Lynching: The History Of African Americans

In the words of Miss Ida B. Wells: The student of American sociology will find the year of 1894 marked by a pronounced awakening of the public conscience to a system of anarchy and outlawry which had grown during a series of ten years to be so common, that scenes of unusual brutality failed to have any visible effect upon the humane sentiments of the people of our land. She is depicting a period of time in American history stained with the blood of hundreds of free African American men, women and children. These people were unjustly slaughtered through the practice of lynching within the South. Wells was an investigative journalist and was involved in exploring, reporting, publishing literature on, and eventually campaigning against the

He wants his readers to imagine the pain and humiliation of the ill treatment that African Americans endure on a daily basis. King writes of vicious mobs lynching people’s mothers and fathers, policemen killing people’s brothers and sisters, a man and his wife not receiving the proper respect they deserve because of their skin color, and the notion that African Americans feel insignificant within their communities; this is why these peaceful demonstrators of whom the clergymen attack “find it difficult to wait” (King, 20). However, King believes that soon, injustice will be exposed, like “a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up” (King, 30). This vivid description helps arouse an emotional response, driving shame into the hearts of his white readers.

Ida B. Wells posited in the May 21, 1892 edition of the Free Speech that “Nobody in this section of the country believes in the old thread bare lie that Negro men rape white women,” upon the journalistic evidence that states “Eight negroes lynched since last issue of the “Free Speech” one at Little Rock, Ark., last Saturday morning where the citizens broke into the penitentiary and got their man; three near Anniston, Ala., one near New Orleans; and three at Clarksville, GA., the last three for killing a white man, and five on the same old racket - the new alarm about raping white women. The same programme of hanging, then shooting bullets into the lifeless bodies was carried out to the letter.” Miss Ida B. Wells; Southern Horrors Lynch Law In All Its Phases.

In “The Case Stated” (1895), Ida B. Wells asserts that failure to speak up against racial injustices contributed to the lynch law phenomenon and the loss of many African American lives. Wells supports her claims by giving examples of injustices served to African Americans such as slavery, a constitution that fails to promote equity, and false accusations and lynching’s that resulted in the deaths of thousands of African Americans. In order to convey her passion and desire for change, Ida B. Wells pleads to all Americans, both black and white, to fight for change and stop “avow(ing) anarchy, condon(ing) murder, and defy(ing) the contempt of civilization” (74). Ida B. Wells is not asking for pity for African Americans, she is asking for all

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.

First, ask yourself how would you feel after hearing the news that one of your family members had been lynched? Throughout the chapters 1-8, we can experience and observe the disheartening history of violence and lies. It is additionally an irritating depiction of a partitioned country on the very edge of the social equality development and an eerie contemplation on race, history, and the battle for truth. Throughout history, the conditions of the lynching, how it affected the legislators of the day, quickened the social equality development and keeps on shadowing the Georgia people group where these homicides occurred. During the 1900s until 19600s various African-Americans experienced various harsh conditions of violence, never being granted the right to vote and being segregated from whites based on their race and skin-color from their white masters. In general racism between whites and blacks can be seen throughout the globe during the era of slavery

2. One of the texts most focused on educating readers about race and the challenges it presents to American culture is Ida B. Wells’ “Lynch Law in All its Phases.” As discussed in previous reading responses, Wells’ speech is made up primarily of evidence due to the limitations placed on women of colors’ speech but even more so due to her “deep-seated conviction that the country at large does not know the extent to which lynch law prevails in parts of the Republic” (189). In this way, Wells endeavours to educate the US both about lynching and about the repercussions of allowing lynch law to prevail. That is, Wells forces audiences to acknowledge the fact that lynching, and thus white supremacy and racism, actively threaten the moral pillars that the United States is built on.

In the United States, there has been many cases of Racial injustice. From the beginning of the start of the United States of America it was the injustice to the Native Americans being captured and used for slave labor while their bison be slaughtered for sportsmanship. But this paper is on the specific race of the African Americans. There are many races that have been racially profiled and ostracized by the English people. But the treatment that African Americans have endured even till this day is disheartening. African Americans have gone through enslavement during the early 1600’s to the mid 1800’s. Then the African Americans were obstructed by the Jim Crow laws creating the ‘Separate but Equal” propaganda during the late 1800’s into the 1960’s. After the abolishment of the Jim Crow Laws, people were considered equal until the recent actions of many police officers using deadly force on African American youths in the early 2000’s.

