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- Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
- Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
- Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze,
- Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
From About Lynching by Robert L. Zangrando
Lynching is the practice whereby a mob--usually several dozen or several hundred persons--takes the law into its own hands in order to injure and kill a person accused of some wrongdoing. The alleged offense can range from a serious crime like theft or murder to a mere violation of local customs and sensibilities. The issue of the victim's guilt is usually secondary, since the mob serves as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner. Due process yields to momentary passions and expedient objectives.
Vigilantism, or summary justice, has a long history, but the term lynch law originated during the American Revolution with Col. Charles Lynch and his Virginia associates, who responded to unsettled times by making their own rules for confronting Tories and criminal elements. "Lynching" found an easy acceptance as the nation expanded. Raw frontier conditions encouraged swift punishment for real, imagined, or anticipated criminal behavior. Historically, social control has been an essential aspect of mob rule.
Opponents of slavery in pre-Civil War America and cattle rustlers, gamblers, horse thieves, and other "desperadoes" in the South and Old West were nineteenth-century targets. From the 1880s onward, however, mob violence increasingly reflected white America's contempt for various racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. African-Americans especially, and sometimes Native Americans, Latinos, Jews, Asian immigrants, and European newcomers, felt the mob's fury. In an era when racist theories prompted "true Americans" to assert their imagined superiority through imperialist ventures, mob violence became the domestic means of asserting white dominance. Occasionally, this complemented the profit motive, when the lynching of a successful black farmer or immigrant merchant opened new economic opportunities for local whites and simultaneously reaffirmed everyone's "place" in the social hierarchy. Sometimes lynching was aimed at unpopular ideas: labor union organizers, political radicals, critics of America's role in World War I, and civil rights advocates were targets.
African-Americans suffered grievously under lynch law.
victims
Victims pre 1900
- Julia and Frazier Baker (1898)
- Joe Coe (1891)
- Pancho Daniel (1858)
- Michael Green (1878)
- John Wesley Heath (1884)
- Sam Hose (1899)
- Steve Long (1868)
- Francis McIntosh (1836)
- Big Nose George Parrott (1881)
- Henry Plummer (1864)
- Josefa Segovia (1851)
- Bill Sketoe (1864)
- Henry Smith (1893)
- Joseph and Hyrum Smith (1844)
- Joseph Standing (1879)
- Joseph Vermillion (1889)
- Ellen Watson (1889)
- Samuel Scott (1860)
- Stephen Williams (1894)
- Eliza Woods (1886)
Victims past 1900
- George Armwood (1933)
- Roy Belton (1920)
- Will Brown (1919)
- William Burns (1907)
- Cordie Cheek (1933)
- Anthony Crawford (1916)
- Michael Donald (1981)
- Wesley Everest (1919)
- Leo Frank (1915)
- Raymond Gunn (1931)
- Ed Johnson (1906)
- King Johnson (1911)
- Olli Kinkkonen (1918)
- Frank Little (1917)
- Jim Miller (1909)
- Laura and L.D. Nelson (1911)
- Mack Charles Parker (1959)
- Ell Persons (1917)
- Robert Prager (1918)
- Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith (1930)
- Lamar Smith (1955)
- Emmett Till (1955)
- Mary Turner (1918)
- Jesse Washington (1916)
- Matthew Williams (1931)
Incidents
- Reno Brothers Gang (Indiana, 1868)
- Chinese massacre of 1871 (Los Angeles)
- Wilmington Massacre (1898)
- East St. Louis Riot (1917)
- Omaha Race Riot of 1919
- Duluth lynchings (1920)
- Tulsa race riot (1921)
- Rosewood massacre (1923)
related projects
resources
The Anti Lynching Movement
From Wikipedia
The anti-lynching movement was a civil rights movement in the United States that aimed to eradicate the practice of lynching. Lynching was used as a tool to repress African Americans.[1] The anti-lynching movement reached its height between the 1890s and 1930s. The movement was composed mainly of African Americans who tried to persuade politicians to put an end to the practice, but after the failure of this strategy, they pushed for anti-lynching legislation. African American women helped in the formation of the movement and a large part of the movement was composed of women's organizations.
The first anti-lynching movement was characterized by black convention meets, which were organized in the immediate aftermath of individual incidents. The movement gained wider national support in the 1890s. During this period, two organizations spearheaded the movement - the Afro-American League (AAL) and the National Equal Rights Council (NERC).
Ida B. Wells was a significant figure in the anti-lynching movement. After the lynchings of her three friends, she condemned the lynchings in the newspapers Free Speech and Headlight, both owned by her. Because of her anti-lynching campaigning she received death threats from racist rioters.
In 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was established. The formation of this organization was a significant event in the history of the anti-lynching movement. The NAACP formed a special committee in 1916 in order to push for anti-lynching legislation and to enlighten the public about lynching.
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