Ithaca College

History Professor Michael Trotti published an article titled "The Scaffold's Revival: Race and Public Execution in the South" in the Fall, 2011, issue of The Journal of Social History.

This article evaluates the peculiar intersection of devout Christianity and public execution in the history of the South after the Civil War.  Most southern states maintained the tradition of public execution after the war, but these events were much less humiliating to the condemned than scholars have presumed, for the ministers, condemned, and the crowds that gathered tended to turn the events at the gallows into impromptu religious camp meetings: revivals focused on how even the most sinful among us can repent and be saved.

While scholars have typically seen public executions as something akin to lynchings, it was private executions that were more horrifying to many black southerners: being put to death without this religious ceremony, out of sight from their community, and in the presence of only a few white men.  The article reorients our understanding of the place of public execution in the history of the South.