Let’s examine the reality of violence during the Reconstruction Era. In the document, “Southern Horrors- Lynch Laws in All its Phases, by Ida B. Wells-Barnett we see countless examples of the continued violence in the south against African-Americans. The slogan “This is white man’s country and the

‘Fire in a canebrake’ is quite a scorcher by Laura Wexler and which focuses on the last mass lynching which occurred in the American Deep South, the one in the heartland of rural Georgia, precisely Walton County, Georgia on 25th July, 1946, less than a year after the Second World War. Wexler narrates the story of the four black sharecroppers who met their end ‘at the hand of person’s unknown’ when an undisclosed number of white men simply shot the blacks to death. The author concentrates on the way the evidence was collected in those eerie post war times and how the FBI was actually involved in the case, but how nothing came of their extensive investigations.

Transition published a journal article in 1999, Issue 83 (Volume 9, Number 3) “Exquisite corpse”, written by Ashraf Rushdy. This article chronicled numerous hate crimes executed against African Americans by Caucasians as far back as 1933. The Transition article, a journal dedicated to the advancement of the African American community, written by Rushdy, look to reduce the propensity and likelihood of their constituents being lynched by the white community. It is Rushdy’s hypothesis that prominently displaying lynched cadavers, to the community, will induce a morbid reaction and remove any sense of justice legitimacy of such a repulsive activity. Rushdy, being well pedigreed, obtained both his BA and MA from Alberta and his PHD from Cambridge and is currently employed at Wesleyan as a “Professor of English” (Faculty). He is also a prominent author, having had numerous published books such as American Lynching, Remembering Generations: Race and Family in Contemporary African American Fiction, and A Guilted Age: Apologies for the Past.

During the nineteenth century, lynching was brought to America by British Isles and after the Civil War white Americans lynching African American increased. Causing and bringing fear into their world. In the Southern United States, lynching became a method used by the whites to terrorize the Blacks and to remain in control with white supremacy. The hatred and fear that was installed into the white people’s head had caused them to turn to the lynch law. The term lynching means to be put to death by hanging by a mob action without legal sanction. So many white people were supportive of lynching because it was a sign of power that the white people had. “Lynching of the black people was used frequently by white people, their is no specific detail of how many times they had done it, but lynching of black people has lasted from 1882 to 1968. Lynching also is in fact a inhuman combination of racism and sadism which was used to support the south’s caste system,’’(Gandhi).

Our exhibit reveals how the uninformed learn the issues regarding lynchings throughout history in the United States. My particular contribution to the exhibit would provoke visitors to examine past lynchings, later reflect back on these issues, and participate in the complete abolition of these types of issues.

Author James H. Cone uses the phrase “the shadow of the lynching tree” to describe what many African Americans are still living under in the decades following the terror that reigned across the South. Lynching was not only a violent event, but a way to keep fear in the forefront of communities and a form of terrorism used to enforce, enact and trigger trauma. The collective identity of African Americans has meant that trauma from lynching can be felt on a personal level, whether the violence was experienced directly or indirectly. The long lasting trauma that remains in many African American communities has resulted in the disappearance of family histories and a silence surrounding the violence of lynchings. Stories may remain untold, however they are still

The black freedom struggle has not yet come to an end – there are still prejudiced and racist radicals that try to negotiate white supremacy and dominance in order to prevent the blacks from their long wait for equality. Consequently, the movement has progressed very sluggishly in the past few centuries. Nevertheless, the campaign for equal rights has led to the triumph over slavery and has led to the accrual of suffrage rights. However, this is still not enough, not after centuries of enslavement, lynching, segregation, and discrimination. Oftentimes, there is still no justice in court houses, especially when black people are accused and convicted, even for the simplest of crimes – as compared to the white and powerful who are charged for heinous misconducts and get away scratch free. Hence, throughout the period of the Blacks’ long fight for freedom and equality, several Black intellectuals have come front with ideas that could administer better treatment for their people. A good strategy to encourage the black populace to fight for their freedom and their rights is by inverting popular ideas so that there is a clear distinction between the reasonable and unreasonable notions of equality and justice. Thus, it was not uncommon for these literati to undermine dominant discourses in order to bolster their own analyses. Among the discussed black intellectuals who inverted prevailing dissertations, three that stood out the most are Frederick Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, and