The Lynching of Cleo Wright

Winner of the 1999 Missouri History Book Award On January 20, 1942, black oil mill worker Cleo Wright assaulted a white woman in her home and nearly killed the first police officer who tried to arrest him. An angry mob then hauled Wright out of jail and dragged him through the streets of Sikeston, Missouri, before burning him alive. Wright's death was, unfortunately, not unique in American history, but what his death meant in the larger context of life in the United States in the twentieth-century is an important and compelling story. After the lynching, the U.S. Justice Department was forced to become involved in civil rights concerns for the first time, provoking a national reaction to violence on the home front at a time when the country was battling for democracy in Europe. Dominic Capeci unravels the tragic story of Wright's life on several stages, showing how these acts of violence were indicative not only of racial tension but the clash of the traditional and the modern brought about by the war. Capeci draws from a wide range of archival sources and personal interviews with the participants and spectators to draw vivid portraits of Wright, his victims, law-enforcement officials, and members of the lynch mob. He places Wright in the larger context of southern racial violence and shows the significance of his death in local, state, and national history during the most important crisis of the twentieth-century.

"Winner of the 1999 Missouri History Book Award On January 20, 1942, black oil mill worker Cleo Wright assaulted a white woman in her home and nearly killed the first police officer who tried to arrest him. An angry mob then hauled Wright out of jail and dragged him through the streets of Sikeston, Missouri, before burning him alive. Wright's death was, unfortunately, not unique in American history, but what his death meant in the larger context of life in the United States in the twentieth-century is an important and compelling story. After the lynching, the U.S. Justice Department was forced to become involved in civil rights concerns for the first time, provoking a national reaction to violence on the home front at a time when the country was battling for democracy in Europe. Dominic Capeci unravels the tragic story of Wright's life on several stages, showing how these acts of violence were indicative not only of racial tension but the clash of the traditional and the modern brought about by the war. Capeci draws from a wide range of archival sources and personal interviews with the participants and spectators to draw vivid portraits of Wright, his victims, law-enforcement officials, and members of the lynch mob. He places Wright in the larger context of southern racial violence and shows the significance of his death in local, state, and national history during the most important crisis of the twentieth-century.

Publishers Weekly

On January 25, 1942, a few weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a black oil-mill worker knifed Grace Sturgeon, a white soldier's wife, in her home. When apprehended, Cleo Wright also knifed a marshal, and was shot repeatedly. Hours later, while his victims were recuperating in a hospital and Wright lay dying in an unsecured jailhouse, a white Sikeston, Mo., mob kidnapped him, lynched him, then dragged him through the streets by car and set him on fire in the black community. The lynching set off a storm of protest that was led by the NAACP and the black press. Considered a national outrage on the heels of Pearl Harbor (the Japanese used the lynching for anti-American propaganda), the need for the appearance of a united front and the desire to develop a real anti-lynching law pressed the involvement of the Justice Department's civil rights section. Capeci, who teaches history at Southwest Missouri State University, offers a case study of the incident and examines the area's history, community mores, as well as the aftermath. His extensive research, including interviews with survivors, is evident in his intricate and engrossing perspective, especially when describing the lynching and the bloodshed that led to it. The book is most successful when examining the lives of Grace and Cleo and the events that drew them together and pushed their communities apart. It's less successful when it reduces to weak sociology, such as "Wright beckoned his own destroyers." And while the ironic revelation that mob members believed their actions supported the boys overseas is stunning, a chapter designed to show one white family's reaction to the lynching seems peripheral. (June)