The history of lynching in America dates back to the American Revolution but became most prevalent after the Civil War. Historians estimate over 3,500 people were lynched, though not all victims were black. From 1865 to 1900, America developed a complex system of white supremacy through legal, social, political, and economic mechanisms to deny black people rights and oppress them. Characteristics of lynchings included them being extra-legal mob acts involving the gruesome public murder and mutilation of victims without trial. Lynchings were often justified as maintaining social order and protecting white womanhood from the mythical black rapist.
The Society of Professional journalists outlines four major rules of engagement for ethical journalists. This lecture discusses the code of ethics, and when it may need to be broken.
African American History Final 1. Southern whites who a.docxnettletondevon
African American History Final
1. Southern whites who aligned with the Republican Party in the South were called which of the
following names by southern Democrats?
A) Klansmen
B) carpetbaggers
C) scalawags
D) secessionists
2. Northern whites who migrated to the South were called which of the following names by
southern Democrats?
A) scalawags
B) freedmen
C) carpetbaggers
D) miners
3. What did white southerners mean when they said they wanted to "redeem" their states?
A) They wanted Republicans to be in power.
B) They wanted to remove all blacks to Africa.
C) They wanted to restore religious feeling and true Christianity to their state.
D) They wanted to remove blacks and Republicans from political office.
4. Why did local law enforcement fail to effectively prosecute the Klan?
A) Because no terrorist groups had existed before, there were no laws to deal with them.
B) Local law enforcement or white troops often sided with the Klan against blacks.
C) There were only a small number of Klansmen, and they remained hidden from
prosecution.
D) The Klan's actions were almost invisible because no one reported news of the terrorism.
5. What is the connection between the Ku Klux Klan and Reconstruction?
A) The Klan played no role during Reconstruction
B) The Klan assisted local African Americans in establishing political and social rights in
several southern states.
C) The Klan promoted violence in the interest of southern Democrats who ended
Reconstruction.
D) The Klan helped to prolong Reconstruction by volunteering to staff military outposts in
rural areas of the South.
6. What is the connection during Reconstruction between the Ku Klux Klan and the Klan’s outfit of
hoods made from flour sacks and bed sheets?
A) The sheets hid the identity of the Klansmen from public knowledge.
B) The sheets emphasized the rapid movements of Klan members at night.
C) The sheets were used to warm the bodies of Klansmen who were cold at night.
D) The sheets were used to hide weapons and sacks of food used in raids.
7. Which of the following statements accurately characterizes the Civil Rights Act of 1875?
A) It eliminated all discrimination in public places on the basis of race.
B) It was championed by both Republicans and Democrats.
C) It was eventually overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
D) Neither house of Congress passed the measure.
African American History Final
8. To what party did most blacks remain loyal in the post-Reconstruction South?
A) Democrats
B) Populists
C) Republicans
D) Whigs
9. What were “grandfather clauses”?
A) voting restriction clauses which held that someone could vote only if his father or
grandfather had been able to vote before a certain time, usually the end of slavery
B) limitations on voting to those people who were grandfathers
C) limitations on voting to those who could prove .
The Society of Professional journalists outlines four major rules of engagement for ethical journalists. This lecture discusses the code of ethics, and when it may need to be broken.
African American History Final 1. Southern whites who a.docxnettletondevon
African American History Final
1. Southern whites who aligned with the Republican Party in the South were called which of the
following names by southern Democrats?
A) Klansmen
B) carpetbaggers
C) scalawags
D) secessionists
2. Northern whites who migrated to the South were called which of the following names by
southern Democrats?
A) scalawags
B) freedmen
C) carpetbaggers
D) miners
3. What did white southerners mean when they said they wanted to "redeem" their states?
A) They wanted Republicans to be in power.
B) They wanted to remove all blacks to Africa.
C) They wanted to restore religious feeling and true Christianity to their state.
D) They wanted to remove blacks and Republicans from political office.
4. Why did local law enforcement fail to effectively prosecute the Klan?
A) Because no terrorist groups had existed before, there were no laws to deal with them.
B) Local law enforcement or white troops often sided with the Klan against blacks.
C) There were only a small number of Klansmen, and they remained hidden from
prosecution.
D) The Klan's actions were almost invisible because no one reported news of the terrorism.
5. What is the connection between the Ku Klux Klan and Reconstruction?
A) The Klan played no role during Reconstruction
B) The Klan assisted local African Americans in establishing political and social rights in
several southern states.
