Vigilantism and the practice of ‘lynching’ individuals for any crime, real or imagined, had a long history in North America. Though the act was practiced throughout the world, the term lynching, as we know it, originated during the American Revolution. Colonel Charles Lynch and his group Virginia friends, made their own rules to confront loyal British Tories and others deemed as criminals: they used to hang a person by the neck until dead as a means of justice. The conditions of the American frontier encouraged this vigilante mentality for swift punishment as civil justice was slow: some courts were as far away as 200 miles (Chestnut 2009). As the Nation expanded, lynching justice was also used by white men against newly freed African American …show more content…
According to Equal Justice Initiative Report, Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror, the lynchings held between 1880 and 1920 can be categorized as one or more of the following: (1) lynchings that resulted from a wildly distorted fear of interracial sex; (2) lynchings in response to casual social transgressions; (3) lynchings based on allegations of serious violent crime; (4) public spectacle lynchings; (5) lynchings that escalated into large-scale violence targeting the entire African American community; and (6) lynchings of sharecroppers, ministers, and community leaders who resisted mistreatment. (Initiative 2015) In response to this barbaric act, women joined together in grassroots activism and generated an antilynching campaign. They deplored not only the act of lynching itself, but they disapproved of the carnival atmosphere that included having women and children in the audience. Several prominent women from seven Southern states met in 1930 and formed the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching (ASWPL). In addition to the ASWPL, the campaign was joined by organizations such as the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Council for Interracial Cooperation …show more content…
Wells was co-owner and editor of a local black newspaper called ‘The Free Speech and Headlight’. She wrote a series of newspaper columns in response to violence against blacks, the poor school system on Tennessee and the failure of blacks to fight for their rights. She was moved into the fight against hanging by the 1892 lynching of three Memphis black businessmen whose success had outraged white competitors. Tom Moss, respected black grocery owner and friend of Wells, and two of his workers were lynched by an angry white mob over a marble dispute between a young white boy and a young black boy. By the 1890s their neighborhood was experiencing racial tensions and Moss had the exclusive black commerce. The white grocer, William Barret, who’s store was across the street wanted Peoples Grocery closed and used this fight as an excuse to attack. Adults, both black and white, stepped in and began to fight. This led to various violent altercations between the two groups and police later arrested several black men and placed them in the Shelby County Jail. Early morning on Wednesday, March 9, a large group of white men surrounded the jail and nine entered, dragging Tom Moss, Will Stewart, and Calvin McDowell from their jail cells. They were taken a Chesapeake & Ohio railroad yard outside of Memphis. The men were actually shot several times, but this violence was a
“Hellhounds” in the Trouble in Mind by Leon Litwack: In this reading the author graphically describes lynching as punishment and deterrence for “high-falutin’” blacks. In page 292, distinctions were drawn between a “good” and “bad” lynching – depending on who executed the sentence and the atmosphere of the punishment.
One of the most appalling practices in history, lynching — the extrajudicial hanging of a person accused of a crime — was commonplace in American society less than 100 years ago. The word often conjures up horrifying images of African Americans hanging from lampposts or trees. However, what many do not know is that while African Americans certainly suffered enormously at the hands of a white majority, they were not the only victims of this practice. In fact, the victims of the largest mass lynching in American history were Chinese (Johnson). On October 24th, 1871, a white mob stormed into the Chinatown of Los Angeles.
Interestingly, the book does not focus solely on the Georgia lynching, but delves into the actual study of the word lynching which was coined by legendary judge Charles B Lynch of Virginia to indicate extra-legal justice meted out to those in the frontier where the rule of law was largely absent. In fact, Wexler continues to analyse how the term lynching began to be used to describe mob violence in the 19th century, when the victim was deemed to have been guilty before being tried by due process in a court of law.
Ida B. Wells continued the fight against mob violence and lynching to the end of her life. She showed us the way towards achieving real social justice by participating in the founding of the NAACP -- the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People -- in 1909. This alliance of whites and blacks represented a new stage in the crusade to stop racial violence and inequality. The great legal, moral, and political victories won by the NAACP and the civil rights movement stand as proof of one of Ida Wells' deepest convictions. Wells understood that justice could not be fully achieved without interracial cooperation.
