-century American incidents in which racism led to the persecution of members of minority groups by means of lynchings, miscarriages of justice, or the placement of people in internment camps: the unjustly conducted trial and lynching of the Jewish factory manager Leo Frank accused of murdering a young girl in Georgia; the kidnapping and murder of African American adolescent Emmett Till in Mississippi; and the internment of Japanese descendants during World War II out of fear that they would aid America's enemy.