The History of Lynchings in the United States between 1882 and 1930 - Research Paper Example

Running Head: Lynching A Woman’s Voice: The Fight of Ida Wells and other Female Activists against Lynching in the United s between 1882 and 1930A Position Paper Name Course Title Name of Professor Date of Submission Introduction Between 1882 and 1930 in American South, lynching took countless lives but changed the notion of gender racially. The traditional lynching narrative presented in popular newspapers explained lynching as castigation for the suspected sexual harassments of White women by African-American men. These reports depicted White men as defenders of White women against Black men, the alleged barbaric thugs or black brutes who played as threats to genuine, White masculinity. White females came out as submissive, needy, generally muted sufferers (Cimbala & Miller, 1997). This traditional narrative, for all its tragedy, excluded the White males, White females, and black females who were also lynching victims and took for granted the dynamic part of White women in supporting or opposing mob violence. Moreover, Black women were completely absent in the mainstream lynching narrative (Logan, 1999). However, as this paper argues, Black women belonging to the middle class, headed by Ida B. Wells, became the most expressive and bold detractors of lynching. The work of Ida Wells against lynching provokes a re-evaluation of the extraordinary influence of Black women on structured campaign against lynching. Ida’s revolutionary analysis of the politics of race and gender and her worldwide exposure crusade signified a radical deviation to the public role of Black women. It initiated the presence of feminization within American reform that oriented its critical tendencies into a more cultivated type of women’s position (Logan, 1999). The campaign of Black women against lynching by the 1920s, even though remained public, was influenced more powerfully by sexuality and gendered practices of women’s society, evangelicalism, charity, and the expression of motherhood and womanhood (Loewenberg & Bogin, 1976), all uniquely dissimilar from the prior campaign of Ida. The lynchings of Will Stewart, Calvin McDowell, and Thomas Moss in 1892 were not an issue for their uncommonness: in 1892, hundreds of Blacks were murdered by furious mobs for suspected crimes against White people (Brundage, 1997, 295). The site of the lynchings in Tennessee was not noteworthy; seventeen Black people from Tennessee were lynched in 1892 and forty-six Blacks had died in a race disturbance in Memphis in 1866 (Brundage, 1997, 295). The three casualties took particular relevance mainly due to their influence on Ida Wells as a young writer. She was well acquainted with the three men. Infuriated by the death of her comrades, Ida mustered her great gifts and efforts to fight the injustices of mob hostilities; hence started the powerful union of an intelligent person and a cause. A child of slave parents, Ida was born of July 1862 in Mississippi. She became a teacher and later on transferred to Memphis, where she took part in the vibrant cultural affairs of the privileged Black people (Cimbala & Miller, 1997, 99). There she could have lived traditionally but for her outlook and a chain of occurrences. The first episode took place on May 1884, when an attendant told Ida to leave the train. She declined and filed a suit against the railroad. In 1889, Ida became an editor and associate of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight (Cimbala & Miller, 1997, 99). Becoming a permanent member of the press, she kept on writing radical commentaries, which often reappeared in other Black editorial pages under her pseudonym, Iola (Cimbala & Miller, 1997, 100). Later on she became popular as a dynamic, radical, and unyielding opponent of injustice. The lynching of Ida’s three comrades concentrated her fury on the epidemic of mob hostilities. Yet, lynching was not an unfamiliar matter to either the Black people or her. The year prior, she had produced a commentary of recognition for Black people in Kentucky, who had burned down a municipality after a lynching incident there (Brundage, 1997, 62). Ida could barely be ignorant of the intensifying threat of racial aggression—countless Black Southerners were being murdered since the Reconstruction. Killing by mobs had supplanted flogging as tool to control disobedient Blacks. The slavery tradition had functioned remarkably to entrench not only slaves but all Black people into different forms of false free will (Brundage, 1997, 62). When the institution of slavery was abolished, White Southerners quickly tried to come up with other forms of racial control. The need of the White Southerners for a new kind of slavery was momentarily frustrated by Republican regime in the province and the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments (Gunning, 1996). Still, according to Markowitz (2004), in several regions, hostilities immediately became the solution for the political empowerment and freedom of African-Americans, just like in the disturbance in Memphis in 1866. White Southerners, by the 1890s, gained independence from the local Republican administrations and had started to develop a caste structure founded on authorized domination. That structure resembles a three-pronged chair with violence, discrimination, and exclusion as its foundations; the lynching of nearly 2,000 Blacks between 1882 and 1902 gives evidence to the dependence of the White society on hostility to conquer Black opposition to exclusion and marginalization (Brundage, 1997, 73). White Southerners of that period, similar to the slave owners prior to them, were endowed with principles. They not merely aspired to subjugate Black people; they also aspired to know their deeds were validated. They had taken over a convenient ideological justification for injustice: the Black inferiority dogma. Strengthened by claims from American