Lynching: Its Role and Impact
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Defined as “a form of violence in which a mob, under the pretext of administering justice without trial, executes a presumed offender, often after inflicting torture and corporal mutilation”, the term lynching does not specifically reference African Americans even though they have been historically impacted by this conscience act of violence. This was the motivation on Wednesday, February 26, 2020 when the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved The Emmett Till Antilynching Act in a vote of 410-4. Introduced by
HistoryMaker and U.S. Congressman Bobby Rush (D-IL),
this act served to address an historic loophole that had been advocated for by the NAACP and black press for over a century. On its website, the NAACP says:
“From 1882-1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States. Of these people that were lynched 3,446 were black. The blacks lynched accounted for 72.7% of the people lynched.”
HistoryMaker
Melvin Miller
explains that
“the NAACP’s goal when it was founded and up until 1952 was to try to make lynching a federal offense, because once state law was applied to the lynching, an acquittal was relatively easy.”
In 1918,
Congressman Leonidas Dyer
of Missouri first introduced his Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which the NAACP supported it after it was revised by
Moorfield Storey
, a lawyer and the first president of the NAACP. The Dyer Bill was passed by the House of Representatives in 1922, and but was killed by a filibuster in the Senate.
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HistoryMaker
Dorothy Height
remembers,
“The NAACP used to hang out a sign that said, ‘A man was lynched today,’ because, you know, there were thousands—lynching was kind of an everyday thing at that time. And when they would hang out the sign, the Harlem Youth Council, we would gather up all of our young people and go to Times Square [New York] wearing black armbands, would walk around, chanting
‘Stop the lynching.’
And we had eighty-eight youth groups in the Harlem Youth Council, every kind of church, every kind of group. And they would come together. There was that spirit of activism and determination to bring about change.”
The NAACP hoped that the election of
Franklin D. Roosevelt
in 1932 would bring an end to lynching; and, in 1935, attempts were made to persuade Roosevelt to support the Costigan-Wagner antilynching bill. Height and
Juanita Jackson Mitchell
later formed the
United Youth Committee Against Lynching
, meeting every week on the issue of lynching, traveling to churches to speak out against lynching, and trying to get the Costigan-Wagner anti-lynching bill passed. President Roosevelt refused to support the bill, worried about losing support among white Southerners. Height remembers,
“The bill didn't pass, but I think we did a great deal to help people understand what lynching was and what was happening, and we built a kind of a sentiment against it. But we weren't able to get the bill passed.”
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HistoryMaker
Brenda Payton Jones
remembers her grandfather’s reaction to the federal government’s blatant negligence:
“My oldest uncle was actually going to be shipped overseas and [his] father was so disturbed by the thought…This country that had never passed an anti-lynching bill and one of his sons could possibly die, he literally had a stroke in the street when he heard about it and never recovered.”
Similarly, HistoryMaker
Cheryl Blackwell Bryson
remembers
“hearing [her grandfather] be disappointed because Congress never passed an anti-lynching law. Seeing him slam the paper down and saying, ‘All these years, all these years, and we can't get an anti-lynching law.’”
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The Black press also played an integral role in the anti-lynching movement. HistoryMaker
Robert Sengstacke
describes how
“If you go back through the pages of the [Chicago] Defender--during its early years, there was an entire page of …blacks[who] were lynched all over the country.”
Each lynching instilled an overwhelming fear in African American communities. HistoryMaker
Dorie Ladner
notes, “
Joyce [Ladner] and I would run and get the paper and…get scared to death because we thought the same thing would happen to us.”
HistoryMaker
Robert T. Starks
adds, “
I remember the trauma of my grandparents….and overhearing them talking about the need to protect young boys in particular.”
HistoryMaker
Preston Jackson
compares the lasting psychological effects of racial terror to “
war wounds,
psychological war wounds… It's like coming out of a war. And psychologically ….to think of something so dark, something so bad.”
