Lynching

INTRODUCTION

Southern trees bear strange fruit,

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,

Strange fruit hanging from the popular treesвЂ¦Ð²Ð‚¦Ð²Ð‚¦.

This is part of a poem written by Lewis Allen in 1939. It explains some of what I

will be stating in my report. Lynching is to execute without the process of law, especially

to hang by a mob. This was usually done because of hatred and prejudice. Lynching

occurred throughout the United States, it was not a sectional crime. Lynching found an

easy acceptance as the nation expanded, but it still didn’t make it right.

African American literature became broader in the later half of the twentieth

century, lynching, like slavery came as an actuality of race. African Americans were

hung because some whites thought that they were in the wrong doing. Many were

accused of rape only about one-third of the time, the most accusation was murder.

Hanging was the most common form of lynching but some victims were beaten, burned,

stabbed, shot, or slowly tortured to death. The total number of black lynching victims,

was more than two and one-half times as many as the number

As you can see, African Americans have been through a lot to get to where we are

today. It is very important that you be proud of who you are and where you came from.

So listen and pay attention closely. As you are placed in your brother’s and sister’s

shoes as they swung in the southern breeze, from the popular trees.

THE HISTORY OF LYNCHING

Lynching was later shortened with the term “lynch law”, which originated with

Col. Charles Lynch. It was a punishment for real, imagined, or anticipated criminal

behavior. Mob violence increasingly reflected white’s racial ethnic groups. Wherever

someone was being lynched there was a racial riot. African Americans suffered

dramatically under the lynch law.

Lynchers kept burning and torturing to excite the festive atmosphere of killers and people who just came to watch. White families brought their small children to watch. Some people even sold tickets to announce the lynching sites. Also, mobs cut off

different parts of the body for souvenirs. Sometimes the mob has a leader and sometimes

it doesn’t. The leading participants would wear mask. When lynching was planned,

sometimes the leaders planned it weeks in advance so that it could be advertised in the

local newspapers. Any black person who enough white people suspected or considered

guilty of any offence was subjected to murderous punishment. What a horrible site that

would have been to watch.

Lynching didn’t just come out of nowhere; it actually goes back into the times of slavery. Many were accused of rape, but most of the time murder. Others were accused of homicide, robbery, insulting whites, and other “offenses”. The total number of lynching victims was more than two and one-half times as many as number of whites put to death by lynching.

THE IMPACT ON AFRICAN AMERICANS

In the decades of the nineteenth century, the lynching of blacks in the south became a method by whites to terrorize blacks and to maintain the white supremacy. In the south of the 1880 to 1940 people feared and hated the Negroes, so the came up with the “lynch law” for social control. Lynching opened public murders or individuals suspected of crime, and carried out less by mobs. Lynching is a criminal practice which resembles the United States. Therefore, lynching was a cruel combination of racism and sadism. Many whites believed that Negroes could only be controlled by fears. To the whites lynching was looked at as just controlling.

Lynching opened public murders or individuals suspected of crime, and carried out less by mobs. Mobs lynching was by hanging or shooting. Also many were by burning at the stake, maiming, dismemberment, castration, and other brutal methods of torture. Causes were assigned by whites that the lynching of Blacks included everything from major crimes to minor offenses. In many cases, Blacks were lynched for no reason at all other than race