The Essay 'Ignore The Noose Makers' By Ellis Cose

Ritual Murder is a play by Tom Dent in 1967 and it is considered a hopeless tragedy because it depicts New Orleans as one of the most violent cities in the United States, especially amongst the poor African-Americans. It is about murder. It is a ritual murder because “it happens all the time in our race on Saturday nights (Dixon 474). More specifically, Ritual Murder is about Joe Brown Jr. who killed his best friend, James Roberts, on a summer Saturday night. It is a heartbreaking, chilling, and violent crime in New Orleans considering it's with black-on-black-- black people killing black people. Sadly, the problem Dent recognized decades ago in Ritual Murder portrays is still ongoing with us today (473). This paper will explain Dent’s Ritual Murder phenomenon of black urban crime by delving into the victims and perpetrators, as well as reasons that lead to the murder.

Have you faced racial persecution due to the color of your skin? The time was 1900’s and this was the nightmare that Ida B. Wells-Barnett wrote of in Mob Rule in New Orleans. This is the true account of Robert Charles as he fights for his life to escape the hands of a lynching mob. This impassion story collaborates with the witness of this terrifying event that Wells describes. Wells uses her literary skills to shed light on racial discrimination, media bias, and her personal crusade for justice to portray this heart wrenching reality of the violent lynching during the 19th century.

Wexler’s attention to these details ensures that the lynching victims are more than flat “symbols,” constructed by a foreign and long past semiotic system, to the reader. She writes, for instance, of George Murray, or Dorsey, who had “returned [to Monroe] from the army” (167), after “four and one-half years” of service, in September 1945, that he was a man who had “love for music,” “skill as a farmer,” and a memorable smile (99). In this respect, Wexler accomplishes the same empathy for an innocent victim as the NAACP, in 1946, might have done, and in similar style—as she contends, in parallel fashion to the deceased victims’

‘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.

Revenge is what set the beginning tone of Wexler’s story and the initial reason for why four African-Americans were shot to death. Roger Malcom, one of the lynching victims, stabbed Barnette Hester out of revenge; he believed that his wife, Dorothy, was sleeping with Barnette (Wexler, page13). Since Roger was black and not white, this was considered an act that the white population could not let go unpunished. The death of Roger Malcom was expected by everyone, even Roger knew, “when Barnette Hester died, he would die too” (Wexler, page 55). Many people at the time thought that this was the main motive behind the lynching and that the other three, Dorothy, Mae Murray,

“Forgotten Dead” by authors William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb, delivered a collective narration of the numerous lynching crimes against Mexican people in the southern west states of the United States. Their purpose was to describe that extend of mob violations against the minority groups of people in the United States. By, arguing how many of these racial crimes were prejudice to eliminate the potential competition for territory, and gold mines’ economy that were potentially able to provide the envy position that Anglo people were afraid to loose. They wanted to figure out, who these forgotten dead Mexicans were at the time, and what types of “crimes” they committed to face such cruelty death in the hands of the mob Anglo groups. They uncovered the grand extend of violent scenes that Anglo vigilantes members of mob groups organized the banishment of many Mexican in what they had considered part of their territory at the time.

She mocks how “They called us kidnappers, yet brother clark squires (who is accused,along with me, of murdering a New Jersey state trooper) was kidnapped on April z,1969”. Although the white man accuses the black man of being kidnappers they mask how monumental their crimes are. She criticizes that the white man are hypocritical and devious people for blaming black people small crimes while they’ve committed atrocities. Assata’s persuasive use of antithesis shines light on the outrageous and unethical motives of the white man because their bias contradicts their values.

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 first action Ida B Wells took to stop lynching was in 1892. She composed a pamphlet exposing the fear and brutal treatment of mob violence ("Biography for kids: Ida B. Wells”). Meanwhile Wells led an anti-lynching crusade in the late 1890s for the United States for thoses who did not get a fair trial for an alleged offence ("Biography”). By Wells being so devoted and interactive with the movement it became stronger because she dedicated an excessive amount of time and effort proving that the lynching of men, women, children were considered murders ("Woman Journalist Crusades Against Lynching”). Currently, because Wells stepped up and chose to be brave, lynching is banned today. Not only did Ida B Wells expose lynching as this country’s national crime, her efforts directly affected us

Throughout this piece, specific language techniques have been used to propel the argument the writer is trying to ‘enforce’ upon her audience. Devine uses an accusative tone and derogatory words such as ‘greenie’ and ‘crackpot’ to portray ideology with a negative connotation that suggests these people are out of touch with reality. The metaphoric phrase ‘cutting off life blood’ is assumed to represent the death of the

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.

In this article a woman explained seeing a black flag with words in white stating “A Man Was Lynched by Police Yesterday” on social media a week ago. This flag does resemble its significant original “A Man Was Lynched Yesterday” hung by the N.A.A.C.P. in front of their headquarters in 1936. She went on to explain how she found so many more stunning images and visual expressions of how the country felt towards these terrible acts of violence that they have endured over the past few weeks. She went through more research and found the artist of this empowering statement. His name is Dread Scott and his goal was “to direct people toward the history of ‘lynch mob terror’ and how police have more recently played a similar role.”

Leigh Raiford’s piece entitled “The Consumption of Lynching Images” portrays the horrific truth of what racism looked like in the “New South” after emancipation. Similar to the film we watched in class: Without Sanctuary, The lynching photographs have the images of postcards that depict lynching and the spectacle these public executions caused at the time with crowds of people coming from all over the state to watch someone be killed. Leigh Raiford claims that through these lynching photographs whites are trying to hold on to their supremacy and identity in this new south after slavery has been abolished. The whites are frightened with the perceived loss of power and economic loss since the slave plantations will no longer be bringing in the income that they had with slaves. The lynching photographs also served as a new wave of technology by using print media for those who came to view the lynching, but were not close enough they could buy a souvenir.

“The Lynching”, by Claude McKay, is a small sonnet composed of fourteen lines that share a rhyme scheme and a noticeable use of alliteration throughout it. This author’s poem describes the event that took place in many places that did not agree with the equal-existence of African Americans, especially when the white, Americans, were forced to treat them equally legally speaking. Throughout his sonnet, McKay successfully portrayed the pain and the way the world was viewed through the minorities’ perspective, using a unique grammatical syntax and such detail that describes these horrid events and what it meant to the different people while playing with the reader’s emotions. Author Mary Church Terrell also writes an article about lynching viewed through an African American’s point of view.