Posted on 06/02/2015 3:50:14 AM PDT by Biggirl
Oprah Winfrey is on record referring to the "millions" of lynchings. Obviously, extrajudicial punishment is a de facto abjuration of due process; I didn't think that needed to be stated. Saying something was not commonplace or widespread is not the same as saying it never happened. Good lord.
Of course those things happened. The idea that it was frequent and commonplace, however, is untrue. My objection is to the perception of such practices in the minds of many, when the historical record exists to provide more reasonable understanding.
You are, of course, entirely correct in that.
The common perception is that lynching was a routine practice, that black children perhaps witnessed multiple such events growing up.
In actual fact it was quite rare. <3500 over 80 years, the vast majority prior to the 30s. A bare majority, I think, in the 12 years of the 19th century for which we have records. 21 blacks were lynched in the entire country after WWII. That’s a lively weekend in Chicago.
In 2011 2447 blacks were killed by other blacks. That’s only 1000 less than were killed by all the lynchings over more than 80 years.
Though, to be fair, the number of lynchings is probably higher than the stats show. Also, Tuskegee had a pretty strict definition. Lots of blacks were murdered by whites in situations that didn’t meet the definition of a lynching.
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingyear.html
Yet this is not the perception. I’ve actually read articles in which blacks casually refer to the hundred of thousands or even millions who were lynched. As if it’s something everybody knows. Which I guest many of them do know it. They’re just wrong about it, of course.
Thank you. And my point in bringing it up was not to minimize the awful treatment of blacks that has historically occurred in the US. It’s just when a wildly inaccurate version of history is propagated and allowed to persist in the public consciousness, it is not unreasonable to wonder why.
What a shameful and absolutely ridiculous statement!
Perhaps. It is also almost certainly accurate.
Here's what A. Lincoln had to say about an appalling incident across the river in St. Louis, in 1838.
"Similar too, is the correct reasoning, in regard to the burning of the negro at St. Louis. He had forfeited his life, by the perpetuation of an outrageous murder, upon one of the most worthy and respectable citizens of the city; and had not he died as he did, he must have died by the sentence of the law, in a very short time afterwards. As to him alone, it was as well the way it was, as it could otherwise have been.--But the example in either case, was fearful.--When men take it in their heads to day, to hang gamblers, or burn murderers, they should recollect, that, in the confusion usually attending such transactions, they will be as likely to hang or burn some one who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is; and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of to-morrow, may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake."
http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/lyceum.htm
I think lynchings were awful. But with fairly rare exceptions they were aimed at those who were firmly believed to have committed atrocious crimes, not random blacks. As with those arrested for crimes today, most are guilty. That is, of course, why they are arrested.
It is not, IMO, shameful or ridiculous to note that certainly "many," and perhaps most, of those murdered in this way were probably guilty of crimes that at the time carried the death penalty.
That a man does not receive a fair trial, or indeed any trial at all, does not bestow posthumous innocence upon him. Whether he is objectively guilty of the crime is a question of fact, not of procedure.
All that said, I'd be perfectly happy if we could go back in time and use tommy guns on the lynch mobs.
Neither does it bestow posthumous guilt.
We have judges, juries, and executioners for that.
In America, those charged with crimes are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Quite right. But it’s a presumption, not a fact.
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