The History of Lynching

The lynching of African Americans was oddly brutal and often took place in front of an "audience," a crowd of onlookers who cheered on the lynchers. Those who were being lynched were not just hung. They were nearly often tortured, burned, whipped, beaten, shot, dismembered and castrated.

Although lynching was virtually carried out in the southern where fair supremacists ruled, the matrimony did little to stop these illegal, vigilante killings. nigh Americans, mostly African Americans, were outraged by the lynchings, notably Ida B. rise up who actively spoke out against the lynching practices of her time. Her views were published in several newspapers, and she also wrote a series of pamphlets against lynching, notably grey Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, which was published in 1892. Wells also courageously started the first anti-lynching campaign in the United States after three of her friends were lynched. However, for the most part, the lynching of African Americans, largely in the southwestward and border states, was institutionalized into the framework of American society and very few people actively protested the violence.

It should be noted that there were some lynchings in the North and West as well, save nine-tenths of the lynchings took place in the mystifying South. The reasons given for lynching ranged from minor offenses allegedly committed by African Americans (disputes with a white man, attempting to

After the Civil War, African Americans were given the rights of citizens to get an education, to repugn economically, to vote, to hold office. When African Americans started to have some success at staking their rightful places in American society (basically in the South where most lived), many southern whites grew increasely resentful and fearful. Attempts to indue African Americans failed, and for many years the white South openly flouted the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. As Bailey observed, wholesale disenfranchisement of African Americans was achieved by intimidation, fraud, trickery and violence. "Among various underhanded schemes were the literacy tests, unfairly administered by whites to the advantage of illiterate whites.

In the eyes of white southerners, the goal of unobjectionable Supremacy fully justified dishonorable devices."

Of the political embolden of impoverished blacks maintained

Nevertheless, it was the lynching of Emmett Till that paved the way for the neo Civil Rights struggle in the United States which eventually make lynching a punishable crime, and brought a greater rhythm of rights to African Americans, and made them lesser victims of social control.

Zinn, Howard. A People's level of the United States (New York: Harper Perennial, 1995), p. 198.

Cutler, James E. Lynch Law. (New York, 1905). p. 1.

The southern white oligarchy used its economic

Lynching was sometimes carried out by individuals, but most often by organized groups and the most ill-famed of these was the Ku Klux Klan which was founded in 1866 in Tennessee. These organizations grew as a reaction to the increasing "leniency" afforded African Americans in the Reconstruction period. The Klan, known as the "invisible empire," routinely flogged, mutilated and murdered African Americans in order to keep white control of the South. As Bailey pointed out, "in one Louisiana parish in 1868, the whites in two years killed or wounde
Order your essay at Orderessay and get a 100% original and high-quality custom paper within the required time frame.