Lynching

such as the behavior of the mob and the events that lead to the scenes of violence. Mountain Standard Time is set during the First World War in New Mexico and the people accuse a man of being a German spy, eventually leading to the proposal of a lynching before the town which, fortunately, never takes place but the man is still publicly shamed. The second excerpt, Atonement, takes place during the Second World War and a group of British soldiers uses physical violence to injure a member of…

“Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root.” this is an excerpt from the poem “Strange Fruit”. In this poem, the main point that the authors, Billie Holiday and Abel Meeropol, wrote about is the “strange fruit” which is actually a metaphor. The metaphor is comparing the fruit and slaves, and how they were hung from trees during the pre-Civil Rights times. Along with the metaphors, the literary devices that the author Billie Holiday uses in the poem “Strange…

In the middle of a town, There’s is a tree splattered red and from a rope attached to a branch hangs a rotting corpse covered in grime and gore. This is the image Billie Holiday puts into the mind of the listener during her song Strange Fruit. Strange fruit was written as a poem by a school teacher, Abel Meeropol, and was recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. During the song strong imagery effectively appealing to the listener’s emotions and their ethics as a person. Billie Holiday effectively…

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…

Lynching. The word makes people cringe while it has no effect on others. When most people hear the word, they begin to think about racial prejudice in both the past and present. It seems as if every week there is a new story about some man, woman, or child who is beaten because their skin doesn’t match the Crayola crayon for “flesh” and a prejudice that has lasted many lifetimes consumes common sense and people’s ethical thinking. Lynching, defined by the dictionary, is “to put to death,…

first photograph definitely appears very dark and ominous even before it was converted to black and white. Therefore, students automatically assumed that the first tree was the only lynching tree. Fewer people believed that the answer was the second photograph. It is apparent now that the trees all look like lynching trees since they are on a gray scale. I also found that it was more appropriate for these photographs to be shown in black and white rather than in color. Portraying these trees as…

victim to lynchings in America for a range of crimes or violations. America saw almost a hundred years of lynchings, highlighting the demographic and economic changes many southerners did not want to face. The number of victims lynched was very high, but the exact number may never be known. Lynchings, mostly committed by extralegal groups, were feared my many, mostly in the Deep South. These were public events conducted by—and both watched and encouraged by—local people. Efforts to stop…

After reading and viewing the mob mentality pieces, I conclude that the individuals that took part in the lynching mobs during times of segregation were doing it under pressure from their peers without thinking twice about their actions. This conclusion can be backed up by several sources including a photo that was taken in the 1930s by Lawrence Beitler. In the following photo, a group of people can be seen standing and surrounding two African Americans that have been lynched most likely from a…

Lynching was a popular form of punishment in the southern United States from 1892-1900. Lynching is killing someone without legal trial, often times by hanging. African Americans were subjects of lynching for several different crimes that often times were not even committed. Southern citizens used lynching to intimidate African Americans, causing the freedoms they were allowed to not be easily exercised. Southern whites used lynching to punish African Americans for unjust crimes, scare them from…

Erased Lynching by Ken Gonzales-Day presents lynching photographs, but removes the victim and the rope from the image summoning viewers to complete the picture in our imagination. This is meant to “redirect the viewer’s attention away from the lifeless body of the lynch victim and allow viewers to see the crowd, the mechanism of the spectacle.” The meaning and the power of each image resides not in what’s visible, but in what’s not: He seeks to change the usual focus of lynching (the victim) to…