The End of Public Execution: Race, Religion, and Punishment in the American South

[Trotti] weaves a wholly unexpected story for how the New South ended up at the electric chair. His narrative, backed by extensive evidence and data drawn from 1,300 executions carried out in the former Confederate states between the end of the Civil War and 1936, is less a story of the consolidation of state power through technological and political means than a history driven by the agency of Southern African Americans resisting a paranoid and reactive state."-The Civil War Monitor

This focused study opens up vital questions about religion, public space, and punishment in American life and brings an ignored archive into view for American religion."-American Religion

Trotti's book is a fascinating study of the subversive power of communal faith."-The Christian Century

Recommended . . . . Trotti employs both quantitative and qualitative evidence to support his conclusions, and his detailed analyses of various datasets and statistics are particularly impressive."-CHOICE

There is no doubt that Trotti's study is a seminal and highly readable intervention in a scholarly conversation that is very much in need of fresh methodological, theoretical and quantitative exploration."-Journal of Social History

The End of Public Execution significantly contributes to understanding the history of capital punishment and the South. . . . Histories like this one make it impossible to deny that capital punishment in the United States has been inseparable from a legacy of white supremacy and provide compelling arguments for ending the practice."-Reading Religion