What Virtue There is in Fire: Cultural Memory and the Lynching of Sam Hose by Edwin T. Arnold

Abstract

356 Mississippi Quarterly “interweaves conservative and liberal strands spurred by global forces that are grounded in the regional context and other localized contexts around the world” (219). James Peacock currently holds the position of Kenan Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and was formerly the institution’s Director for the Center for International Studies, both testaments to his disciplinary excellence and leadership in the field. Yet Grounded Globalism is not fare solely for anthropologists; this text is immensely readable for scholars and lay people with interests in cultural studies, politics, history, and the arts. Following the scientific method, Peacock’s book offers a model that he backs up with statistical data and conclusions from fieldwork. The wealth of anecdotal support reflects the author’s diverse knowledge and personal engagement with the topic. These anecdotes range from his boyhood experiences growing up in the segregated South to his doctoral fieldwork in Indonesia to the many professional endeavors in which he has observed the impacts of globalization on the region. One notable story concerns the Nike class he team taught in response to UNC students’ protests over a contract the school had signed with the company in the late nineties. At issue were oppressive international business practices, particularly sweatshops. The students in the class offered recommendations for Nike’s reform which were actually implemented by the company. Peacock explains how this was the seed for the Fair Labor Association (FLA), an organization that works globally with licensees and factories. With this anecdote and numerous others, Peacock underscores the relationship between local and global concerns and the need for productive interaction between the two. Such is the nature of “grounded globalism.” High Point University KIRSTIN L. SQUINT What Virtue There is in Fire: Cultural Memory and the Lynching of Sam Hose, by Edwin T. Arnold. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009. 264 pp. $28.95 cloth. IN WHAT VIRTUE THERE IS IN FIRE: CULTURAL MEMORY AND THE Lynching of Sam Hose, Edwin T. Arnold examines a series of lynchings in 1899 in an area near and around Newnan, Georgia. One purpose of 357 Book Reviews the book is to recover the memory of these events, which have been largely suppressed or repressed in the local and state memory. Arnold, who grew up in the Newnan area, remarks that he had never heard of the lynching of Sam Hose or related killings. He draws on numerous sources—especially newspaper accounts as well as studies by historians and sociologists and others both at the time of the events as well as more recent ones—to reconstruct and to try to understand what happened. He treats the Hose lynching as an iconic, emblematic episode in the history of Georgia, the South, and the United States. What is notable about the Sam Hose lynching is the ferocity of the crowd that carried it out. This was not the work of a few men. Rather it was a crowd of several thousand men and women—more or less normal white citizens from every economic and social class. The Hose lynching was the first so-called “spectacle lynching,” one attended by much publicity and drama, widely publicized in the local and national press. Sam Hose, according to Arnold, may actually have been guilty of killing Alfred Cranford and of raping his wife in April 1899. Arnold analyzes how variant accounts of the episode, accounts that differ dramatically on the issue of Hose’s guilt or innocence, propagated over the years. One side viewed Hose as a vicious beast that deserved mob justice. The other side saw him as an innocent victim, a martyr. The reality was more complicated and ambiguous. But whatever his responsibility for the Cranford crimes might have been, he deserved justice under the law of the land, not of the mob. Arnoldexaminesindetailtheinvolvementofvariouspoliticians,civic leaders, and newspaper writers and editors in stirring up public feelings about Sam Hose both before and after his death. Newspapers were often responsible for fomenting the blood lust of their readers. Attempts at objectivity were not yet seen as responsible practice by journalists. Many journalists of the time wanted to write salacious stories that would increase readership...