Lynching and the Making of a National Community: A Rhetoric of Civic Belonging

“We the People”—that imagined collective brought into formation through a shared ideology and the set of social practices that affirm it—is bound by physical, symbolic, and discursive boundaries, boundaries that must be maintained, fortified, and policed if the community constituted through their creation is to remain intact. Lynching is one such practice that helped to fortify this boundary. Prof. Ore explores the relationship between lynching, legal constructions of citizenship, and American imaginings “homeplace.”