Willie Lynch

Before reading the Willie Lynch letter, my assumption was that he was a black man. Then realizing his last name, “Lynch”, I knew he was white. Although The Willie Lynch’s letter wasn’t a real letter made centuries ago and it was made based off todays time, it gives a clear view of how black people are controlled today. In Lynch’s letter he gives advice to his people about how to control black people. The number one thing that caught my attention was when he began to list off the methods of controlling slaves, and blacks.

The Willie Lynch Letter is a document that allegedly is a speech given by a white slave owner from the West Indies, on the bank of the James River in Virginia, 1712. It has been said that it was instructions to the current day slave owners on how to control their slaves indefinitely. This alleged letter came into print in the 1970s and gained wide spread attention in the 1990s. The brutality associated with this speech in controlling the African slave and keeping him and his

The Willie Lynch Letter: The Making of a Slave was a document that was presented by a white slave owner William Lynch on the bank of the James River in 1712. This document was written to establish how they can keep the African Slaves enslaved for at least 300 years. William Lynch had foolproof plan to keep the Africans in what we call today the “slave mentality”. His main goal was to turn the slaves against one another. Even today the powerful speech still enslaves black people and turns us against our brothers and sisters

Phillips found that most slaves were well provided for materially and treated with less than brutality by their masters, who for both economic and moral reasons had an interest in the happiness and well-being of their property. He does not deny that slaves were whipped, performed dangerous or tedious tasks, or were separated from their families, but points out that such occurrences were the exception rather than the rule. He does not find that slaves were particularly susceptible to laziness or criminality, or that the threat of slave uprisings was as great as contemporary whites assumed, but rather finds that the racial characteristics of slaves included loyalty, geniality, and a predisposition to manual rather than intellectual labor.

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

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.

. . 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.

One example of characterization would be that Equality 7-2521 was outgoing, rebellious and unfortunately misunderstood. One example of this is “when we cleaned the yard of the Home of the Scholars, we gathered the glass vials, the pieces of metal, the dried bones which they had discarded. We wished to keep these things to study them, but we had no place to hide them. So we carried them to the City Cesspool.” (Pg 29)

To support his theory, Mr. Schwarz refers to data that shows "Most lynchings took place precisely in those areas in the South where many of these wandering black males ended up. The Gulf plain and cotton uplands had by far the highest rate of lynchings, and these areas combined extremely low rural population densities with by far the highest rates of black transiency in the South." W.E.B. Du Bois is even quoted as having written about the emergence of "a class of black criminals who are a menace to both black and white . . . instead of petty stealing and vagrancy, we . . . have highway robbery, burglary, murder and rape." Though I tried my best to be objective when reading the L.A.Times Article, I found myself quickly becoming exasperated by Mr. Schwarz's effort to "play both sides of the field". While he writes "It must be said that an indeterminate sizable number of lynching victims did not commit the crimes of which they were accused and, by definition, none was found guilty by properly constituted authorities (whose ability to carry out justice was suspect at best)", he also notes "Denying black criminality

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).

According to Charles Mills, race matters and is a category reflecting custom. These customs are broken down to racial classification matters. We as individuals associate race as a cluster of attributes. These attributes include physical and psychological/moral facets. When it comes to physical attributes, we focus more towards the skin, bone structure, hair color, and all biologically substances that human beings have naturally acquired. On the other hand, Psychological

Looking back in time, slaves were differentiated into mulattoes and pure blacks. Pure blacks did most of the outside labor leaving the house labor to mulattoes. For mulattoes, being a house servant brought advantages including food, shelter, and clothing. Mulattoes were trained for skilled occupations and these skills allowed mulattoes to separate themselves from other blacks. The light skinned blacks were exposed to cultural views and practices such as proper speech, dress, and mannerisms. Once a mulatto was emancipated, he/she was better prepared for negotiating with whites because mulattoes knew how to handle them. Mulattoes had a sense of being superior over the darker slaves. Because of the color similarities between mulattoes and whites, the mulattoes were the middle class between blacks and whites.

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.

Although slavery and segregation laws are obsolete, racial inequality remains visible within our society. Throughout the course readings, one thing is for sure: the slave trade is the primary cause of racial inequality from 1500 to the present. Those sold into slavery become the property and a product of violence. Moreover, throughout the 15th to mid-18th centuries, slavery caused people to despise those who looked different from them, based on skin color. Slavery has caused numerous gaps among the privileged white community and minorities who have a history of slavery. This created a divided society based on skin color, with effects that continue to be a small part of our contemporary world.

When one of the plantation owners talk down to his wife, and treats her like she has nothing to say about stuff, it shows how he thinks of her as less than himself. He discriminates her infront of the slaves.