Often defined as a mostly southern phenomenon, racist violence existed everywhere. Brent M. S. Campney explodes the notion of the Midwest as a so-called land of freedom with an in-depth study of assaults both active and threatened faced by African Americans in post–Civil War Kansas. Campney's capacious definition of white-on-black violence encompasses not only sensational demonstrations of white power like lynchings and race riots, but acts of threatened violence and the varied forms of pervasive routine violence—property damage, rape, forcible ejection from towns—used to intimidate African Americans. As he shows, such methods were a cornerstone of efforts to impose and maintain white supremacy. Yet Campney's broad consideration of racist violence also lends new insights into the ways people resisted threats. African Americans spontaneously hid fugitives and defused lynch mobs while also using newspapers and civil rights groups to lay the groundwork for forms of institutionalized opposition that could fight racist violence through the courts and via public opinion. Ambitious and provocative, This Is Not Dixie rewrites fundamental narratives on mob action, race relations, African American resistance, and racism's grim past in the heartland.| Cover Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgments A Note on the Use of the Federal Censuses Introduction 1. "Light Is Bursting upon the World!" 2. "Negroes Are the Favorites of the Government" 3. "Kansas Has an Ample Supply of Darkies" 4. "A Day More Dreadful Than Any That We Have Yet Experienced" 5. "Some Finely Tuned Spring-Release Trap" 6. "The Life of No Colored Man Is Safe" 7. "Sowing the Seed of Hatred and Prejudice" 8. "Peace at Home Is the Most Essential Thing" Conclusion Appendix 1. Incidents of Racist Violence in Kansas, 1861–1927 Appendix 2. Incidents of Jailhouse Defenses and Police Resistance Against Racist Violence in Kansas Notes Selected Bibliography Index | Jan Garton Prairie Heritage Book Award, Prairie Heritage, Inc., 2017
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2016 — Prairie Heritage, Inc.
Jan Garton Prairie Heritage Book Award, Prairie Heritage, Inc., 2017
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2016 — A Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2016
|Brent M. S. Campney is an associate professor in the Department of History and Philosophy at the University of Texas–Rio Grande Valley (formerly the University of Texas–Pan American).