The association of southern women for the prevention of lynching: Strategies of a movement in the comic frame

Recent debates and writings on Kenneth Burke's frames of reference have gone beyond the predominant tragic frame to explore Burke's preferred comic frame (Carlson, 1986, 1988; Condit 1992, 1994). This study of the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, 1930–1942, builds on previous studies of the comic frame to explore four rhetorical strategies available to the comic rhetor. By choosing to operate within a comic frame, the ASWPL became a coalition of white Southern women successful at halting and eventually bringing an end to lynching in the South.