I saw Sherrilyn Ifill recommend this book on Twitter. The book is a memoir and apology by the author Warren Read about the actions of his Great Grandfather in a 1920 lynching of three young black men in Duluth, Minnesota in 1920.

if you are a therapist, anyone interested in multi-generational trauma, or just someone trying to make sense of the world right now--this is worth seeking out.

We have to look our history square in the face to move on as a nation. Scratch some dirt in your neighborhood in this country and you'll find a story of injustice. Let's own up to it.

In weird coincidences I often find in the book world, the author happens to live not too far from me. ( )

This book wasn't quite what I expected. I had anticipated a more in depth study of the actual event in Duluth, MN in 1920; in actuality, there are three stories, woven into a dramatic personal journey. Best put, three main themes run about a third each: one being the events which claimed the lives of three Black circus employees; one being the author's sojourn to lay claim (or as the back dust jacket flap states in his biography: "he willingly shoulders the responsibility for his ancestor's actions.") and make amends for a deed carried out by family three generations prior; and finally, relating his turmoil of broken family life and victimization growing up.

The book begins written in a heavy, burdensome fashion. I found it ironic, as a teacher he likely might have admonished students for making tenuous analogies as he did between flora and interpersonal relationships and deep family secrets. Perhaps I grew accustomed to his writing style, but the book took a lighter, more easier to read style later in the book; it seemed to happen in part two, where the metaphoric composition trail off.

I viewed this book to be cathartic in nature for Warren Read. Unfortunately, he used the reticent family shame of his great grandfather's prison term relating to rioting as an excuse to liberally fill a third of his book with heartrending stories of his alcoholic father and alcoholic step-father. Mr. Read loosely lays brotherhood to his grandfather in that he understands what anguish it is to visit your father in prison. He spends a large section of part two explaining how his father came to be convicted.

I realize this book is about his personal journey once he discovers, by mere happenstance, that is great grandfather had more than a passing role in the lynching of three black men who were kidnapped from the city jail after the mob overpowered the police and literally broke down a wall to gain access to the prisoners. Near the end of the book, he addressed a reunion of a town one of the victims hailed from, she assured him that thankfully lynchings don't physically take place now-a-days, but they do in other ways. My mind instantly recalled the 2006 Duke lacrosse case. The three Duke University student's lives and reputations were besmirched by the media and Duke faculty during an investigation later proven to be purposely mishandled by the District Attorney for political purposes, playing up the socioeconomic aspects between the accuser and suspects. They may not have been hanged, but harm had been done from a false accusation.

Aside from the title, The Lyncher in Me (Lyncher is in bold), on the first page, three paragraphs in Mr. Read's personal connection was solidified when he equates himself to the three murdered men nearly 100-years ago. He is gay and begins the paragraph admitting he has "been among people who I'm sure would sooner see me dead than living with another man..." and concludes it with, "I know that as far-removed as I am from the men beaten and lynched that night long ago, I am not so different." Warren Read does refer to the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. tragedies lending credence to his fear of "being discovered hanging from a hastily fashioned noose." Yet, I take umbrage with this automatic equation of gay rights to a history of chattel slavery, Jim Crow and post-reconstruction racial violence and generations of vote suppression. Thankfully, the author doesn't involve his sense of civil rights injustice an over arching theme throughout the story; a simple reference to his homosexuality reside in the narrative or his near encounter with a bunch of Fred Phelps yahoos in Kansas.

What he does dwell on is the angst he takes on for his great grandfather. Because even his mother knew nothing about her grandfather's role in the mob (in)justice, Mr. Read assumes his ancestor had no guilt or regret for what he had done. His emotions and sense of responsibility are what they are. Aside from assuaging the newly found guilt of a family patriarch he never met, I think the only positives to come from his self-imposed blameworthiness is catharses for him and possibly answering some questions distance relations him have about one of the three victims of mob violence on a darkened street corner in Duluth, Minnesota in 1920.

He spends a considerable amount of time discussing his own grappling with race relations in his life. From temporarily allowing a classmate he came to resent in elementary school represent the whole Black race, to being one of the whites who move into a "black part of town" and improve the neighborhood, thereby raising taxes and displacing blacks, he deals with race relations on a personal level. This aspect and his searching for family members of the three victims his great grandfather helped murder made this book interesting. And while the story of the murders is relatively short for being the genesis of his memoirs, his exhaustive research facilitated his enthralling narrative of the faithful night where five to ten thousand revelers took part or witnessed the macabre execution of what turned out to be innocent men - sadly no crime had been committed by them, only by the teenage couple who claimed rape and the town folk who bypassed the justice system to hasten trios untimely demise. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1171958.html

This is a fascinating book. Subtitled "A Search for Redemption in the Face of History", it chronicles the research of Warren Read, an elementary school teacher from Washington State, into the June 1920 lynching of three black men in Duluth, Minnesota, accused of a rape that had not actually happened. To his horror, Read discovered while doing some online genealogical research that his own great-grandfather was jailed for inciting the riot. His exploration of that hot summer night in Duluth goes in parallel with exploring his own childhood experiences (his own father was also jailed, for raping his step-sister) and teasing out the unspoken parts of his own family's history. In one particularly moving chapter he visits the home town of one of the lynched men, and gives his own testimony at the local church. It's actually quite a short book, but passionate in its detailed analysis. ( )