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Books by Janis Owens

  • Hidden in Plain Sight: A History of the Newberry Mass Lynching of 1916

    Hidden in Plain Sight: A History of the Newberry Mass Lynching of 1916

    Hidden in Plain Sight: A History of the Newberry Mass Lynching of 1916 is a fast-paced narrative history of a 1916 mass lynching in North Florida, where six members of a tight-knit Black family were killed by a white mob of the “best men” in the district. The lynching garnered brief, nationwide attention, including an investigation by the NAACP and condemnation by W. E. B. Dubois, before it was buried in a vow of silence that endured for nearly a hundred years.

    With an abundance of citation and uncommon insight, Hidden in Plain Sight: A History of the Newberry Mass Lynching of 1916 draws a portrait of a struggling, turn-of-the-century farming town and the families, Black and white, who were pitched headlong into a weekend of bloodlust and revenge that would change the town forever. With a scope of a hundred years, the story that begins in anguish unexpectedly ends in recent steps to reconciliation and remembrance.

     


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Janis Owens is an award-winning novelist, memoirist, folklorist and storyteller. She is a native of North Florida and graduated from the University of Florida, where she was a student in Harry Crews' creative writing workshop. She is the author of four novels, My Brother Michael, Myra Sims, The Schooling of Claybird Catts, American Ghost, and a memoir cookbook, The Cracker Kitchen. She lives with her husband in rural North Florida and is working on her next novel.