Tragedy of Lynching in the Race Relations of America Research Paper

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Introduction

Lynching can be defined as a practice in which a mob which, in most cases involves many people totaling to even hundreds, violates the law and engage in injuring and killing a person who is accused to have committed an offense. The offense the person might have committed may be a minor offense such as breaking the customs and sensibilities that are followed in the locality or a serious offense such as a person engaging in theft or killing of another person.

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Vigilantism, also referred to as summary justice can be traced back so many years ago but what is termed the lynch law came up in the course of the American Revolution. This was set up by Col. Charles Lynch and his associates he had in Virginia. This was in response to the unsettled times and this called for the need to come up with laws to deal with criminal elements and Tories. As the nation grew, lynching obtain acceptance without many hardships. Quick punishment was advocated for by raw (frontier) conditions for the criminal demeanors. Basing on history, social control has been a vital feature of mob rule1.

Those people who opposed slavery in pre-Civil War America, those people who gambled, those who stole horses and cattle, among others who committed some particular crimes were the ones who were targeted in the 19th century. However, from the last two decades of the 19th century going on, mob violence gave a clear reflection of the hatred the white Americans had for several other people based on race, ethnicity, and culture. African-Americans, Jews among other immigrants became targets for the mob fury and could easily fall victims to lynching. In American history, lynching has been carried out on a racial basis and the Blacks have formed a very large number of the victims despite being the fewer in number in total as compared to the whites and the federal government has been reluctant in putting in place anti-lynching laws for political gains.

American History Lynching

Mob violence is known to have dominated events that were geared towards white dominance assertion2. On some particular occasions, the implementation of this served as a complement of the profit motive. This occurred in many instances, for example, in the case in which those successful black farmers being lynched as well as the lynching of immigrants who opened fresh economic opportunities for the white people in the locality. On other occasions, lynching targeted the ideas that were deemed to be not popular. Such ideas included the organizing of labor unions, criticizing the American role in World War I among others.

Individuals suffered greatly under this (lynch) law. The White people in the south had the determination to bring to an end the engagement of the black people in the local affairs in the region following the close of the Reconstruction in the course of the 1870s3. In the north, there was a growing exhibition of callousness towards the black American people’s civil rights. This saw constitutional negligence from the (federal) government. There was the response (the states in the south and the states which were on the border) in which they employed the appropriate law that was set up in the course of the 1890s, that is, the Jim Crow law. On top of lynching the people, many riots came up and, in most cases, the black people were victims and this turned out to be widespread in such regions as North Carolina in the year 1898 and other areas such as Oklahoma in the year 1921.

Basing on the statistics given, in the period that started in the year 1882 and ended in the year 1968, deaths occurred totaling to four thousand seven hundred and forty-three people resulting from lynching. Among these people who died, three thousand four hundred and forty-six were black people; both men and women. Mississippi was in the lead having five hundred and thirty-nine black victims and only forty-two white victims. This was followed by Georgia having four hundred and ninety-two black victims and thirty-nine whites. Next was Texas having three hundred and fifty-two black victims and a high number of white victims of one hundred and forty-one. This was followed by Louisiana having three hundred and thirty-five black victims and fifty-six white victims and lastly, Alabama had two hundred and ninety-nine black victims and forty-eight white victims. Beginning from the year 1882 up to the year 1901, the number in each year went beyond one hundred; in the year 1892, two hundred and thirty deaths occurred among these, there were one hundred and sixty-one black people and sixty-nine white people4.

Even if the number of those people who were lynched went down in the twentieth century, still cases of lynching were witnessed in the year1908 where a total of 97 people was lynched and among these, there were eighty-nine black people and eight white people5.

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According to6, these statistics do not reveal the whole truth since some lynching never were reported beyond the communities in which they took place. More so, the mobs employed tactics that were sadistic in the cases where the main targets were the black people. In the course of the 1890s, those who were involved in lynching others used such techniques as burning, torturing, and cutting parts of the body to make longer the suffering and set a celebration mood among these killers and those people who watched. The white people brought their family members to come and watch, in other occasions, the newspapers carried notices beforehand, and in some cases, there was the selling of the tickets announcing the sites at which the lynching could be taking place. The prominent people in the political and business arena took the lead in encouraging the mob. Lynching had taken a different form; it had taken the form of being a source of recreation and not just as being a mere punishment for the offenses committed by individuals.

