Legacy of lynching still with us
From the late 1800s to the early 1940s, there were more than 5,000 recorded lynchings in the United States, the vast majority committed against African-American men.
Though the definition of a lynching is “murder by mob,” many in the crowds were observers of the acts that could include torture. Lynchings were often captured in photographs or even filmed.
It is this spectacle surrounding lynching that Associate Professor of History Amy Wood studies. “Human cruelty warrants explanation,” said Wood, who is the author of Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940. “We need to look at how cruelty became socially acceptable.”
For her book, Wood poured over collections of lynching photographs. “Some of these were gruesome, gruesome murders,” she said. “And you wonder why people would want to capture these.”
When looking back at history, Wood said it is important to remember the mores of the day. The communal witnessing of a death was commonplace in turn-of-the-century America, and officials encouraged attendance at public executions. “The public hangings of criminals were meant to serve as a deterrent against crime,” she said. “Watching hangings was very much part of the popular consciousness. It wasn’t until executions were pulled behind the walls of prisons that we see a shift in the visibility of death.”
As official executions retreated from the public eye during the early part of the 20th century, the stark differences between executions and lynchings became more apparent. “Lynching was never just about punishing a crime, it was about exerting a power relationship, usually an imagined white supremacy over a black population.”
Anti-lynching groups, such as the NAACP, grew in strength as the nation distanced itself from lynching. “These photos and films that were taken for posterity became weapons used by the anti-lynching groups. People became more and more repulsed with lynchings, seeing them as backward and archaic.”
Ever since 1918, legislators have tried to pass federal anti-lynching legislation, yet all efforts died in Congress. The last effort was in 1968. Lynching itself did not wholly disappear, but the rhetoric shifted.
“In the 1970s and 1980s, you see the concept of ‘hate crimes’ absorbing lynching,” Wood said. “What defined lynching historically was largely political. But people tend to identify this form of racist violence as a hate crime today.”
The act of lynching as a form of intimidation has been replaced by what scholars call ‘legal lynching,’ in reference to the racial disparities in terms of how the death penalty functions. “If you are looking for a legacy of racial lynching, then look at the racial disparity in the legal system, and the number of African-American men facing capital punishment,” she said.
Wood cited cases such as the recent Trevon Martin shooting in Florida, and the Jena Six incident in 2006, which saw racial tensions in Louisiana erupt in violence. “You saw nooses being hanged by the school as a form of intimidation of the black students and fires being set, but only after a white student was injured were arrests made. The legacy of lynching is still with us.”
Incarceration rates are another form of “racial lynching,” said Wood. “We have the highest incarceration rates in the world, and, African-Americans are disproportionately incarcerated.” She added that statistics show that black defendants are far more likely to be convicted and sentenced to death if their alleged victims are white, where the conviction rate of white defendants against black victims is decidedly lower. “If anything still survives from lynching, it is this odd idea that a white life is more valuable than a black one.”
Looking into the penal system and penal reform will be the next focus of Wood’s studies. “After studying violence for so long, I’m interested in the idea of compassion, and what role the government has played in creating a more compassionate society,” she said. “When studying this as a social and political principle, one might ask, ‘What group does society see as least deserving of compassion?’ Generally, that answer has been criminals. So in order to study the social role of compassion, I’m turning to things like the development of criminology and penal reform in the early 20thcentury.”
Retrieved from: mediarelations.illinoisstate.edu/report/1213/sept18/lynching.asp