Lynching And Lynch Mobs : Lynching

In the moral dilemma of “The magistrate and the threatening mob”, rioters have decided to take matters into their own hands and threaten a certain part of their community. Unless the magistrate brings forth someone for the crime that has taken place to upset the rioters. Therefore, the magistrate decided to blame the crime on an innocent man and have him tried and executed to ease the rioters’ behaviors.

Who is Willie Lynch? Willie Lynch is a British slave owner in the West Indies, who came to United States to advise American slave owners how to keep their slaves restrained. Lynching or the Lynch Law is actually attributed to him. Lynching initially referred to the hanging of the black man. In his letter he stated more than several characteristics to differing black slaves. The four characteristics that I have chosen is age, sex, hair texture and color or shade of the skin.

The article “Regarding the Aftermaths of Lynching” is one written by Kidada E. WIlliams, that helps explain why it is important to be interested in what happens after an individual is lynched. This is indeed Williams’ argument, which is later elaborated more on in the article. Her argument is arguable due to the fact that, even though Kidada believes that lynching should be researched, every scholar does not. Williams has stated that lynching is wrong and immoral, but there are obviously individuals that do not agree.

Lynching occurred most frequently in the deep southern states. One reason for the lynchings was the resentment of southern whites when the slaves were

Wells,“Lynch Law in America,”) Over a hundred of African Americans were lynched every year. The unwritten law was practiced for thirty years, inhumanly butchering thousands of men, women, children by either drowning, hanging, shooting, and burning them alive. By this point, the national law was irrelevant and the unwritten law was superior among the southern states. With every killing, white Americans would invent an excuse accordingly and to make matters worse, they realized it was sufficient to put anyone to death if the crime was against a woman, no matter if it were true or not, since it was under the unwritten law, which did not allow any sort of trial. This accusation was done in “the interest of those who did the lynching to blacken the good name of the helpless and defenseless victims of their hate. For this reason they publish at every possible opportunity this excuse for lynching, hoping thereby not only to palliate their own crime but at the same time to prove the negro a moral monster and unworthy of the respect and sympathy

Capital punishment has been a part of our government since the seventeenth century. Although the capital law of the thirteen colonies differed from one another, many interesting and important details concerning the death penalty and

Capital punishment was both frowned upon by the church and yet exciting and entertaining for the colonists. The most common way that the towns executed people was by hanging. Many towns did not have a formal gallows, so they made up for it in other ways. Religiously, the magistrates wished to avoid the death penalty if they could, however, if there was no other way, they would allow it. The people, on the other hand, saw public punishment as entertainment. Execution was the front runner of any of the possible entertainment and was preferred in comparison to others. With the stress of having someone’s neighbors rooting for blood and entertainment did not help the tensions already plaguing the area.

Recently, an L.A. Times article (dated 2/13/00) reviewed a new book entitled "Without Sanctuary", a collection of photographs from lynchings throughout America. During the course of the article, the author, Benjamin Schwarz, outlined some very interesting and disturbing facts related to this gruesome act of violence: Between 1882 and 1930, more than 3,000 people were lynched in the U.S., with approximately 80% of them taking place in the South. Though most people think only African Americans were victims of lynchings, during those years, about 25% were white. Data indicates that mobs in the West lynched 447 whites and 38 blacks; in the Midwest there were 181 white victims and 79 black; and in the South, people lynched 291

During this time, lynching was used to control, intimidate, and manipulate a certain group of people, striking fear into their hearts.

This methods of invoking terror was highly effective in small scale communities. Near the end of the Jim Crow era, “laws allowed black [people] to be arrested for minor infractions. A system of penal labor known as convict leasing was established at this time”(Virginia Commonwealth University). This system of conviction is eerily similar to our current system. Like in the Jim Crow, we exploit a clause in the 13th amendment to allow slavery to exist in this

Another way that white southerners were able to rolled back many of the rights held by African Americans is by lynching. Lynch is a mob of people killed, especially by hanging, for an alleged offense with or without a legal trial. The primary source, ““Lynch Law in America” the author Ida B. Wells organized a national fight against lynching in the early twentieth century. Born a slave, Wells became a teacher and civil rights leader in Memphis, Tennessee. When a white mob lynched three of her friends, she helped organize a black boycott of white-owned businesses and wrote harsh editorials in her own newspaper. According to Wells, lynching “ It represents the cool, calculating deliberation of intelligent people who openly avow that there is

During certain times of history, communities have been swallowed up by times of darkness seeming hopeless. Events in history help to illustrate this fact. In the book Lynchings in Duluth, this fact is evident through people unwilling to go against the crowd. When describing the scene of the lynching, the author states, “from the streets and sidewalks, other men grabbed onto the rope and marched behind, encouraging others to join. The procession grew rapidly. Young men barely out of high school were urging older men to come with them” (Fedo 47). Although some men were very passionate about the cause, others were only participating as a result of peer pressure. Not enough people were willing to stand up against the majority, so they let it happen.

The great majority of people lynched between 1882 and 1930 were black. During that period there were almost 4800 recorded lynchings in the United States. There were many more, no doubt, but we know about 4800. 3400 victims of this mob justice were black. The period from 1889 to 1893 accounted for the worst years. 579 blacks were lynched as opposed to 260 whites. That is a ration of 2.2 blacks lynched for every white. This is a significant difference already, but only part of the story. By the end of the century the racial nature of lynching had revealed itself, completely and unmistakably. Between 1899 and 1903, 543 people were lynched in the United States -- men and women. Of that number only 27 were white. That is a ratio of 22 blacks lynched for every white.

Lynching and Lynch Mobs Martin Luther King once said “It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me but it can keep him from lynching me.” Unfortunately at one point not even the law could stop white men from lynching blacks. 4,000 African Americans were killed from lynches after the Civil War ended and Jim Crow Laws came into effect. Lynching which is a form of vigilantism in which a person is killed without an adequate legal process. The history of lynching is brutal, there were many prominent lynching states and towns such as Sundown Towns, and in To Kill a Mockingbird we see a black man almost get lynched for a crime he did not commit.

Lynching was way of life in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. As Wells-Barnett points out, although most white people try to say that they did not want to discuss the noisy, because it will drag the reputation of angry white women, the vast majority of lynching had been completed, white people thought like lynching or burning some black people just to teach them their place. Wells intends to dissolve these myths and reasons into lynching, especially black rape white women. She repeats and the objectivity of the news proves that most black corpses killed black citizens are innocent and that their murders are not punished.