As noted by7, lynching did not originate from the air. Its history is traced back to the times of slavery. In the course of slavery, there were many punishments imposed on the slaves in public and these punishments did not come about after carrying out trials or undertaking any other procedure to make sure that the punishment was justly carried out. Justice was in the hands of the person who was holding the slave. Acts such as whipping, putting to death among others dominated the punishment exercise and were mostly carried out most crudely. On particular occasions, separation of the families was carried out. In most cases, the other slaves were allowed to attend the said punishment to have a true picture of how authoritative the master was but this was particularly aimed at intimidating them. The rationale behind such an act was the notion that the slaves were not true human beings and in case they were human beings, then they were not equal to the masters and had no right to life or freedom that went beyond what these masters saw as the right to give out.

After achieving freedom, in spite of the efforts carried out by the amendments and Reconstruction legislation of federal governments, the white people in the south looked for all the possible ways, be it legal or extralegal, to emphasize a white superiority so intense as to bring in justification of meting out ritual death to the black people in the absence of whatever legal process. The emergence of lynching was very much in line with the state law passage that never allowed the blacks to participate in the voting process.

In the quality of lynching that was haphazard, it was debatably equal or even worse than the murders that were carried out on the people who were in slavery. In the course of slavery, any person who committed an offense against a slave was answerable to the master of this slave. The person had to face the law for messing up with someone else’s property, and in this case, the slave. With the coming up of lynching at a time when the Civil War was over and the termination of Reconstruction, such control was not there. The place which was held by the master during the slavery period, this place was held by an unclear standard of justice that was held by a certain community of the white people in this period of lynching. The power of lynching originated from the taking part of several citizens who were white in the ritual murder and the support in the action of the remaining community of the white people.

Even if disgusting to many people, lynching wasn’t an anomaly in the race relations of America. According to8, there exist discrepancies as well as coming together of lynching, a literary experience, and a historical experience. According to9, even if there was the widespread holding of the idea that many of the negroes that were lynched had been found guilty of committing the offense of rape on the white women’s bodies, in the course of the initial fourteen years of the 1900s, a minimal number of the lynched people who were three hundred and fifteen in number faced the accusation of having participated in rape or had made attempts to rape. Other people who were lynched had been accused of having committed such offenses as insulting the white people, committing homicide, and engaging in robbery among other offenses. It is not a surprise that what is common in what is held by the lynching literary expressions and the accounts of mob violence oral eyewitnesses are the ritual features. Lynching is called by Ralph Ellison as “a ritual drama that was usually enacted…..in an atmosphere of high excitement and led by a masked celebrant dressed in a showy attire who manipulated the mystical objects associated with the rite as he inspired and instructed the actors in their gory task.”10

These observations that were carried out by Ellison seal the difference between the documentary discourse of history and the literature’s creative mythic rhetoric11. On particular occasions, the mobs are under a leader or leaders, but in other instances, there is no leader. In some instances, the leading people taking part in mob violence have masks but in some other instances, these leading participants are not masked. In some instances, the cruelty even if not appealing to the ritual elements or having ritual elements, this cruelty is spontaneous and full of chaos, in other instances, this brutality is planned cautiously beforehand and even in some cases advertised in the local media. However, what is of much interest is that lynching being a race ritual in America put forth a strong pull on the writer’s imaginations who are African American.

According to 12 the transgressions that originated from a lynch mob were many and they involved cases such as rape, behaviors that were deemed to be unruly, and acting in a manner that was regarded as being suspicious. The white people took joy in witnessing the lynching take place and to the black people, this was a form of entertainment and they took the photographs and saved these photos as souvenirs.

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Most of the people who had fallen victims of lynching in a period of 88 years starting from 1882 to 1968 were black people. Out of the 5000 people that were lynched within this period, 3,445 of them were black people and this took place in the south. This problem spread in the whole nation over time, and by the year 1918, all the states except just six of them had had cases of lynchings. Rarely were investigations carried out in the cases where lynching was carried out on black people by the white people, and even these white people were impeached on very rare occasions and they even went scot-free in most of these instances. This was witnessed despite the presence of the laws that outlawed lynching, particularly in the states of the southern part of the US. The laws that were put in place were not effective at all for the reason that these laws were not enforced.

Efforts towards Anti-lynching

The anti-lynching campaign was a movement geared towards doing away with the mob violence (that was directed on the African American people) and most particularly the summary execution of people who were accused of crimes and mostly the crime of raping the white women in the states found in the southern part of the United States of America in the cause of the period that began from the 1880s and ended in the 1940s. This campaign which was under the leadership of the organizations like NACW, ASWPL among others strived to fight against lynching by educating people and engaging in the taking of legal action13.

Women are believed to have played a critical role in the efforts towards this campaign. The leader that they had that was the most effective was called Ida B. Wells-Barnet. This person was a teacher as well as a journalist and was an African American14. The person originally was touched by the Memphis lynching that was carried out in the year 1892 in which three businessmen who were black were lynched. These people were lynched because they had acquired much success in their business operations and this had irritated the white people who were competing with them in business.

