The istory and Purpose of Lynching
For many years, people have taken the law into their own hands. Normally in a violent fashion. One way that people did this was lynching. Lynching is when a group of people get together to form a mob to punish someone for doing something they thought was wrong. Lynching was used as a form of vigilantism to punish people that groups thought needed to be punished.
Lynching came to represent whites hatred of blacks. Lynching began to assume a more racial tone [towards blacks] in the north after the 1830’s At the beginning of the reconstruction era, freed blacks became prime targets for lynch mobs, this shows that lynching got a more racial tone (Anti Lynching). Both of these excerpts show that …show more content…
Nearly all the black lynching victims were political activists or labor organizers (Lynching
). Whites lynched blacks in the early 1900’s because they were afraid of losing their power. They lynched blacks that wanted equal treatment of blacks, so whites would stay in power. White supremacy groups such as the KKK used lynching as a way to control and threaten African Americans (Lynching). This shows whites used lynching to retain their power because they made African Americans too scared to act against them. It also made them too scared to oppose their power. Whites used lynching as a scare tactic so blacks would not oppose them being in power.
Lynching did not start out as being directed toward African Americans. A person did not need to be an African American to be lynched, someone could be any race guilty of any crime (Fitzbrudage). Lynchings were not meant to only happen to African Americans when the idea was first conceived. This quote demonstrates this point because it says that a person that fell victim to lynching could have done any crime or been any race. When Colonel Charles Lynch thought of the idea of lynching, he used it to punish Tories (Fitzbrudage). This shows that he did not only want to use it to punish blacks. He wanted to punish Tories, which could be of any race. When the idea of lynching was conceived by Charles Lynch, he did not intend to use it only on African
For many years, people have taken the law into their own hands. Normally in a violent fashion. One way that people did this was lynching. Lynching is when a group of people get together to form a mob to punish someone for doing something they thought was wrong. Lynching was used as a form of vigilantism to punish people that groups thought needed to be punished.
Lynching came to represent whites hatred of blacks. Lynching began to assume a more racial tone [towards blacks] in the north after the 1830’s At the beginning of the reconstruction era, freed blacks became prime targets for lynch mobs, this shows that lynching got a more racial tone (Anti Lynching). Both of these excerpts show that …show more content…
Nearly all the black lynching victims were political activists or labor organizers (Lynching
). Whites lynched blacks in the early 1900’s because they were afraid of losing their power. They lynched blacks that wanted equal treatment of blacks, so whites would stay in power. White supremacy groups such as the KKK used lynching as a way to control and threaten African Americans (Lynching). This shows whites used lynching to retain their power because they made African Americans too scared to act against them. It also made them too scared to oppose their power. Whites used lynching as a scare tactic so blacks would not oppose them being in power.
Lynching did not start out as being directed toward African Americans. A person did not need to be an African American to be lynched, someone could be any race guilty of any crime (Fitzbrudage). Lynchings were not meant to only happen to African Americans when the idea was first conceived. This quote demonstrates this point because it says that a person that fell victim to lynching could have done any crime or been any race. When Colonel Charles Lynch thought of the idea of lynching, he used it to punish Tories (Fitzbrudage). This shows that he did not only want to use it to punish blacks. He wanted to punish Tories, which could be of any race. When the idea of lynching was conceived by Charles Lynch, he did not intend to use it only on African