Lynching in the West: 1850-1935 (review)
In this intriguing new study, Ken Gonzales-Day attempts to demonstrate that scholars of lynching have focused too narrowly on African American victims in the South. His book shows that lynching accounted for the deaths of more than 350 people in California between 1850 and 1935. The author accounts for this phenomenon by placing his emphasis on the primacy of racism. Most of those who died as a result of hanging or summary execution were members of racial minorities including African Americans, Native Americans, Chinese, and, above all, persons of Mexican origin or descent. The strength of this argument is underlined through the inclusion of an inventory of lynching victims at the end of the book.