C) The Klan promoted violence in the interest of southern Democrats who ended
Reconstruction.
D) The Klan helped to prolong Reconstruction by volunteering to staff military outposts in
rural areas of the South.
6. What is the connection during Reconstruction between the Ku Klux Klan and the Klan’s outfit of
hoods made from flour sacks and bed sheets?
A) The sheets hid the identity of the Klansmen from public knowledge.
B) The sheets emphasized the rapid movements of Klan members at night.
C) The sheets were used to warm the bodies of Klansmen who were cold at night.
D) The sheets were used to hide weapons and sacks of food used in raids.
7. Which of the following statements accurately characterizes the Civil Rights Act of 1875?
A) It eliminated all discrimination in public places on the basis of race.
B) It was championed by both Republicans and Democrats.
C) It was eventually overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
D) Neither house of Congress passed the measure.
African American History Final
8. To what party did most blacks remain loyal in the post-Reconstruction South?
A) Democrats
B) Populists
C) Republicans
D) Whigs
9. What were “grandfather clauses”?
A) voting restriction clauses which held that someone could vote only if his father or
grandfather had been able to vote before a certain time, usually the end of slavery
B) limitations on voting to those people who were grandfathers
C) limitations on voting to those who could prove .
This is probably the first time that youve heard this perspective.docxjuliennehar
This is probably the first time that you've heard this perspective regarding MLK, it certainly was for me. What are your thoughts about what the writer said? Do you agree? Disagree? Did his experience challenge or change any thoughts about this era?
This will be a very short diary. It will not contain any links or any scholarly references. It is about a very narrow topic, from a very personal, subjective perspective.
The topic at hand is what Martin Luther King actually did, what it was that he actually accomplished.
What most people who reference Dr. King seem not to know is how Dr. King actually changed the subjective experience of life in the United States for African Americans. And yeah, I said for African Americans, not for Americans, because his main impact was his effect on the lives of African Americans, not on Americans in general. His main impact was not to make white people nicer or fairer. That's why some of us who are African Americans get a bit possessive about his legacy. Dr. Martin Luther King's legacy, despite what our civil religion tells us, is not color blind.
Head below the fold to read about what Martin Luther King, Jr. actually did.
I remember that many years ago, when I was a smartass home from first year of college, I was standing in the kitchen arguing with my father. My head was full of newly discovered political ideologies and black nationalism, and I had just read the Autobiography of Malcolm X, probably for the second time.
A bit of context. My father was from a background, which if we were talking about Europe or Latin America, we would call, "peasant" origin, although he had risen solidly into the working-middle class. He was from rural Virginia and his parents had been tobacco farmers. I spent two weeks or so every summer on the farm of my grandmother and step-grandfather. They had no running water, no gas, a wood burning stove, no bathtubs or toilets but an outhouse, potbelly stoves for heat in the winter, a giant wood pile, a smoke house where hams and bacon hung, chickens, pigs, semi wild housecats that lived outdoors, no tractor or car, but an old plow horse and plows and other horse drawn implements, and electricity only after I was about 8 years old. The area did not have high schools for blacks and my father went as far as the seventh grade in a one room schoolhouse. All four of his grandparents, whom he had known as a child, had been born slaves. It was mainly because of World War II and urbanization that my father left that life.
They lived in a valley or hollow or "holler" in which all the landowners and tenants were black. In the morning if you wanted to talk to cousin Taft, you would walk down to behind the outhouse and yell across the valley, "Heeeyyyy Taaaaft," and you could see him far, far in the distance, come out of his cabin and yell back.
On the one hand, this was a pleasant situation because they lived in isolation from white people. On the other hand, they did have to leave the v ...
This is probably the first time that youve heard this perspective.docxkbrenda
This is probably the first time that you've heard this perspective regarding MLK, it certainly was for me. What are your thoughts about what the writer said? Do you agree? Disagree? Did his experience challenge or change any thoughts about this era?
This will be a very short diary. It will not contain any links or any scholarly references. It is about a very narrow topic, from a very personal, subjective perspective.
The topic at hand is what Martin Luther King actually did, what it was that he actually accomplished.
What most people who reference Dr. King seem not to know is how Dr. King actually changed the subjective experience of life in the United States for African Americans. And yeah, I said for African Americans, not for Americans, because his main impact was his effect on the lives of African Americans, not on Americans in general. His main impact was not to make white people nicer or fairer. That's why some of us who are African Americans get a bit possessive about his legacy. Dr. Martin Luther King's legacy, despite what our civil religion tells us, is not color blind.
