Training run on West Sands beach in St Andrews. Where  the movie ‘Chariots of fire’. was filmed

The first Blacks arrived in America in chains. Then there was  civil war, ending in 1865, and emancipation followed. But racism did not end. The entire generation of White Americans were raised on the Christian belief that they were superior. Despite losing the Civil war, the South resented the anti christian position of giving the same right to blacks, whom they referred to with the N word. In their struggle to adjust to the new ways of this astonishing concept, so clearly at odds with Gods Natural Order, racism, as it was called, the majority of Southerners supported their own brand of  justice. An Apartheid system that survived long after emancipation.

The most telling example is the practice of lynching.

There are three primary sources for lynching statistics, none of which cover the entire time period of lynching in the United States. Before 1882, no reliable statistics are available. In 1882, the Chicago Tribune began to systematically record lynchings. Then, in 1892, Tuskegee Institute began a systematic collection and tabulation of lynching statistics, primarily from newspaper reports. Finally, in 1912, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People started an independent record of lynchings. The numbers of lynchings from each source vary slightly, with the Tuskegee Institute’s figures being considered “conservative” by some historians.

Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University, has defined conditions that constitute a recognized lynching:

“There must be legal evidence that a person was killed. That person must have met death illegally. A group of three or more persons must have participated in the killing. The group must have acted under the pretext of service to Justice, Race, or Tradition.”

Tuskegee remains the single most complete source of statistics and records on this crime since 1882. As of 1959, which was the last time that their annual Lynch Report was published, a total of 4,733 persons had died as a result of lynching since 1882. To quote the report,

“Except for 1955, when three lynchings were reported in Mississippi, none has been recorded at Tuskegee since 1951. In 1945, 1947, and 1951, only one case per year was reported. The most recent case reported by the institute as a lynching was that of Emmett Till, 14, a Negro who was beaten, shot to death, and thrown into a river at Greenwood, Mississippi on August 28, 1955… For a period of 65 years ending in 1947, at least one lynching was reported each year. The most for any year was 231 in 1892. From 1882 to 1901, lynchings averaged more than 150 a year. Since 1924, lynchings have been in a marked decline, never more than 30 cases, which occurred in 1926….”Typical scenario is the 1920 story from Duluth, Minnesota, on June 15, 1920, three young African-American traveling circus workers were lynched after having been accused of having raped a white woman and were jailed pending a grand jury hearing. A physician’s subsequent examination of the woman found no evidence of rape or assault. The alleged motive and action by a mob were consistent with the “community policing” model.

The last lynching to take place in California was Clyde Johnson. A White man. 1935.

Yreka’s second lynching took place in August 1935. At the funeral of Dunsmuir, California Chief of Police, F. R. Daw, a number of mourners planned the lynching of his alleged murderer, Clyde Johnson. Early on the morning of August 3, 1935, the masked mob, estimated as large as fifty, forcibly removed Johnson from his jail cell and dragged him three miles (5 km) south of town where they hanged him from a pine tree. Local and state officials expressed mixed reaction to news of the lynching.

District Attorney James Davis declared that he would open an investigation and “do everything the law requires to apprehend members of the mob.” On the other hand, the California Attorney General, referring to the recently delayed execution of an accused murderer, stated that the “uncontrollable unrest” was a natural result of the “apathy of the Supreme Court of the United States.”

Americas lynching habit acquired international celebrity.  International media, including press in the Soviet Union, covered racial discrimination in the U.S. Deeming American criticism of the Soviet Union’s human rights abuses as hypocrisy, the Soviets would respond with “And you are lynching Negroes“.  In his 1934 book Russia Today: What Can We Learn from It?, Sherwood Eddy wrote: “In the most remote villages of Russia today Americans are frequently asked what they are going to do to the Scottsboro Boys and why they lynch Negroes.”

What is this aspect of the American national character that chooses lynching. This ‘Strange Fruit.’

In a meeting with President Harry Truman in 1946, Paul Robeson urged him to take action against lynching. In 1951, Robeson and the Civil Rights Congress made a presentation entitled “We Charge Genocide” to the United Nations. They argued that the U.S. government was guilty of genocide under Article II of the United Nations Genocide Convention because it failed to act against lynchings.

Still lynchings went on. By the 1950s, the Civil Rights Movement was gaining momentum. Membership in the NAACP increased in states across the country. The NAACP achieved a significant U.S. Supreme Court victory in 1954 ruling that segregated education was unconstitutional. A 1955 lynching that sparked public outrage about injustice was that of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago. (See video of Bob Dylan’s version.) Spending the summer with relatives in Money, Mississippi, Till was killed for allegedly having wolf-whistled at a white woman. Till had been badly beaten, one of his eyes was gouged out, and he was shot in the head before being thrown into the Tallahatchie River, his body weighed down with a 70-pound (32 kg) cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire. His mother insisted on a public funeral with an open casket, to show people how badly Till’s body had been disfigured. News photographs circulated around the country, and drew intense public reaction. The visceral response to his mother’s decision to have an open-casket funeral mobilized the black community throughout the U.S. The state of Mississippi tried two defendants, but they were speedily acquitted by an all-white jury. Of course they were. They did nothing wrong.

From 1882 to 1968, “…nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress, and three passed the House. Seven presidents between 1890 and 1952 petitioned Congress to pass a federal law.” No bill was approved by the Senate because of the powerful opposition of the Southern Democratic voting bloc

Although lynchings have become rare following the Civil Rights Movement and changing social mores,  including Bob Dylan’s Song – Emmet Till, some have occurred.
In 1981, two Klan members in Alabama randomly selected a 19-year-old black man, Michael Donald, and murdered him, to retaliate for a jury’s acquittal of a black man accused of murdering a police officer. The Klansmen were caught, prosecuted, and convicted (one of the Klansmen, Henry Hayes, was sentenced to death and later executed). A $7 million judgment in a civil suit against the Klan bankrupted the local subgroup, the United Klans of America.

……… Continued

The complete story appears in full in this book  The Three Rs (Press Release)

Order from AMAZON; Kindle and paperback.

MY AMAZON AUTHORS PAGE    
Where you can order my books and also send copies to friends.
_________________________________________________________