Birth and nation: Mary Turner and the discourse of lynching -- Silence, voice, and motherhood: constructing lynching as a Black woman's issue -- Brutal facts and split-gut words: constructing lynching as a national trauma -- Contemporary confrontations: recovering the memory of Mary Turner -- Conclusion: marking a collective past -- Appendixes: selected creative and documentary responses to the 1918 Brooks-Lowndes lynchings -- Appendix 1. "Hamp Smith murdered; young wife attacked by negro farm hands" -- Appendix 2. "Her talk enraged them: Mary Turner taken to Folsom's bridge and hanged" -- Appendix 3. Joseph B. Cumming, letter to the editor -- Appendix 4. The colored welfare league (Augusta, Georgia), "Resolutions adopted and sent to Governor Dorsey urging that he exercise his authority against such acts of barbarism" -- Appendix 5. Colored federated clubs of Georgia, "Resolutions expressive of feelings sent to president and governor" -- Appendix 6. Memorandum for Governor Dorsey from Walter F. White -- Appendix 7. Carrie Williams Clifford, "Little mother (upon the lynching of Mary Turner)" -- Appendix 8. Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, "dirty south moon".