Content Warning

How can educators confront the history of lynching and racial violence to foster deeper understanding and justice?

Content Warning by Rhonda Jones explores African American efforts to heal from enslavement, racial terror, and repression. Many educators struggle to address race and racism in the classroom. With 177 documented lynchings in North Carolina (1880s-1950s), racial violence had lasting effects on families and communities. Using archives and primary sources, this book chronicles counter-stories and resistance movements that fueled African American antilynching, desegregation, and restorative justice efforts, emphasizing history’s relevance today.

Ideal for educators, historians, policymakers, and students in Black studies, seeking a deeper understanding of racial violence, historical trauma, and resistance movements in American history.

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgment
• Abstract
• Table of Contents
• Learning objectives
• Content warning
• The structure of this reader
• Introduction
• The legacy of racial violence in North Carolina
• 1 Reconstruction and retaliation (1870–1896)
• Content warning
• Themes
• Primary resources
• Questions for discussion
• 2 Democracy undone: The Wilmington riot of 1898 and the institutionalization of white supremacy (1868–1900)
• Content warning
• The Governor’s visit
• The parade of the red shirts
• The blow at colored laborers
• Forced him to resign
• Incendiary utterances
• The colored man’s defense
• The demolition of the office
• Murdering of unarmed colored people
• The murders at Wilmington
• Solemn campaign pledges broken
• Should it be adopted even if Constitutional?
• Will not keep the machine politicians from raising the negro cry
• To disfranchise the poor, hardworking 12 year old boys
• The poll-tax receipt scheme
• A scheme to trick or bribe voters
• But it is constitutional?
• Who says it is constitutional?
• Who says it is unconstitutional?
• What will be the result?
• What is their purpose?
• What senator Stewart says
• Emancipation Day
• Questions for discussion
• 3 Lynching, policing, and racial terror (1880s–1940s)
• Content warning
• Message to governor
• Lynching Inquiry Without Result
• Jury from Rolesville Section
• The Crime
• NUMBER OF LYNCHINGS
• Questions for discussion
• 4 Respectable dissent and radical defiance: The making of a movement, 1930s–1960s
• Content warning
• Themes
• A town called Monroe: Robert F. Williams and armed self-defense
• Primary source documents
• Questions for discussion
• 5 Students, strikes, and legal struggles: Dudley Senior High School and the Wilmington Ten (1969–1980)
• Content warning
• Primary resources
• Greensboro voices/Greensboro civil rights oral history collection
• Connecting Dudley Hight and Wilmington: Patterns of repression and resistance
• The continuum of racial violence
• Primary resources
• Opinion
• [**3] I.
• A. Introduction
• B. General
• [**10] [*217] C. Hall’s amended statement and efforts to obtain it
• D. Hall’s psychiatric report
• E. Limitations on cross-examination
• [**26] II.
• A. General
• B. Hall’s amended or corrected statement
• C. Hall’s psychiatric report
• III.
• Questions for discussion
• 6 Epilogue: The study as a content warning: Content Warning: Bearing witness, learning, and repairing
• Why we study difficult history
• Pedagogies of witnessing and repair
• Restorative justice as a framework for historical learning
• Navigating ethical complexity and resistance
• Conclusion: The work ahead
• Notes
• Appendix
• Index