Lynching in the Heartland by James Madison

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Why did the lynching in Indiana happen, what lead residents to engage in such behaviour and commit such acts? How did the 1930 lynching reflect the post-civil war history of racial violence and how did it reflect the new economics, cultures and race/ gender relations of the 1920s and early 1930s?
Introduction:
Lynching has always been part of America`s brusque solution for rough justice and the lynching in Indiana which did not occur in the Deep South was a typical portrayal of how blacks were treated in several states. Obviously the largest proportion of lynchings occurred in the Deep South but the lynching in Indiana demonstrated that this method of arbitrary justice was not a wholly Southern phenomenon. James Madison`s book, ‘A Lynching in the Heartland` is a seminal indictment of lynching as retribution for a crime which had still not been judged.
The lynching
The town of Marion, Indiana was a sleepy and quite forgetful town without much going on. So when three black men were accused of the rape of a white woman and the murder of a white man, the town`s residents decided to take the law in their own hands and lynch the three suspects. Thankfully one of the black men narrowly escaped but the way the lynching was photographed also shows a certain nonchalance over the way such brutal murders were portrayed in American folklore. Madison delves deep into the culture of ingrained racism which was ingrained into these sleepy towns where the black man was ‘put in his place` and nothing much could actually get him out of his predicament. The collaboration of local authorities with the lynchers...