Anti-Lynching Movement

During the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, lynching or mob violence was a powerful tool that was used by commonplace citizens to enforce the social aspects of Jim Crow and to terrorize African American communities. In this sense, the victims of lynching were mostly black men. Although participants in the lynching rarely hid their identities, many of them were never arrested for their crimes. As a result, lynching of blacks continued to triumph. In the 1890s, African Americans and their white allies formed an anti-lynching movement. In an effort to publicize the mob violence, various strategies were used, including petitions, marches, demonstrations, and rallies. Also, plays, songs, visual art, films, and cartoons were used to emphasize the humanity of the victims and to educate the American public about the scope of the lynching. The main aim of the movement was to reprove lynching and to pressure the government to pass a federal anti-lynching law. Nonetheless, even though the movement never did achieve its legislative goal, the shameful history of the lynching of black Americans was given voice, and it brought enormous attention to lynching in the United States, especially in the South.

Many black women played a significant role in the anti-lynching movement on a number of fronts. For example, with the financial support of the Black Women's Club movement, journalist Ada B. Wells-Barnett was able to travel throughout the United States and went to Britain twice to speak out against lynching. Wells-Barnett published two anti-lynching pamphlets, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases (1892) and The Red Record (1895). In 1896, the National Association of Colored Women was founded. Its main focus was to denounce lynching and to develop [Page 162]anti-lynching strategies. Also, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was formed as a result of efforts to combat lynching.

Eventually in 1918, Representative Leonidas Dyer (R-Missouri) introduced in Congress his antilynching bill, which was known as the Dyer Bill. Initially, the NAACP did not support the passage of this bill because of the recommendations of Moorfield Storey, a lawyer and the first president of the NAACP. Storey eventually altered his position, and in 1919, the NAACP launched a campaign against lynching. The Dyer Bill was passed by the House of Representatives on January 26, 1922. Nonetheless, the very idea of protecting blacks from mob violence prompted a considerable number of white supremacist senators to use filibuster, which succeeded in preventing the bill from ever reaching a vote in the Senate.

Many efforts to pass similar legislation were not taken up again until the 1930s with the Costigan-Wagner Bill, which was proposed by Senators Edward P. Costigan (D-Colorado) and Robert Wagner (D-New York). Its aim was to make sure that sheriffs who failed to protect their prisoners from lynching mobs were punished. However, President Franklin D. Roosevelt refused to support this bill because he was afraid of losing the support of the white voters in the South and, as such, of losing the 1936 presidential election. Another anti-lynching bill, the Gavagan Bill, was passed in the House of Representatives in 1937 and again in 1940, but both times it died in the Senate because of Southern filibusters. Although a federal law making lynching a crime failed to pass, lynching had almost disappeared in the 1950s. Between 1950 and 1959, about six African Americans were lynched.

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