Farming was the way of life for a majority of Texans up until the Great Depression. Life was simple and cyclical—planting, waiting, harvesting, and selling. This cycle, broken only by racial violence, was all Texans knew. However, as Texas grew increasingly connected to the modern world, through technology, a global economy, and an expanding role for the United States Federal government, that simple life began to change, and not necessarily for the better. All three books show this shift and the effect on the life of everyday Texans. In the case of The First Waco Horror, increasing connectivity to the United States and even the world helped to begin to change the view of Lynching and the anti-lynching movement gained …show more content…
Bernstein’s book focuses on how connectivity helped to end lynching, as well as how it increased lynching. The NAACP used the lynching of Jesse Washington to spread awareness of the atrocities committed in the South and the need to stop them. As Bernstein points out, the Jesse Washington lynching, “was just the barest beginning of a battle that would last for many years” (Bernstein 174). News of the Jesse Washington lynching spread around the United States, and even made its way to a British Newspaper (Bernstein 130). The national and international news coverage began the battle to increase public awareness, and would eventually lead the dying out of lynchings done by huge crowds. Lynching, however, is an enigma because increasing connectivity led to more awareness of the issue, but it also increased lynching. As population shifted and the U.S. became more interconnected, for example, during WWI, a rise in the need for Anglos to control their ever-changing environment led to a resurgence of the KKK in the 1920s. Lynching increased as a method of social control and while it was more socially inappropriate, the number of lynchings did not decrease significantly until after WWII. Therefore, in the case of racial violence, increased connectivity was a double-edged sword. Sitton and Utley’s book is a compilation of interviews from small landowners in Texas, whose existence was a combination of subsistence farming and production of
In a speech, Frederick Douglass stated “[t]here are seventy-two crimes…which, if committed by a black man…subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment.” While that is not the case today, racism continues to be an important and urgent issue in the United States. Although the shadow of racism continues to haunt Americans, race relations among people in America have slowly improved. From the active practice of institutional racism during the 19th and early 20th century, the spike in criticism against institutionalized racism during the Civil Rights Movement, and the dissolution of racial barriers in the past two decades, the wane of racial tension in America is evident.
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
News of Emmett Till’s murder reached media sources across the country and over the ocean. PBS’s history series The American Experience, provides a timeline of how his story spread like wildfire to newspapers around the world. PBS lists several publications which addressed the murder, causing universal public outrage at how something like this could happen to anyone, especially a child. The list includes that on September 2nd, the same day in which Mrs. Till received her son’s body in Chicago, The Jackson Daily in Mississippi published an article on the Till case. In it, they refer to the murder as a “brutal, senseless crime,” however in the same story they complain that the NAACP was placing too much attention on the incident by referring to it as a “lynching”. That same day a Belgium newspaper, Le Drapeau Rouge also published an article which was
A perfect example backing up what Wells-Barnett argues the cause of lynching is in Southern Horrors is the case of a lynching that occurred on March 9th, 1892 in Memphis, Tennessee. Tensions were rising in a Memphis neighborhood after three African American men; Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell and Will Stewart, opened their own grocery store that was taking business away from a nearby white owned store. The three black men stayed overnight at their store to protect it from vandals that night. Sometime in the night they shot off some of the white men who came to attack. In retaliation for the white men who were shot, the storeowners were arrested and taken to jail. These men were never given the opportunity to defend their actions due to a lynch mob dragging them from their cell then murdering them. Additionally, Wells-Barnett informed the public that some of the cases, more often than not where black men that were lynched for raping white women, the sexual relations were consensual and not forced. Learning of the unjust treatment of the store owners, the other men who were falsely accused of rape, and countless other injustices Wells-Barnett became outraged to the degree of taking it upon herself to put her life at risk by traveling the south for two months gathering information on other lynching incidents
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
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
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
. . but specifics [to him] didn’t matter because the victims were now symbols of injustice: a NAACP cause” (78). Especially given the long-past, over-60-years-old nature of the lynching, Wexler’s goal, and therefore also her writing, must more profound, and compelling, than this, and therefore she, unlike White, is interested in the specifics: “Roger and Dorothy Malcolm, and George and Mae Murray [the lynching victims] . . . I have tried to bring them to life” (266). Wexler succeeds in that, rather than merely mentioning these victims in the context of the lynching, she includes detailed biographies of each, as well as of their relations, and describes their actions long before and immediately leading up to the lynching, in an attempt to give the reader a better understanding of and greater empathy for them.
The Rosewood Massacre was one of the most captivating events in history. It all began with racism and violence against African Americans in the united states during the post World War 1 era. African Americans were lynched for allegedly raping white women like for men in McClenny were on 08/05/20. Burned at the stake like Perry, a black man on 12/09/22. They also had their church, school, Masonic lodge, and meeting hall burned down. The Rosewood Massacre all started when a lady named Fannie Coleman wife of James Taylor clammed a black male knocked on her door and proceeded to assault her. In the movie Rosewood Fannie was having an affair with a white man and one day while her husband was at work her secret came over he ended up beating her and leaving bruises all over her. She knew she couldn’t tell her husband she was having an affair so when the man left she ran outside screaming and shouting. Neighbors who had heard her screaming ran to her rescue asking who done it. She had said it was a nigger. The sheriff and a bunch of white townsfolk band together to try to find this black man believe to be named Jessie hunter. They lynched innocent people, burned down houses, and tortured them. A man named Mr. Man, who was actually a fictional character, helped save the lives of children and women and then helped a man named John Bradley save other African Americans who were not
After the Compromise of 1877, southern states were given back state control of the government. Consequently, white violence heightened in the south. In an article by Ida B. Wells, she discusses the unjust lynching of African Americans by white men. Wells continues in her article that the white men were not prosecuted for their actions due to their supposed need to oppress Africa Americas as result of “Negro Domination” during the Reconstruction Era (Documents in History I, 53-57). Not only was white violence a problem but so was segregation.
Production-based farming has provided small communities a new effective way of farming; however, this type of farming has created more issues than solutions. In "Renewing Husbandry," Wendell Berry discusses the way communities have lost the practice of husbandry in farming to production-based farming. Also, he depicts the side effects production-based farming has on the small communities by demonstrating the loss of connection the farmers now have with the land and community they provide for. Production-based farming destroys the unity of small communities.
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 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).
The various facts, statistics, anecdotes, and studies used in chapter 2 are as follows: the lynching of blacks from 1890-1969 statistic, the outline of Stetson Kennedy’s efforts to take down the KKK, Drew Pearson’s radio report from November 17, 1948, the price of term life insurance falling in the 1990s, David Hillis’ New York Times article, the Weakest Link voting data, commonly used real-estate terms, the dating site data, and the New York 1989 mayoral race. I found the outline of Stetson Kennedy’s efforts to be the most convincing piece of evidence; The anecdote is a primary example of how powerful information can be, how hoarding it is extremely effective for inducing fear, and how revealing it empowers the public. I found the price term of life insurance falling in the 1990s to be the second most
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.