Head below the fold to read about what Martin Luther King, Jr. actually did.
I remember that many years ago, when I was a smartass home from first year of college, I was standing in the kitchen arguing with my father. My head was full of newly discovered political ideologies and black nationalism, and I had just read the Autobiography of Malcolm X, probably for the second time.
A bit of context. My father was from a background, which if we were talking about Europe or Latin America, we would call, "peasant" origin, although he had risen solidly into the working-middle class. He was from rural Virginia and his parents had been tobacco farmers. I spent two weeks or so every summer on the farm of my grandmother and step-grandfather. They had no running water, no gas, a wood burning stove, no bathtubs or toilets but an outhouse, potbelly stoves for heat in the winter, a giant wood pile, a smoke house where hams and bacon hung, chickens, pigs, semi wild housecats that lived outdoors, no tractor or car, but an old plow horse and plows and other horse drawn implements, and electricity only after I was about 8 years old. The area did not have high schools for blacks and my father went as far as the seventh grade in a one room schoolhouse. All four of his grandparents, whom he had known as a child, had been born slaves. It was mainly because of World War II and urbanization that my father left that life.
They lived in a valley or hollow or "holler" in which all the landowners and tenants were black. In the morning if you wanted to talk to cousin Taft, you would walk down to behind the outhouse and yell across the valley, "Heeeyyyy Taaaaft," and you could see him far, far in the distance, come out of his cabin and yell back.
On the one hand, this was a pleasant situation because they lived in isolation from white people. On the other hand, they did have to leave the v.
1. Slavery and the Early RepublicThe concept of liberty as espou.docxgasciognecaren
1. Slavery and the Early Republic
The concept of liberty as espoused in the American Revolution had limits. For instance, women did not come to enjoy the liberty bestowed upon men, which is not surprising, given the history of gender roles in Europe and the American colonies. The Revolutionary War era entertained much discussion about slavery’s compatibility with the idea of liberty. As we’ve discussed, Northern states began the process of abolition or gradual emancipation. Even in the South, some slaveholders granted individual manumissions and pondered slavery’s future. The debate did not go much further than that in the South, however. The fear of slave revolts (as had happened in Haiti (Links to an external site.)) and the continued profitability of slavery blunted the revolutionary rhetoric.
Intellectuals concluded either that blacks and whites were separate species of humanity or that nature had molded the races differently and had consigned blacks to intellectual, if not physical, inferiority.
The Three-Fifths Compromise, the apprehension and return of escaped fugitives (i.e. slaves, for the most part) and the regulation of the slave trade (forbidden for a period of twenty years, at least) were all factored into the Constitution, as noted in Module 4. These elements dealt with legal obligations of the states toward each other in regards to slavery, though the moral aspect was present in the debates.
Slavery had existed in the Old Southwest from its earliest days, and slaveholders brought their slaves with them as Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida transitioned from unorganized territories into states. A similar process occurred in the Old Northwest, in which slavery by statute was forbidden.
The displacement of Native American tribes from the lower Mississippi after the War of 1812 opened the way for white settlers to come into these areas. A hardier, versatile strain of cotton entering widespread cultivation accelerated the forced migration of enslaved blacks as well. Combined with Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin for processing, as discussed in Module 5, slavery was now a very lucrative economic endeavor.
Any hesitation white Southerners may have had about slavery’s morality essentially dissipated by the early 1800s. The Southern economic system justified its social utility as well, because land-owning whites regarded slavery as a prevention of a feared race war or a way to maintain the racial status quo. Even discussing changes to slavery was frowned upon and punished. Southern states banned anti-slavery literature from the mail within their borders (even justifying the opening and reading of the US mail) and made speaking out against slavery in public an offense punishable by law. Encouraging slave revolts could lead to charges of treason and the death penalty.
Slavery assumed a central place in Southern internal politics. As the nation’s politics democratized in the 1830s and 1840s, the South lagged behind. Southern states.