imperialists and Social Darwinists, the falsehoods of White superiority unearthed a strong position and became even more profoundly embedded in the North and South. Exclusion and the denial of the right to vote required justification in a democratic rule; murder and denial of justice needed even more sound justifications (Bapbapo, 1894). In a paradoxical misrepresentation of facts, even though White males had been sexually harassing Black females with immunity for at least a century, the African-American male was portrayed as an evil creature who could be stopped from assaulting White females only by severe actions. The accusation of ‘sexual violence’ justified murder, mutilation, and torture to the White people of the North and South (Gunning, 1996). Only a handful of White people were blatant enemies of lynching in the 1890s (Markowitz, 2004). Blacks were faster to condemn the law of lynching. They realized that, regardless of its purpose, cruelty was the fortification of the new caste structure that supplanted slavery as a pool of oppression and cheap labor (Markowitz, 2004). Many African-American leaders, according to The Spectator (1894b), understood that while slave owner’s lashing had thwarted genuine liberty for any African American, the capacity of White people to kill Blacks with immunity restricted all African-American liberty after emancipation. Hence, lynching was a subject constantly reappearing in the campaigns and speeches of African-American groups and leaders all over the United States. The Black Convention campaign, prior to the Civil War, had surfaced in the North to oppose slavery and to raise the position of emancipated Blacks (Markowitz, 2004). Meetings were conducted in the North and South after the war and racial hostility was added on their list of issues. African-American newspapers and associations like the Afro-American League condemned lynching (Gunning, 1996). All leading personalities openly denounced mob hostility. The unison of demands for justice was strident and determined—but remains disregarded. Sexual violence, according to Cimbala and Miller (1997), was viewed as a lot more savage than lynching. Quite dominant was the belief that lynching stemmed from sexual violence that even African-American representatives usually did not question it. Many considered an admonition of sexual violence with petitions to allow the justice system perform its duty; they only demanded that judges and board of adjudicators, instead of mobs, determine culpability and exact punishment (Bapbapo, 1894). Ida afterward declared that prior to the Memphis lynchings in 1892, “Like many another person who had read of lynching in the South, I had accepted the idea meant to be conveyed—that although lynching was irregular and contrary to law and order, unreasoning anger over the terrible crime of rape led to the lynching; that perhaps the brute deserved death anyhow” (Gunning, 1996, 19). The executions of Stewart, McDowell, and Moss exposed her to the harsh reality and encouraged her to inform other people. Neither of the three was charged of sexual assault. All were connected to the People’s Grocery, which was launched across the avenue from a shop managed by W.H. Barret, a White trader. Resentful of this competition, Barret was antagonistic and inflamed several vicious confrontations (Brundage, 1997). According to Gunning (1996), he afterward persuaded a high jury to prosecute the authorities of the People’s Grocery for opening a public disturbance. After a number of furious Blacks employed fierce arguments at a public assembly, Barret convinced a judge to release warrants of arrests for two of his opponents for working against Whites. Enraged and disheartened, Ida produced several commentaries for the Free Speech and advised that African-American people relocate to the west to look for justice (Loewenberg & Bogin, 1976). When more or less 2,000 Blacks followed her advice, several White industries endured the economic effect, particularly the streetcar industry. Its proprietors ordered the newspaper to advise Blacks to go back to the streetcars. Ida determinedly declined their demands (Loewenberg & Bogin, 1976). She also started to study lynchings, and found out that very few of lynching victims were charged of sexual assault. Furthermore, lots of instances the accusations of sexual assault were unfounded. Simply talking to a White woman in an evocative manner may be classified ‘attempted rape’ (Gunning, 1996, 81). Ida also discovered that a lot more intentional sexual contacts took place between Black men and White women than White men would admit; the unraveling of these relationships often raised allegations of sexual violence (Markowitz, 2004). Ida, in a commentary for Free Speech that was publicized on May 1892, she boldly proclaimed what White men detested to read about. She said, “Nobody in this section of the country believes the old thread bare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful, they will over-reach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women” (Cimbala & Miller, 1997, 102). The White community was enraged. One commentary indicated it was the obligation of the White people “to tie the wretch who utters these calumnies to a stake at the intersection of Main and Madison Sts., brand him in the forehead with a hot iron and perform upon him a surgical operation with a pair of tailor’s shears” (Loewenberg & Bogin, 1976, 254). Ida’s contempt for conciliation and cautious expression may have restricted her contribution as an organizational head, but it made her spoken and written arguments persuasive. Her male co-workers and journalists were particularly captivated by the disparity between her vivid accounts of violence and her ‘feminine elegance’ (Logan, 1999). Not many activists have roused as many remarks on their outward appearance. Accounts of her English talks, according to The Literary Digest (1894a), suggest that listeners were frequently