Well-Barnett carried out the documentation of the innocence of those people that were lynched and, in most cases, the documentation of the innocence of those who were charged with rape and at the same time denouncing the failure of giving guidance to the white people in the south to act against this evil most forcefully. She undertook the publication of thorough investigative work (in the year 1895), what was referred to as “A Red Record”, a thing that took the form of the greatest resource for this campaign. She engaged in leading the legal efforts to ensure the prevention of lynchings and got involved in carrying out her undertakings towards this call together with the National Association of Colored Women and the National Association for Advancement of Colored People which is the organization she set up herself, in order to secure legislation in regard to Antilynching. Through these organizations, several other black women turned out to be active in the quest to fight against lynching. Such women included Georgia and Grimke who were writers. Starting from the second and third decades of the twentieth century, there was the joining of the white women in the south in the Antilynching movement on an increasing level15.

There was a tendency among the local sheriffs to turn out to be indifferent toward the law and they mostly did not take any action that could offer prevention against the mobs of taking the people who were under imprisonment and murdering these people. More so, there were rare attempts that were carried out to impose apprehension on those people that were involved in lynching other people. In addition, there was not only a lack of enforcing the law but there was as well the active participation of those people who were supposed to engage in the prevention of lynching16.

There was a miserable failure of the federal branches. There was very rare interference of the federal judicial. In the initial stages of Reconstruction, there was passing of more than a few civil rights acts to carry out the outlawing of black codes, provide the provision for criminal endorsements against whatever individual who engages in a conspiracy that is private to carry out the violation of another person’s federal rights, and stifle the KKK or Ku Klux Klan.

However, some declarations were made that these laws were not in line with the constitution, and later, Congress repealed them. More so, over two hundred anti-lynching bills were brought to Congress and not even one of these bills was made to become law. Even if these bills were passed three times by the House Representatives, the senators who came from the south engaged in blocking this legislation. In the course of Woodrow Wilson’s reign, Congress did not just fail in passing legislation regarding anti-lynching but it as well welcomed twenty bills that encouraged even more segregation17.

However, in the year 1921, Congress came close to passing legislation in favor of anti-lynching at the time the House engaged in passing the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill but then this failed in the Senate. The motion in the house moved around the attacks that were carried out based on race and this was practical protection of lynching even if this had roots in the legal as well as constitutional arguments. In the Senate, the arguments were presented in regard to unconstitutionality, but the senators from the Republican Party made no actual attempts to block and stopped the bill without no even getting a single vote.

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There was the exposure of the fear by the Dyer debate that this kind of a bill would offer to the blacks in the south social equality. By Roosevelt getting elected in the year 1932, there were hopes by the NAACP that eventually lynching will be stopped. However, this turned out not to be true. The pressures came from the wife of Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, who did not succeed in enabling the president to get convinced in order for him to act. When the year 1935 came, the president did not offer support to the Costigan-Wagner Anti-lynching Bill that would have offered punishment to sheriffs who did not succeed in offering protection to the prisoners from being lynched by the mobs. The president had a fear of the voters who were in the south and he did not want them to reject him and make him fail in his efforts of acquiring another term in the election of the year 1936. The mind of Roosevelt was not even changed by the lynching of Rubin Stacy that took place in the year 1935. This person was taken away from the protection of the police by a mob consisting of white people and he was hanged. Roosevelt was not swayed by the countrywide attention about this incident.

When it came to President Harry S. Truman, the president as well had fears about the people in the south that had much control in Congress. However, eventually, the president offered his support to the anti-lynching laws. He as well set up the commission on civil rights of the president and as well brought to an end formal segregation in the armed forces through Executive Order 9981.

Therefore, by the fifth decade of the twentieth century, through the government’s assistance, the number of lynching cases was brought down. There were occasional occurrences of lynching that brought shock to the country and roused action. In the year 1955, a boy who was fourteen years old by the name Emmett Till from Chicago was beaten up and thrown away in the river. The offense that was claimed to have been committed by this boy was that he had insulted a white woman. In response to this incident, rising violence based on race, and the increasing struggle for the right to engage in voting by the African American people in the south, the then president, Dwight Eisenhower, set up in the year 1957 a committee on Civil Rights18.

However, this president was reluctant in employing the federal power since he had thought that the black people could attain the objective they had through voting even if he engaged in the endorsement of anti-lynching laws, carried out the integration of the armed forces, and brought to an end the segregation in the federal employment.

The lynching that took place that was put under record was in the year 1964 in which there was the killing of the civil rights workers; three in number. Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney are the names of. these civil rights workers. This took place in Mississippi and at this point, Congress had not yet passed any anti-lynching law19.

