Lynchings



Lynching in America had existed long before slavery even existed but lynching never truly reared it’s ugly head until black men and women began to rise to prominence by registering to vote and run in public office. In fact, most of lynching was due to a mindset brought on by most whites that black men would have sexual relations with white women, and the way most whites coped with this is by “disabling” their political power and instead put themselves in this place in order to protect their race. Many writers had talked about how lynchings and this mindset had transformed america, Mark Twain had a name for it, “the United States of Lyncherdom.”

The History of Lynchings
The practice of lynching goes back to the 1700s where a man by the name of Charles Lynch would hold illegal trials of local lawbreakers in his front yard, and if the victim were to be found guilty he would “lynch” them, eventually the practice just became known as lynching. The practice of lynching would take on the role of vigilantism, or if society felt that the judge or the court improperly accused the victim then they would assume the role of the judge, and would try the victim to see if they were guilty or not and if they were found guilty, and usually they were, then they were lynched. Many of the lynchings were more brutal than what you just read about in your textbook. The practice didn’t just involved the physical violence of lynching but also the emotional impact of humiliation, and castration. It was so brutal that after the person was dead the “executioners” would fire rounds into the dead corpse while the crowd cheered and the children would take body parts as souvenirs.

The Mindset of Lynchings
There were many reasons as to why a black man would be lynched, and most of it was because of the mindset that white people had to “protect” their race and not allow blacks to integrate into it or mix with white women, specifically it became a racial stereotype that black men were sexual predators by nature and wanted to integrate into it. Even though many of the lynchings were because a black man was accused of “raping” a woman, or associating with one, most of the lynchings were political activists or black men that wouldn’t back down from a fight, even women were victims of lynching if they chose to associate with a black man, despite the social and political laws. Many of the ways the white race removed the black people from power were by torturing them by lynchings, or if need be death.

How Lynchings Influenced Writers
Many writers had talked about the lynchings that happened in North America. Such as in Richard White’s 1987 book Bad Boys he wrote, “The things that influenced my conduct as a Negro did not have to happen to me directly; I needed but to hear of them to feel their full effects in the deepest layers of my consciousness. Indeed, the white brutality that I had not seen was a more effective control of my behavior than that which I knew” (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/peopleevents/e_lynch.html), this explained how the reports of his relatives being lynched was a means of controlling his behavior rather than him having to learn it the hard way.

Conclusion
Even though many black people were lynched for “raping” a woman, or associating with a woman, it never truly stopped black men from being with a white woman. In fact, even though lynchings were published in newspapers and shown through the media it never stopped all black man from attempting to be with a white woman, or a white woman attempting to be with a black man, in fact, it was widespread. Lynchings definitely controlled some black men’s behavior but it never stopped the African American race as a whole, and it may have helped propel the black race to retaliate more, and thus was an integral part leading up to the Civil Rights Movement.