What Is Lynching In The United States

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

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.

Lynchings were a real threat to African Americans in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They created a lot of fear in the African American community especially in this time period. Between 1882 and 1969, 4,743 people lynchings occurred. In 1882, African Americans accounted for forty-six percent of lynchings. Yet from 1900 to 1910, African Americans represented eighty-nine percent of lynchings.

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

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.

Since a majority of cases revolve around the African American community, analysis will be considered through those cases. African Americans are a community of historically oppressed people. Briefly, slavery was an American institution that enslaved the black race for over 300 hundred years. White superiority dominated American culture and any person of color was viewed as inferior. Slaves did not possess the mental psyche to be law abiding citizens so they had to be under their master’s protection. Although the proslavery ideals are almost two centuries old, the idea of white supremacy still

Over the past five centuries, black people have endured violence in many different ways. Today, police officers use deadly, excessive force that leads to inexcusable assaults, beatings and shootings. This demonstrates the governmentТs role in initiating and prolonging racial suppression and provides the explanation for police brutality to become a federal crime(Black Radical Congress, 3). In history, racist violence, police brutality, has been used to suppress the racial blacks and to preserve power and privileges for the white race. This was done for five primary purposes. First, it has forced black people into slavery or low wage situations. Secondly, to steal land and other resources. A 3-rd was to maintain social control. A fourth

‘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.

After slavery ended four conflicts came up two of them were heavy racism and the fear of African Americans lives that were getting lynched very often. After the civil war the south was completely destroyed and they needed to rebuild. Lynching in the south was a big problem for blacks/African-Americans. In my primary source” Lynching in the United States, it shows how in the years 1889-1893 that 705 Lynchings were reported. Out of (705) 260 were white and 579 were black this a big impact on society of life for blacks. This made it very a hard and scared life for African Americans growing

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

Lynching was a prominent influence in the South, African Americans were constantly attacked and threatened, a result of Southerners need to show authority. Lynching became a social event for white Southerners, in Ida B. Wells narrative, she accounts the horrific events of lynchings, Wells states, “Here Smith was placed upon a scaffold, six feet square and ten feet high, securely bound, within the view of all beholders. Here the victim was tortured for fifty minutes by red-hot iron brands ... Then, being apparently dead, kerosene was poured upon him, cottonseed hulls placed beneath him and set on fire” (90). Racial classes were divided and lynchings showcased this inequality.

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).

Whites could physically beat blacks with impunity. Blacks had little legal recourse against these assaults because the Jim Crow criminal justice system was all-white: police, prosecutors, judges, juries, and prison officials. Violence was instrumental for Jim Crow. It was a method of social control” (Pilgrim, par. 9). The unjust circumstances of Jim Crow laws limit African Americans their simplest rights as citizens because they were prohibited from “drinking from the white water fountain or trying to vote,” and the consequences resulted in severe danger to their livelihood, risking their families, jobs, and ultimately, their lives. White people had the freedom to punish, beat, and lynch African Americans without any question of the validity of accusations towards blacks because the majority of the “Jim Crow criminal justice system was all-white: police, prosecutors, judges, juries, and prison officials,” of whom which mainly believed in white superiority. Violence was a huge component in Jim Crow laws to enforce the “social control” and segregation of society to suppress blacks into inferiority. This law of segregation within society does not uphold morality in the United States because it

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 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.