The Murder of Oscar Chitwood in Hot Springs, Arkansas: An Interview with co-author Christopher Thrasher Pt 2

On December 26, 1910, Oscar Chitwood lay lifeless on the courthouse lawn in Hot Springs, his wrists shackled together and his body torn by bullets. The deputies on the scene claimed that masked men had lynched their prisoner and that the lawmen were innocent bystanders to the carnage. Newspapers everywhere proclaimed this killing another example of vigilantism run rampant. Within days, however, the official story fell apart, and these deputies were charged with cold blooded murder. Authors Guy Lancaster and Christopher Thrasher tell the little-known story of accused outlaw Oscar Chitwood, the authorities he dared defy and the mysterious resort town of Hot Springs, a place where the Wild West met the epitome of civilization and where the boundaries between lawman and outlaw were never all that clear.

Christopher Thrasher earned his doctorate in American history from Texas Tech University. In 2015, Thrasher published his first book, Fight Sports and American Masculinity: Salvation in Violence from 1607 to the Present. He published his second book, Suffering in the Army of Tennessee: A Social History of the Confederate Army of the Heartland from the Battles for Atlanta to the Retreat from Nashville, in 2021. Guy Lancaster holds a PhD in heritage studies from Arkansas State University and currently serves as the editor of the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas, a project of the Central Arkansas Library System. He has authored, coauthored or edited several books on the history of violence in Arkansas, including American Atrocity: The Types of Violence in Lynching (2021).

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