Lynching

White mobs are known to have lynched 3,386 African Americans during the period between Reconstruction and the passage of the civil rights acts. Lynching is defined as execution without due process of law, usually by hanging. In fact, the practice of lynching is more accurately described as a manifestation of the depravity and inhumanity of those Southern whites who participated in or condoned the vile practice and of the Northern whites who responded to the travesty of justice with apathy. Lynch mobs typically comprised members of all classes of a given Southern white community, including women, children, and prominent business and government and religious leaders, as well as the working class men with whom the savagery is traditionally associated. These mobs took part in the castration, burning alive, gouging of eyes, and hanging of anyone who was charged with a crime against whites, whether or not the accused was [Page 313]guilty of what was charged. The majority of the lynching victims were male; however, some African American women were lynched as well. The reported figure of 3,386 people lynched excludes the countless cases that went unreported.

Antilynching activism was, by necessity, an effort of persuasion. Popular belief, influenced by the white press, held that lynching was a justified response to the rape of white women by black men. But the cry of rape was meant to stifle the cry for liberation and freedom among blacks. Black activists worked diligently to redress this misconception and mobilize opposition to the injustice of lynching. Their empirical studies revealed that rape was not the most common charge against those who were lynched and that the justification for lynching—to protect the virtue of Southern white women—veiled its actual motivation, which was to crush black economic success, halt black activism, and perpetuate white dominance. Rape was charged in about a third of the cases, and those accusations were specious. In an appeal, Frederick Douglass asked how it was possible that men who had traditionally been left alone with white women and children might suddenly be prone to rape. And he asserted that black men convicted of crimes were sure to receive swift justice through due process of law, making the supposed need for “mob justice” unnecessary. For nearly 100 years, the tireless efforts of African Americans to persuade white Americans to help pass antilynching legislation were met primarily with opposition and apathy.

While activists continued in their efforts to eradicate lynching, the emerging discipline of American social science cast its light on lynching and turned tragedy into a popular topic of research. The intent of sociological, economic, and psychological theories to explain lynching resulted in what appears justification for the brutality. The compartmentalized views of the various disciplines further dislocated scholarship from concern with injustice, immorality, and murder. Lynching may be understood as a scapegoating ritual in which white communities projected their fears, repression, and evil onto innocent black men to purge themselves of sin and guilt. This insight directs attention to the essential question: How were Southern whites capable of such depravity in their action and Northern whites capable of such inaction? The obvious answer is that the enslavement of African Americans dehumanized white Americans.

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