emotionally affected as she narrated the gruesome facts of lynchings. In her speeches she always emphasized that lynching was not about sexual violence but about control. She also stressed that majority of White activists were either muted on the subject or silenced their disapprovals with denials about the atrocities of sexual violence (Cimbala & Miller, 1997). Her claims persuaded many key British personalities of the necessity to fight lynching in order to inform and open the eyes of White people to its injustices. Ida was not remarkable for fighting lynching, but she was the single African-American head to make it the center of her attempts for a very long duration of time. Maybe lynching had affected her more emotionally and mentally than majority of African-Americans belonging to the upper- and middle-class. Similar to most of the Southerner critics of lynching, Booker T. Washington publicized condemnations of lynching that exercise quite controlled rhetoric (The Voice of the Negro, 1904). The power of his concern for lynching wavered but afterward became steadier with the presence Monroe Work. Work had been collecting lynching information and data, and in 1912, he started circulating the yearly Tuskegee Lynching Reports (Brundage, 1997). Mailed to Southern heads and newspapers, according to Markowitz (2004), the accounts became broadly recognized as factual and gave power to Southern groups protesting against biracial lynching. White liberals had turned out to be fairly unworried about racial interactions, possibly partly because of the optimistic, appeasing rhetoric of Booker Washington, who had been the popular ‘race leader’ (Gunning, 1996, 96). Several Blacks, particularly such scholars, like W.E.B. Du Bois, had been claiming that realities were more terrible than Washington depicted them and that prompt radical measures were required. Other types of reforms had absorbed majority of White activists during the initial phase of the Progressive period (Gunning, 1996). Yet, the Springfield riot presented the ultimate proof that racial hostility was becoming the similar form of impairment on the country’s values and reputation that the institution of slavery had once been (Logan, 1999). The disturbance was the ignition, but Ida had provided the inspiration. The exposure her campaign obtained at home and overseas contributed to making lynching a problem that cannot be overlooked or justified anymore. Always hectic and active, Ida took part in numerous associations, such as the Republican Party. Within the years before her demise, she embarked on her autobiography and competed for the Senate. Her furious struggle against injustices was finally silenced on her demise on March 1931 (Loewenberg & Bogin, 1976, 253). That fight had compelled the White society to face the narratives that justified lynching. With the cruel truths of mob hostility exposed, White activisms from all provinces united with the Black clamors for justice. Conclusions Ida Wells initiated her calling in public affairs with an opposition against lynching that supported Blacks men as ‘genuine men’ and laid bare the distorting impacts of the principle of womanhood for all females, particularly its racially prejudiced defense for the execution of alleged African-American rapists. She finally retired from her calling in 1930 (Loewenberg & Bogin, 1976) with an assertion that Black women deserved a position in the public life of their countries and communities. In spite of the numerous hindrances and a great deal of apathy, her philosophy and literature deepened American discourses of gender, power, and race. The capability of Clarence Thomas to portray his Supreme Court affirmation procedures in 1991 as a “high tech lynching” (Markovitz, 2004, 111) was achievable partly because Ida built a strong cultural account of victimization from the shocking descriptions of lynching narrated by the White people almost a century ago. Personally, the reputation of Ida as an independent woman, and a devout justice activist enabled her to claim remarkable levels of independence and assistance for activism in a period when majority of White women were supposed to dedicate their selves to race, domestic duties, and family, through domesticity, maternalism, and marriage. In the hot-tempered environment of Memphis, ‘end of the century’ London, and Progressive period (Cimbala & Miller, 1997), Ida tried voicing her concerns and becoming known as a servant of God and the people in the most general term, attempts that at times needed violence and emotional speeches. The outcomes of her effort make up an influential and unusually American mix of politics, drama, and faith and an incomparable episode in the history of the United States. References Primary Sources n.a. (1894a) English Feeling Upon America’s Lynchings. The Literary Digest, 9(11), 8. n.a. (1894b). Lynching in America and English Interference. The Spectator, 73(3450), 169-70. n.a. (1904). Booker T. Washington on Lynching. The Voice of the Negro, 1(4), 166-67. Bapbapo (1894). Lynch-Law in the United States. The Spectator, 73(3454), 303. Secondary Sources Brundage, W. (1997). Under Sentence of Death: Lynching in the South. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Cimbala, P. & Miller, R. (1997). Against the Tide: Women Reformers in American Society. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. Gunning, S. (1996). Race, Rape, and Lynching: The Red Record of American Literature, 1890-1912. New York: Oxford University Press. Loewenberg, B. & Bogin, R. (1976). Black Women in Nineteenth-Century American Life: Their Words, Their Thoughts, Their Feelings. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Logan, S. (1999). We Are Coming: The Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Black Women. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Markowitz, J. (2004). Legacies of Lynching: Racial Violence and Memory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Read More