Elegy for Mary Turner: An Illustrated Account of a Lynching, Paperback/Rachel Marie-Crane Williams

A lyrical and haunting depiction of American racial violence and lynching, evoked through stunning full-color artwork In late May 1918 in Valdosta, Georgia, ten Black men and one Black woman--Mary Turner, eight months pregnant at the time--were lynched and tortured by mobs of white citizens. Through hauntingly detailed full-color artwork and collage, Elegy for Mary Turner names those who were killed, identifies the killers, and evokes a landscape in which the NAACP investigated the crimes when the state would not and a time when white citizens baked pies and flocked to see Black corpses while Black people fought to make their lives--and their mourning--matter. Included are contributions from C. Tyrone Forehand, great-grandnephew of Mary and Hayes Turner, whose family has long campaigned for the deaths to be remembered; abolitionist activist and educator Mariame Kaba, reflecting on the violence visited on Black women's bodies; and historian Julie Buckner Armstrong, who opens a window onto the broader scale of lynching's terror in American history. About author(s): Rachel Marie-Crane Williams is an artist and teacher, currently an Associate Professor at the University of Iowa in Art and Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies. Her work as a researcher and creative scholar has always been focused on women's issues, community, art, and people who are incarcerated. She has worked with incarcerated women since 1994. Her scholarship--both graphic and textual--has been published by the Jane Addams Hull House Museum, The Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education , and The International Journal of Comic Art , The Journal of Correctional Education , The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society , The Journal of Art Education , and Visual Arts Research .