Eventually, in the year 2005 in June, there was passing by the Senate of a nonbinding resolution to give out apologies for the failures it had gone through over time in the past in regard to putting in place anti-lynching legislation20.

Conclusion

As it has been seen, lynching in American history was carried out on a racial basis. Many of the victims were mostly black people. Most of the victims of lynching were black people despite their lower population as compared to the white people in the United States of America. This problem spread in the whole nation over time, and by the year 1918, all the states except just six of them had had cases of lynchings. Rarely was lynching investigated and also the culprits were never put on trial. This took place even with the mere fact that appropriate laws against lynching were set up in the US. The laws that were put in place were not effective at all for the reason that these laws were not enforced.

There was a tendency among the local sheriffs to turn out to be indifferent toward the law and they mostly did not take any action that could offer prevention against the mobs of taking the people who were under imprisonment and murdering these people. More so, there were rare attempts that were carried out to impose apprehension on those people that were involved in lynching other people. In addition, there was not only a lack of enforcing the law but there was as well the active participation of those people who were supposed to engage in the prevention of lynching.

The motion in the House moved around the attacks that were carried out based on race and this was practical protection of lynching even if this had roots in the legal as well as constitutional arguments. In the Senate, the arguments were presented in regard to unconstitutionality, but the senators from the Republican Party made no actual attempts to block and stopped the bill without no even getting a single vote.

There was the exposure of the fear by the Dyer debate that this kind of a bill would offer to the blacks in the south social equality. By Roosevelt getting elected in the year 1932, there were hopes by the NAACP that eventually lynching will be stopped. However, this turned out not to be true. The pressures that came from the wife of Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, did not succeed in enabling the president to get convinced in order for him to act. When the year 1935 came, the president did not offer support to the Costigan-Wagner Anti-lynching Bill that would have offered punishment to sheriffs who did not succeed in offering protection to the prisoners from being lynched by the mobs.

The president had a fear of the voters who were in the south and he did not want them to reject him and make him fail in his efforts of acquiring another term in the election of the year 1936. The mind of Roosevelt was not even changed by the lynching of Rubin Stacy that took place in the year 1935. This person was taken away from the protection of the police by a mob consisting of white people and he was hanged. Roosevelt was not swayed by the countrywide attention about this incident.

There was so much suffering among the black people under the lynch law. The White people in the south had the determination to bring to an end the engagement of the black people in the local affairs in the region following the close of the Reconstruction in the course of the 1870s. In the north, there was a growing exhibition of callousness towards the black American people’s civil rights. The (federal) government was never interested in following the constitution. The efforts put in place to bring lynching to an end were not encouraged by the government over time as a way of winning the favor of the white people who were majority by the political leaders. The political leaders were fearful about losing the votes from the white people who were many in numbers and that is the reason for their showing reluctance in putting in place effective anti-lynching laws.

Footnotes

  1. Zangrando, Robert. 2010. About lynching. Web.
  2. Brundage, William Fitzhugh., 1997. Under sentence of death: lynching in the South. UNC Press. ISBN 0807846368, 9780807846360.
  3. Brundage, William. Fitzhugh, 1993. Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930. University of Illinois Press. ISBN: 0252063457, 9780252063459.
  4. Anonymous, 2010. Lynchings: By State and Race, 1882 – 1968. Web.
  5. Zangrando, Robert. 2010. About lynching. Web.
  6. Zangrando, Robert. 2010. About lynching. Web.
  7. Callahan, John. 2010. About Lynching. Web.
  8. Callahan, John. 2010. About Lynching. Web.
  9. Madison, James. 2003. A Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in America. Palgrave Macmillan.ISBN:1403961212, 9781403961211.
  10. Callahan, John. 2010. About Lynching. Web.
  11. Callahan, John. 2010. About Lynching. Web.
  12. Balisunset in History, 2010. History of the Anti-Lynching Legislation. Web.
  13. Bruce, Dickson, 2010. Antilynching Campaign. Web.
  14. Barnwell Marion, A place called Mississippi: collected narratives. Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1997. ISBN: 0878059644, 9780878059645.
  15. Bruce, Dickson, 2010. Antilynching Campaign. Web.
  16. Anonymous, 2010. . Web.
  17. Cutler, J. Elbert, 2009. Lynch-Law: An Investigation Into the History of Lynching in the United States. BiblioBazaar, LLC. ISBN: 1103043056, 9781103043057.
  18. Nelson Marilyn, A wreath for Emmett Till. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005. ISBN: 0618397523, 9780618397525.
  19. Balisunset in History, 2010. History of the Anti-Lynching Legislation. Web.
  20. Anonymous, 2010. Lynchings: By State and Race, 1882 – 1968. Web.
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