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Product Description
In , Rebecca N. Hill compares two seemingly unrelated types of leftist protest campaigns: those intended to defend labor organizers from prosecution and those seeking to memorialize lynching victims and stop the practice of lynching. Arguing that these forms of protest are related and have substantially influenced one another, Hill points out that both worked to build alliances through appeals to public opinion in the media, by defining the American state as a force of terror, and by creating a heroic identity for their movements. Each has played a major role in the history of radical politics in the United States. Hill illuminates that history by considering the narratives produced during the abolitionist John Browns trials and execution, analyzing the defense of the Chicago anarchists of the Haymarket affair, and comparing Ida B. Wellss and the NAACPs anti-lynching campaigns to the Industrial Workers of the Worlds early-twentieth-century defense campaigns. She also considers conflicts within the campaign to defend Sacco and Vanzetti, chronicles the history of the Communist Partys International Labor Defense, and explores the Black Panther Partys defense of George Jackson.