At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America (2002) by historian Philip Dray offers a detailed history of anti-Black lynching in the United States, exploring the social, political, and legal forces that enabled such violence. Opening with the infamous 1899 lynching of Sam Hose—fueled by fabricated newspaper accounts and political rhetoric—Dray shows how public cruelty and misinformation shaped white Southern attitudes. He also examines later cases, such as Willie McGee’s 1945 trial, to reveal how systemic bias in the justice system perpetuated racial violence even without mobs. Thoroughly researched and deeply unsettling, the book earned the Southern Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize nomination.
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