Almost 5,000 black Americans were lynched between 1890 and 1960. Over forty years later on, Sherrilyn Ifill’s Within the Courthouse Lawn examines the many techniques this racial injury still resounds over the United States. While the lynchings and their immediate aftermath were damaging, the little-known modern consequences, such as the marginalization of politics and economic development for black Americans, are equally pernicious.

In the Courthouse Lawn investigates the way the about On the Courthouse Lawn, Revised Release: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the Twenty-First Century lynchings implicated average white citizens, a few of whom actively participated in the violence while many others witnessed the lynchings but did nothing to stop them. Ifill observes that background of complicity is becoming embedded in the cultural and cultural fabric of local neighborhoods, who either backed, condoned, or overlooked the assault. She traces the lingering effects of two lynchings in Maryland to illustrate how ubiquitous this background is and problems a clarion demand American communities with histories of racial assault to become proactive in facing this legacy today.

Inspired by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, aswell as by techniques of restorative justice, Ifill provides cement ideas to help communities cure, including placing gravestones in the unmarked burial sites of lynching victims, issuing public apologies, creating mandatory school courses on the local history of lynching, financially compensating those whose family homes or businesses had been demolished in the aftermath of lynching, and creating commemorative public spaces. Because the contemporary effects of racial violence are experienced most intensely in regional areas, Ifill argues that reconciliation and reparation initiatives must also be locally located in order to bring both dark and white Americans together in an efficacious dialogue.

A landmark book, Within the Courthouse Yard is a much-needed and urgent road map for communities finally confronting lynching’s lengthy darkness by embracing pragmatic reconciliation and reparation initiatives.