A new book is revisiting one of Owensboro’s most infamous historical events — the 1936 public hanging of Rainey Bethea — through the lens of personal history and national reckoning.
Titled “American Bloodlines: Reckoning With Lynch Culture,” the book is written by Sonya Lea, a Kentucky native who now lives in Oregon. Scheduled for release in 2025 by the University Press of Kentucky, the work blends memoir, historical research, and cultural reflection on what was the last public execution in the United States.
Lea, who was born in Owensboro, said the project began when she uncovered a family connection to the event.
“I knew that my family had a long history in Kentucky, and I started looking into the genealogy of our family line,” she said. “And I came across this name … but I had never really understood what the context was. And when I saw that he had been involved in the last public execution in the United States, I just thought, ‘What is this story? What does this mean?’”
Rainey Bethea was a 26-year-old Black man convicted of raping a white woman. His trial lasted less than a day, and he was executed by public hanging in front of thousands gathered around the Daviess County Courthouse. Though legal, the execution is widely regarded by historians as a public spectacle with strong racial overtones.
Lea said the discovery of her connection to the case became a personal reckoning.
“I really wanted to know how our country had been formed through these types of events — and how we can reckon with them now,” she said.
The book combines archival research, personal reflection, and historical analysis. She draws from newspaper articles, court documents, and broader cultural narratives. The book also examines how public responses to racialized violence have evolved and how remnants of that past still surface in the present.
“This book is not just about Owensboro,” she said. “This book is about white people all over the country — people like me — who are trying to figure out what it means to be in a country that has this kind of history, and who are trying to live differently.”
Locally, the case has long lingered in the memory of some residents, including Marshall Coleman, a Black Owensboro native who was a key figure in helping resurrect the Northwest Neighborhood Alliance.
Coleman has spent years researching Bethea’s trial and execution after he first learned about it in the late 1990s while researching Black history in the Kentucky Room of the Daviess County Public Library. That moment, he said, shifted his self-awareness.
“I was just trying to understand more about where I came from, and I ended up uncovering something that really changed the way I saw the city and the country,” he said. “It was actually the catalyst in me getting probably more aware of myself as a Black man in America.”
Coleman believes the execution had lasting effects on the city’s Black community, which he said had begun to thrive at the time.
“This was the fire that destroyed the Black community, and it’s been chasing its own tail ever since that event happened,” he said.
He also said it’s important for city leaders and residents to acknowledge the reality of what happened in 1936 and the legacy it left behind.
While their perspectives differ in background, both Lea and Coleman agree that the legacy of Bethea’s execution still resonates nearly 90 years later.
Lea said she hopes the book contributes to honest conversations, even if they are difficult.
“I don’t think there’s any way to reckon with these histories without pain,” she said. “But what I would hope is that it doesn’t stop people, especially white people, from engaging with the truth, and from asking, ‘What can I do differently now?’”
“American Bloodlines: Reckoning With Lynch Culture” is available for preorder now on Amazon and kentuckypress.com
