On the Courthouse Lawn, Sherrilyn Ifill
On the Courthouse Lawn, Sherrilyn Ifill
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On the Courthouse Lawn
Revised Edition

Author: Sherrilyn Ifill, Bryan Stevenson

Narrator: LisaGay Hamilton

Unabridged: 8 hr 24 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/14/2018


Synopsis

Nearly 5,000 black Americans were lynched between 1890 and 1960. Over forty years later, Sherrilyn Ifill's On the Courthouse Lawn examines the numerous ways that this racial trauma still resounds across the United States. While the lynchings and their immediate aftermath were devastating, the little-known contemporary consequences, such as the marginalization of political and economic development for black Americans, are equally pernicious.

On the Courthouse Lawn investigates how the lynchings implicated average white citizens, some of whom actively participated in the violence while many others witnessed the lynchings but did nothing to stop them. Ifill observes that this history of complicity has become embedded in the social and cultural fabric of local communities, who either supported, condoned, or ignored the violence. She traces the lingering effects of two lynchings in Maryland to illustrate how ubiquitous this history is and issues a clarion call for American communities with histories of racial violence to be proactive in facing this legacy today.

Inspired by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as well as by techniques of restorative justice, Ifill provides concrete ideas to help communities heal, including placing gravestones on the unmarked burial sites of lynching victims, issuing public apologies, establishing mandatory school programs on the local history of lynching, financially compensating those whose family homes or businesses were destroyed in the aftermath of lynching, and creating commemorative public spaces. Because the contemporary effects of racial violence are experienced most intensely in local communities, Ifill argues that reconciliation and reparation efforts must also be locally based in order to bring both black and white Americans together in an efficacious dialogue.

A landmark book, On the Courthouse Lawn is a much-needed and urgent road map for communities finally confronting lynching's long shadow by embracing pragmatic reconciliation and reparation efforts.

About The Author

Sherrilyn A. Ifill is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law. She is also a civil rights lawyer and a regular speaker on race, public policy, and law. She lives in Baltimore.


Reviews

Goodreads review by J Earl on May 27, 2019

On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century is a ten year anniversary reissue by Sherrilyn A Ifill. This powerful book uses the Maryland Eastern Shore lynchings in the 1930s, and subsequent racial issues in the area, as a central point and example of what the legac......more

Goodreads review by Mika on November 05, 2023

I read this book for my Community Psychology class, where we have been focusing on lynching, specifically in the area of our university, the lower eastern shore of Maryland. This book dug deep into the history that surrounds this area. It was detailed, raw, and most importantly, it gave a place for......more

Goodreads review by Kris on August 06, 2018

I ordered this book after encountering oral history transcriptions of a specific lynching that occurred in Salisbury, of Matthew Williams in 1931. The Director of the Nabb Center, Creston Long, alerted me to this book, which proved to be a thoroughly researched account of multiple lynchings on the E......more

Goodreads review by Ruby on August 22, 2023

"Douglass reportedly wanted to accept a commission to join the Union army, but he was prevented from doing so by the Lincoln administration because of fear of white reaction." "Between 1900 and 1935 courthouse lawns on the Eastern Shore were routinely the sites of lynchings or near lynchings, involvi......more

Goodreads review by Emily on August 26, 2020

On the Courthouse Lawn is an eye-opening book that exposes the ways local systems are set up to perpetuate racist behaviors. Sherrilyn Ifill does a great job of taking readers through the history of the lynchings on the eastern shore of Maryland, while also sharing what policies (both legal and inst......more


Quotes

“As has been powerfully detailed in Sherrilyn A. Ifill’s extraordinary work on lynching, there is an urgent need to challenge the absence of recognition in the public space on the subject of lynching.”—Equal Justice Initiative

“Sherrilyn Ifill’s seminal work exposing the brutality of the abhorrent, barbaric practice of lynching is as important today as it was ten years ago when it was first published—perhaps more so. Ms. Ifill persuasively argues that this country should confront its sordid history of lynching through a truth and reconciliation process. Inspired by her work, many have begun that process. On the Courthouse Lawn should be read, and re-read, by anyone interested in racial justice and healing in this country.”—Angela J. Davis, author of Arbitrary Justice

“This pathbreaking book by Sherrilyn Ifill shows how the ugliest messages from our racial history and politics can hide openly in the public square. Her unflinching memory restores hope for the common good.”—Taylor Branch, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Parting the Waters

"Ifill offers a new approach to addressing the history of lynching in America. . . One legacy [of racial violence] is the difficulty blacks and whites have even of discussing it, since few really want to remember what, for most on both sides of the divide, were traumatizing events. Yet remembering is essential. An intriguing, immodest proposal that itself warrants discussion—and action. —Kirkus Review, starred review

"A sobering and eye-opening book on one of America's darkest secrets. A must read for anyone willing to examine our history carefully and learn from it." —Professor Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice

"A thoroughly researched, unflinching account of the ugly history of the Eastern Shore's early-twentieth-century lynchings."—Petula Caesar, Baltimore City Paper

"Elegantly written and persuasively argued . . . Ifill explores the possibilities and offers concrete advice on how truth and reconciliation could be widely employed in the United States."—Mary Frances Berry, Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and professor of history, University of Pennsylvania