Wexler, Laura. 2003. Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America. Scribner; 2004. Print
In 1860-1960 there was lynching in the United States. When the confederates (south) lost the civil war the slaves got freedom and got rights of human beings. This was just to say because segregation wasn 't over in the South and didn 't go away for over 100 years. Any black person in the South accused but not convicted of any crime of looking at a white woman, whistling at a white woman, touching a white woman, talking back to a white person, refusing to step into the gutter when a white person passed on the sidewalk, or in some way upsetting the local people was liable to be dragged from their house or jail cell by lots of people crowds, mutilated in a terrible
Franklin Zimring (2003) examines the relationship between the history of lynching and current capital punishment in the United States argueing that the link between them is a vigilante tradition. He adequately shows an association between historical lynchings and modern executions, though this paper will show additional evidence that would help strengthen this argument, but other areas of Zimring’s argument are not as well supported. His attitudinal and behavioral measures of modern vigilantism are insufficient and could easily be interpreted as measuring other concepts. Also missing from Zimring’s analysis is an explanation for the transition of executions from representing government control in the past to executions as representing community control in the present. Finally, I argue that Zimring leaves out any meaningful discussion of the role of race in both past lynchings and modern executions. To support my argument, using recent research, I will show how race has played an important role in both past lynchings and modern executions and how the changing form of racial relations may explain the transition from lynchings to legal executions.
On July 25, 1946, two young black couples- Roger and Dorothy Malcom, George and Mae Murray Dorsey-were killed by a lynch mob at the Moore's Ford Bridge over the Appalachee River connecting Walton and Oconee Counties (Brooks, 1). The four victims were tied up and shot hundreds of times in broad daylight by a mob of unmasked men; murder weapons included rifles, shotguns, pistols, and a machine gun. "Shooting a black person was like shooting a deer," George Dorsey's nephew, George Washington Dorsey said (Suggs C1). It has been over fifty years and this case is still unsolved by police investigators. It is known that there were atleast a dozen men involved in these killings. Included in the four that were known by name was Loy Harrison. Loy Harrison may not have been an obvious suspect to the investigators, but Harrison was the sole perpetrator in the unsolved Moore's Ford Lynching case. The motive appeared to be hatred and the crime hurt the image of the state leaving the town in an outrage due to the injustice that left the victims in unmarked graves (Jordon,31).
The Jim Crow era was a racial status system used primarily in the south between the years of 1877 and the mid 1960’s. Jim Crow was a series of anti-black rules and conditions that were never right. The social conditions and legal discrimination of the Jim Crow era denied African Americans democratic rights and freedoms frequently. There were numerous ways in which African Americans were denied social and political equality under Jim Crow. Along with that, lynching occurred quite frequently, thousands being done over the era.
Wells, Ida B. Southern Horrors. Lynch Law in All Its Phase. New York: New York Age Print, 1892. Print. 6.
Between 1882 and 1952 Mississippi was the home to 534 reported lynchings’ more than any other state in the nation (Mills, 1992, p. 18). Jim Crow Laws or ‘Black Codes’ allowed for the legalization of racism and enforced a ‘black way’ of life. Throughout the deep-south, especially in rural communities segr...
The original trials of the Scottsboro Boys, presided by Judge Hawkins, were unfair. Haywood Patterson wrote that as he and the Boys were herded into the Scottsboro courthouse by the National Guard, a horde of white men, women, and children had gathered outside, ready to lynch them. He “heard a thousand times… ‘We are going to kill you niggers!’” (Patterson 21). The atmosphere around the courthouse on the day of the trials was like Barnum and Bailey’s and the Ringling Brother’s...
Southern Horror s: Lynch Law in All Its Phases by Ida B. Wells took me on a journey through our nations violent past. This book voices how strong the practice of lynching is sewn into the fabric of America and expresses the elevated severity of this issue; she also includes pages of graphic stories detailing lynching in the South. Wells examined the many cases of lynching based on “rape of white women” and concluded that rape was just an excuse to shadow white’s real reasons for this type of execution. It was black’s economic progress that threatened white’s ideas about black inferiority. In the South Reconstruction laws often conflicted with real Southern racism. Before I give it to you straight, let me take you on a journey through Ida’s
http://www.umass.edu/compilation/aclanet/USLynch.html>. Everett, Dianna. Lynching. 2013. The. 29 April 2014 http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/l/ly001.html>.