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Henry Kamerling, The End of Public Execution: Race, Religion, and Punishment in the American South, Journal of American History, Volume 111, Issue 2, September 2024, Pages 357–358, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaae127
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In The End of Public Execution, Michael Ayers Trotti examines the rise in public executions in the post–Civil War South to their peak in the early 1890s. He then investigates the reasons behind their slow removal from the public eye, until all southern state-sanctioned executions became private rituals held deep within state penitentiaries in the early twentieth century. Despite the robust scholarship on lynching, prisons, and punishment regimes in the American South during this era, there are no full studies of southern state executions. This is surprising in part because of the sheer volume of formal executions that occurred (over 1,300 by Trotti's estimate), the fact that over 80 percent of those executed were Black, and the importance scholars have attached to the myriad ways white supremacy shaped expressions of state power at this time. Trotti's work not only fills a gap in the literature but also upends long-held assumptions that have guided the scholarship of those studying extralegal punishment.
