Donald Nathan
Professor Deborah Okey
Eng 100 Section 013
10 May 2011
Lynching of Black America
Lynching in the southern states of American had become a way of life for southerners to install fear and control of its Black Americans. In the south there were a frequent occurrence; lynching was Black American biggest fear. Black men were--shot, hanged or burned to death--on an average of fifty to sixty a year and were torture and mutilation also frequent each year. While the White Supremacists were controlling courts and the legislatures, Whites in the south feared no punishment. Southern Blacks had no legal protection, or rights (Winters 17). According to Oliver Cromwell Cox, a sociologist born in Trinidad and educated at University of Chicago, defined lynching as: “a special form of mobbing-mobbing directed against a whole people or political class.” Lynchers, Cox wrote, intended to suppress a people trying to better themselves (Waldrep 3). The Lynching of the Black Race was the most heinous action taken against a race since the holocaust.
According to James Elbert Culter, some have reported that the Scotch-Irish is responsible for the introduction into this country of the practice of illegally punishing public offenders. Others say that it is race prejudice, a result of the coming together of many races in one country, and particularly that it is the racial antagonism between the White race and the Negro race, which explains the matter (11).
James H. Madison, writing in a lynching in the Heartland, explains:
Some suggest that lynching was a southern, not American drama. Certainly most took place in the South, over 95 percent of the nation’s total during the 1920s. The peculiar nature of race relations in the former Confederate states left a sad legacy of White restriction and violence against Blacks, the most vicious of which was lynching…Most scholars emphasize that whites felt threatened by Blacks, that Whites were fearful that Blacks might challenge the subordinate economic, social, and political status forced on them by Whites lynching of a Black man was a clear statement of White solidarity against any Black threat to status quo…A lynching was a performance that sent a message of white supremacy, warning all Blacks to stay in their place. It was a weapon of terror that could strike anywhere, anytime, against any African American (14).
Between 1880 and 1930, 4697 Americans were lynched; 3,344 Black Americans were fallen victim to this tragedy. Madison states that Whites have a myth that Black male are breast lusting for White women. White men wanted to believe that no White women would never willingly engage in sexual relations with a Black man. Only rape provided lustful Black men with sexual access to White women (14).
Whites claimed rape as rationalization of lynching even through a majority of those lynched was not accused of rape. Black women were the chief principal of rape by White men who sexual attraction was prevalent. The attraction of White men toward women of color were known but covered up. (Madison 15). According to Ida B. Wells, a crusading Black woman, made arguments in the 1890s asserted that the cry of rape was often false and often a “shield” and “screen” to “excuse some of the most heinous crimes that ever stained the history of a country”(Madison 15). A prediction in 1903 was made by W.E.B. Du Bois states that the color line would be the problem of the century (Madison 129).
Lynching was not just limited to adult, but children were also targeted by some lynchers. One of the nation worst was that of a young boy from Chicago. The truth of what cause this incidence may never be known, but according to Endesha Ida Mae Holland proclaimed that:
In the mid-1950s, a young boy, Emmett Till was standing on the corner with a couple of his friends. A White woman passed and claimed that young Till had whistled at her. Later that night, a mob of White men took the Black Chicago youth back to the river. They put a millstone around his neck, they cut his penis off and stuck it in his mouth and then lowered him into his watery grave (Metress 6).
There was a young man name Julius. Julius not paying attention let out an unexpected whistle while setting on his porch. This was mistakenly taken as if he were whistling at a White woman passing by. This was a cardinal sin for a Black man. Julius were arrested and jailed. The owner of the plantation where Julius worked, negotiated Julius release, and aided Julius and his family out of the State of Mississippi before he could be lynched that night. This represents how easily it was for a Black man to be accused of stepping out of place.
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