This is not Dixie: racist violence in Kansas, 1861-1927

Often defined as a mostly southern phenomenon, racist violence existed everywhere.

Brent M.S. Campney explodes the notion of the Midwest as a so-called land of freedom with an in-depth study of assaults both active and threatened faced by African Americans in post Civil War Kansas.

Campney's capacious definition of white-on-black violence encompasses not only sensational demonstrations of white power like lynchings and race riots, but acts of threatened violence and the varied forms of pervasive routine violence - property damage, rape, forcible ejection from towns - used to intimidate African Americans.

As he shows, such methods were a cornerstone of efforts to impose and maintain white supremacy.

Yet Campney's broad consideration of racist violence also lends new insights into the ways people resisted threats.