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“Halt!”
No caption
Cartoonist
W. A. Rogers emphatically demands a halt to mob violence against black
Americans. In the artist's vision, the rule of law triumphs over
mob rule as the demonic figure of "Lynch Law," who wields a
bloody knife, hangman's noose, and torch, is stopped by "The
Law." Specifically, Rogers is praising government and law
enforcement officers for quashing race riots in Evansville, Indiana, and
Danville, Illinois. The anti-black violence, though, continued
across the country.
"Lynching" occurred when
ordinary citizens violated the due process of
law by apprehending alleged criminals and summarily executing them (usually by
hanging). Although the cartoon reminds us that not all such events
occurred in the South, that region saw the vast majority of lynching in the
late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, with most being white on black
violence. Most scholars agree that black victims were somehow perceived as
a threat to the dominant ideology of white supremacy, yet they disagree on why
lynching arose in particular places and times, but not others.
The number of black victims of lynch mobs rose steady from 1880 to a peak in
1892-1893 (estimates range from over 90 to over 200 annually). The numbers
then began a slow decline over the decades until reaching a low of less than ten
victims annually in 1928-1929. There were, however, two periods of upturns
in the overall decline: the years around a crest of 60 deaths in 1908, and
the post-World War I years in the late teens culminating in the bloody
"red" summer of 1919.
African Americans were, of course, active in working and speaking out against
lynching. When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1875 Civil Rights Act, Frederick Douglass helped organize a national convention of blacks
in Louisville, Kentucky, which was attended by 300 delegates from 27
states. Delegates called for the enforcement of civil rights for all
Americans and denounced the practice of lynching. Over the decades, black activists held
conventions for various purposes, with anti-lynching a theme common to
virtually all of them.
During the rampant anti-black violence of the early 1890s, Ida B. Wells
lectured across the country and in England against lynching. She insisted
that the
common accusation of rape was greatly exaggerated, a stance supported by
subsequent scholarship. Wells founded the Anti-Lynching
League and the National Association of Colored Women, which also campaigned
against lynching. Other black organizations that called for political,
legal, and social action against lynching include: the Afro-American
League, founded by T. Thomas Fortune in 1887, and reorganized as the
Afro-American Council in 1898; and the Equal Rights Council, established by Bishop
Henry M. Turner in 1893.
Three prominent biracial organizations that placed anti-lynching at the top
of their agendas were: the National Citizens Rights Association, founded by
Albion Tourgee in 1891; the Constitution League (1903); and the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), established by W. E. B.
DuBois and others in 1905 as the Niagara Movement. These and other
organizations financed lawsuits, lobbied government officials, campaigned for
legislation, and publicized the problem of lynching.
The first congressional bills addressing lynching were calls for
establishing investigatory commissions, such as a bill sponsored by Senator John Logan of Illinois in 1884, and one by Congressman Henry
Blair of New Hampshire in the 1890s. In 1900, Congressman George H. White, a black Republican
from North Carolina, introduced the first federal bill aimed directly at
lynching. These and similar bills all died in
committee until 1922 when a bill finally reached the House floor, only
to be filibustered to death in the Senate. Attempts were again made
in the 1930s and 1940s to pass federal anti-lynching legislation, but
all failed. By the 1950s, though, incidents of lynching had become
rare.
Robert C. Kennedy
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