Since the inception of the Ku Klux Klan in 1867, lynching was a violentmeans in which whites, executed blacks and others primarily for the sake ofmaintaining white supremacy. Lynching also served as punishment for disobedientslaves.
“Any black person in America at that time was subject to evil at thehands of white supremacist,” said Don Hernandez, an Southern Universityprofessor of history.
Defined as, “the execution of a person without due process of law,especially by a mob,” lynching was only the end result of intimidation. In somecases, blacks were taken from their homes, stripped and sometimes burned inaddition to being lynched. This was a result of menial crimes, or crimes thatblacks were perceived to be guilty of due to race.
“Black Americans didn’t have to commit crimes, they just had to beblack, and that was reason enough for Whites to go after them,” Hernandez said.
Though there was a slight decline in lynching during the First WorldWar, it quickly increased again due to the stresses of racism, political andeconomic tension, but most of all, to the ethnocentric attitudes of the whiterace.
In 1898, Ida Wells, editor of Memphis newspaper Free Speech, wrote aletter to United States President William McKinley requesting that he intervenein the lynching of blacks in southern states.
“For nearly 20 years lynching crimes have been committed and permittedby this Christian nation,” Wells wrote. “Nowhere in the civilized world savethe United States of America do men, possessing all civil and political power,go out in bands of 50 to 5,000 to hunt down, shoot hang or burn to death asingle individual, unarmed and absolutely powerless.”
Statistics show that nearly 10,000 American citizens have been lynchedin the past 20 years. To our appeals for justice, the stereotyped reply hasbeen the government could not interfere in a state matter.”
Wells set out to do an in-depth investigation into lynching in 1884.She found that 728 black men and women had been lynched by white mobs. She alsodiscovered that two-thirds of the deaths were due to meager offenses such aspublic drunkenness and shoplifting.
In January of 1901, George Henry White, who was the last freed slave toserve in U.S. Congress and the only black in the U.S. House of Representatives,proposed a bill that would have outlawed the lynching of any American citizen,however, White’s bill was easily defeated.
By the 1930s approximately 4,000 blacks had been lynched nationwide.Most occurrences were in the south.
In Louisiana alone, 335 blacks were reportedly lynched from 1882-1968.
In 1935, another attempt was made by Robert Wagner and Edward Costiganto create legislation that would punish offenders for lynching. The Costigan-Wagner bill was notsuccessful due to a lack of support by President Roosevelt and strong southernopposition.
“Congress over the past 100 years, has passed bills attempting toregulate that type of behavior,” Hernandez said.
Currently, U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, D-La., is attempting to have aresolution passed in the Senate that would grant apologies to the nationalblack community for failing to enact anti-lynching laws.
Hernandez felt that the passing of a resolution for the reasons ofgranting apologies lacks purpose.
“What purpose is that going to serve?” Hernandez asked. “We are stillasking for reparations. We need concrete things to get us out of hell. Passsome bills that help poor black communities. Pass some bills that will provideus with additional funding for education.”