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Similar to The history of lynching in america (17)
1. The history of lynching in America
Historians estimate over 3500 deaths by lynching
1. Although race was at the center, not all lynching victims were black
2. Dates back to the American Revolution but really takes off after the Civil War
America 1865-1900-complex system of white supremacy
1. Legal aspects-deny the 14th amendment, no blacks on juries, unequal justice
2. Social mechanisms-defacto segregation-not by law, just by practice and custom
3. Rules for the color line-rules said that African Americans had to control themselves
a. Not look whites in the eye
b. Give way on the sidewalk
c. Come in the back door
d. No interracial sex or touching
e. No comments to white women
4. Political mechanism-disenfranchised, concerted effort to prevent blacks from voting
a. Literacy tests
b. Grandfather clauses
c. Poll taxes
d. Intimidation by KKK or White League
5. Economic mechanism-sharecropping and debt peonage, work your land and pay off your debt when the harvest
comes, you are paid in crops that you must sell or barter
Patterns of a Mob/Characteristics of Lynching
1. Extra-legal-outside of the law
2. Groups of 3 or more
3. Grotesque acts of murder-hanging, mutilation and dismemberment, body riddled with bullets, burned alive,
dragged to death
4. Motivated by ideas of justice, race, and tradition
5. Lynching is not the same thing as capital punishment, it is not just an execution that is held outside
6. The victim never gets a trial and the executioner is not an agent of justice
7. By 1882-most public executions have been outlawed
2. Why are specific people selected for lynching?
1. Being too saucy, etc.
2. Suspected of crimes
3. Related to actual suspect
Culture of Lynching is very specific
1. Accusation of a crime
a. Often no rape, either consensual and need to save face or hide pregnancy, extra paranoid about black
men and sudden movement could lead to accusation
b. Look for link to any blacks in the area because any black man could be held responsible
c. Character of the woman impacted this-upper class woman meant lynching, lower class meant private
lynching
d. Only 30% of men lynched were accused of rape, more likely to be business owners, voters, overly
confident
2. Newspaper story to get the word out
3. Recruitment of people to help with the rounding up and lynching of the accused
a. Self appointed posse of men would be forced to take the law into their own hands
b. Spontaneous, could be family members, law abiding citizens
c. Travel and send invitations to invite others
d. Not kept a secret from the law or the public
4. Hunt for the accused
a. Dual pursuit by law enforcement and lynch party
b. Went on for days, often used tracking dogs
c. Grab people out of their homes
d. Greater will to capture subject than the sheriff but would demand that the sheriff take them in
5. Festivities at the lynching
a. Affront to real authority-break into sheriff’s office and take suspect or threaten the sheriff until he
released the suspect
b. Parade through the town with the suspect
c. Hanged from a tree
d. In view of the court house
3. e. Usually naked with erotic overtones
f. Selection of site was deliberate-scene of the crime, outside of the courthouse, near water, near church,
etc.
g. Castration or Mutilation of the body to show dehumanization, 1/3 of victims in Georgia were castrated
h. Strip away your sexuality and manhood
i. Torture was prolonged and sadistic-slow burning, etc. overkill
j. Send message to all black men to reinforce the social code
k. Charred beyond recognition, no sympathy, contempt for the black body
l. Bodies often staged and dressed up after, top hat, painted face, props, obscene, ridiculous, light hearted
m. Public display of the body as a warning, often on a light pole for a week or two
6. The taking of souvenirs
a. Trophies for people, grotesque sketches in the paper, postcards sent through the mail, scrapbooks to
remember the event, pieces of clothing taken home as evidence, parts of the bodies kept as a proof of
attendance
b. Memorialize the event with professional photographers who would sell photos and postcards, became
part of the historical memory, pics included spectators and victims
Lynching is justified in several ways
1. Maintain the social order with whites as superior and supreme
2. Protect white womanhood
a. Myth of the black man as rapist, would degenerate into a wild beast and attack white women
b. Needed strong white society to keep him away from white women
c. White men extra paranoid about black men even touching white womenj
d. Expectation of white women was that they were pure, chaste, virginal, not spoken to in a sexual manner
if they were upper class women,
e. Black men went out of their way to avoid contact with any white women for fear of being charged or
accused
f. White women were assumed to have been forced if a relationship was uncovered, white men could not
understand why a white woman would willing engage in a physical relationship with a black man
g. White men are defined by their ability to check the animalistic nature of black men
h. Jim Crow=segregation=prevention of miscegenation
4. i. Lynching was more effective than Jim Crow because it sent a reminder to the entire race about keeping
away from white women
j. Lynching justified as a form of chivalry and code of honor to protect home/family/community honor