XPost: alt.global-warming, alt.impeach.bush, alt.non.racism
XPost: alt.politics
From: here@home
On Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:32:17 -0500, "Ouroboros_Rex"
wrote:
> How many 'Polacks' were lynched?
Next to slavery, lynching is thought to be the most racist aspect of
American history. A lynching museum exists in Milwaukee that focuses
exclusively on white-on-black lynchings. In 2000, a traveling exhibit
of white-on-black lynching photos came to American’s biggest cities.
The lynching exhibit received favorable attention from the major media
including the Washington Post, New York Times and CNN. According to
CNN correspondent Maria Hinojosa, “All photos show voiceless victims
of hate; men and women stripped, lashed, beaten, burned and hung.
Often their only crime was one they could not control -- the color of
their skin.” She ends her review of the display by claiming, “The
exhibit is a harsh reminder of America's responsibility for a horrible
chapter of racial hatred.”
This is the official view of lynching. That it was exclusively whites
who carried it out against innocent blacks. It is portrayed as a
viscous act of officially sanctioned white racism against innocent
blacks, designed to keep “Negroes in their place.”
In fact, we know quite a bit about lynching and the facts indicate it
was far from a racist design practiced by whites to terrorize blacks.
From its founding in 1914 until the early 1930’s. The New Republic ran
an annual editorial listing the number of lynchings in the United
States for each year. The NAACP’s first big crusade was against
lynching and they frequently publicized statistics. The Chicago
Tribune also covered lynching extensively.
Robert Zangrando, cites statistics for the period of 1882–1968 in his
book, The NAACP Crusade Against Lynching. Using figures from the
Tuskegee Institute he finds a total of 4,742 for the 87-year period,
of which 1,297 victims were white and 3,445 were black. Even though
over a quarter of those lynched were white, this does not stop
lynching from being described almost entirely in racist terms.
Here are some examples of the charge:
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall in Revolt Against Chivalry (1993) writes:
“Lynching functioned as a mode of repression because it was arbitrary
and exemplary, aimed not at one individual but at blacks as a group.
White supremacy was maintained … and lynching worked effectively to
create a general milieu of fear that discouraged individual and
organized black assertiveness.”
Donald L. Grant writes in The Anti-Lynching Movement (1975): “Lynching
… became the most effective method of maintaining the racial caste
system which developed after Reconstruction. This caste system
relegated Blacks to the position of a conquered people and made it
possible for whites to receive the economic, psychological, and sexual
tribute which they had been conditioned by slavery to accept as their
due.”
Robert Zangrado in The NAACP Crusade Against Lynching, 1909-1950
(1980) claims: “It was the indiscriminate use of violence that gave
the mob its real utility as an instrument of intimidation and control
in a racist society.”
An October 25, 1992 Los Angeles Times/Washington Post story on the
murder of Medgar Evers claims: “between 1881 and 1966, there were
4,709 lynchings in the United States, most of them racially motivated
killings of Southern blacks . . . .”
The claim that lynching was primarily an act of racism against blacks
is almost never supported with evidence. In fact, both whites and
blacks carried out lynchings. Almost all cases of lynchings were
carried out not because of race, but because of viscous crimes –
crimes often perpetrated by blacks.
In Lynching – History and Analysis (1995) Wichita State University
professor Dwight Murphey refutes the case that lynchings were largely
a result white of racism. People often resorted to lynching because
the authorities were a long ride away, and President Andrew Jackson
himself sanctioned the practice when he recommended to Iowa settlers
that they lynch murderers. Likewise in Kansas, a New York Tribune
correspondent reported in 1858 that "[t]here is a very general
disposition to pass over the hopelessly useless forms of Territorial
law and corrupt Federal courts, and try these parties (i.e.
horse-thieves) by Lynch law."
Prof. Murphey notes that contrary to current assumptions, blacks also
formed lynch gangs, mostly to lynch blacks, but sometimes to lynch
whites. In Clarksdale, Tennessee, blacks lynched a white in 1914 for
raping a black woman. The authorities later ruled that this was
justifiable homicide. In 1872 in Chicot County, Arkansas, armed blacks
broke three whites out of jail and shot them to death.
Nor was lynching by any means a sport in which any black was fair
game. In Tennessee in 1911, four white men hanged a black man and his
two daughters for no good reason. This outrage roused the ire of the
community; the whites were tried and two were hanged.
It is true that blacks were lynched more often than whites, but, as is
the case today, blacks were also more likely to commit violent crimes,
so even if lynching had been entirely race-blind, the number of
executions would still have been racially unbalanced. Prof. Murphey
cites black homicide rates in 1921-22 for Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis
and New Orleans per 100,000 that were 102.2, 97.2, 116.9 and 46.7
respectively. This corresponded to white rates of 15.0, 28.0, 29.6,
and 8.4. According to Murphey, “These figures are eloquent testimony
that serious crime was the primary provocation for lynching.” Even
W.E.B. DuBois wrote disparagingly of "a class of black criminals,
loafers, and ne'er-do-wells who are a menace to their fellows, both
black and white."
Lynching exists today, though it is rarely called lynching. Prof.
Murphey’s book cites some then-recent incidents such as a July 13,
1993 report of an attempted lynching of a man in Washington state who
had recently been let out of prison after serving a mere 18 months for
raping a little girl. During the Los Angeles riots of 1992, blacks
lynched several whites, Asians and Hispanics. An October 1993 report
tells of a “scab” worker being killed by a sniper for “working in West
Virginia coal fields during a strike.” Prof. Murphey also reminds us
that for years, the United States and the world at large supported the
African National Congress (ANC) in its drive for power in South
Africa, while fully aware of the hundreds, if not thousands, of people
lynched by the ANC through “necklacing,” where a gas filled tire was
put around the victim’s neck and lit on fire.
One of the worst cases of modern lynching was a 1992-gang attack on a
young white woman, Missy McLauchlin in Charleston, South Carolina. The
victim was abducted, raped, tortured and murdered by five blacks who
had made a pact to kill a white woman for “400 years of oppression.”
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