HistoryMaker
Reverend B. Herbert Martin, Sr.
gives an example:
“Since the death of Emmett Till, the message around his death was if you dare to touch a white woman, then you would die…So, and the word to me was if I want to survive, then white women have to be crossed completely out of my reality…I didn't realize the damage that had been done to me until I was in grad school at Northwestern University. And a white girl who was in my class came to me, and she said, "Why do you treat me as if I don't exist, B. Herbert?"… She was not a part of my reality. She couldn't be. I had to work through that. I had to work through a lot of pain and wounded-ness, anger, fear, intimidation, inferiority. I worked through it all sufficiently enough to function…in this world.”
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The Emmett Till Antilynching Act is a culmination of more than 100 years of organizing, fortitude, and tragedy. Over 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress during the first half of the 20th century thanks to the tireless efforts of African American lawyers, journalists, artists, and academics. Hence, the anti-lynching movement of the 20
th
century cannot be separated from its contemporary success in Congress. However, the United States has a long way to go in order to repair and heal from its history of racial terror and HistoryMaker
Bryan Stevenson
’s National Memorial for Peace stands as powerful evidence of that for generations to see and experience.
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The HistoryMakers
in Anchorage, Alaska
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The HistoryMakers
traveled to Anchorage, Alaska this week for the second time in order interview civil engineer
E. Louie Overstreet
, who came to Alaska in 1975 to work for Alyeska Pipeline Service Company as a staff engineer; entrepreneur
Joseph Tolliver
, who founded Trailboss Enterprises while stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base; politician
Elvi Gray-Jackson
, who began her political career with the Anchorage Assembly in 1988; neurosurgeon and nephew of former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
Dr. Estrada Bernard Jr.
, lawyer and civic leader
Carolyn Jones
, who later became supervising attorney for the State of Alaska Department of Law;
The Honorable Pamela Washington
, the first Black woman to serve as an Alaskan district court judge and the second Black judge in the state; corporate lawyer
James Posey
, who served as general manager of Municipal Light and Power before founding Posey Alaska LLC; and civic leader and municipal administrator
Eleanor Andrews
, who served as commissioner of administration for the State of Alaska and co-founded the Anchorage Urban League in 2006. Black Alaska is teaching the lower 48
th
about its rich history that dates to the 1800s. Go Alaska! Go!
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Our Libraries are Burning
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The recent deaths of three HistoryMakers remind us that time is running out to preserve the 20
th
century. In the past month, we have witnessed the passing of
The Honorable Charles Freeman
, former Chief Justice of the Illinois State Supreme Court,
Bob Petty
, longtime news reporter with Chicago's WLS-TV and one of the first Black anchors on Chicago television, and
Sharon Gist Gilliam
, the former budget director for the City of Chicago and Chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority. We celebrate their accomplishments as pioneers in their respective industries, and are thankful that we were able to capture in-depth, biographical accounts of their lives. Given that 99.8% of those interviewed by
The HistoryMakers
have no autobiography or documentary produced about their lives or a repository for their paper collections,
The HistoryMakers’
mission is urgent; we cannot risk losing the 20
th
century.
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This Friday, March 6,
The HistoryMakers
will travel to Austin, Texas, to attend the fifth annual African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS) Conference, which this year focuses on The Black Radical Tradition. On Saturday, our interviewer
Larry Crowe
will be presenting and leading a workshop entitled “Black Radicalism: An Introduction to ‘The HistoryMakers Digital Archive,’” demonstrating how the very essence of
The HistoryMakers’
bold mission epitomizes the very notion of “Black radicalism.” AAIHS is a scholarly organization that aims to foster dialogue about researching, writing, and teaching Black thought and culture. Christopher Cameron founded the AAIHS blog in 2014 to “provide a space for scholars in disparate fields to discuss the many aspects of teaching and researching Black intellectual history.”
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“
The Difference Between a Stepping Stone and a Stumbling Block is How High You Step."
Ernestine Brown
Gallery Director, Arts Advocate and Civic Leader
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