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At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America (Modern Library Paperbacks)
by Philip Dray

Reviewed by Adib Rashad ~


   Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that the United States
was the greatest purveyor of violence that the world had ever seen.
This, a paraphrase, was made during the height of the Viet Nam
conflict. Undoubtedly, the United States has a brutal history of
international violence--past and present. Its national or domestic
violence against Native Americans is both shameful and dastardly.
Its violence against African Americans bespeaks indescribable
diabolism. The United States was the only country on earth whose
citizens or human beings regularly are burned at the stake.

The end of Reconstruction ushered into existence a rejuvenated
anti-Black feeling. The Federal Government, in turn, adopted a
nonchalant posture with regard to this hostility against Blacks.
Because of this "laissez-faire" attitude on the part of the Federal
Government, Blacks were reduced to a status of quasi-slavery
and second-class citizenship.

During this period, an extremely tense atmosphere of racial hatred,
mass violence, murder, rape, and lynchings took place.
The phenomenon of lynching and brutal intimidation referred to as
the "American Dark Ages" by historian, Rayford W. Logan, is the
essence of Dray's book.

Lynchings were an institutionalized method utilized by Caucasian
Southerners and, yes, some Caucasian Northerners to maintain
"white supremacy."

James E. Cutler in his "Lynch-Law" which was the first, to my
knowledge, research account of lynchings in 1905, stated that
lynching was a criminal practice which was peculiar only to the
United States.

Lynchings involved not only hanging, but also shootings; however,
most were of a hideous, sadistic nature. There were burnings,
maiming, dismemberment, castration, prolonged torture, and brutal
rape. Many Caucasians resented the idea of another Black
Reconstruction period; therefore, they believed that Blacks could
only be controlled through fear and physical abuse. Thus, lynching
was seen as the best and most effective means of control.

As I pointed out earlier, lynchings occurred throughout the United
States; however, the largest percentage of this heinous crime took
place in the Southern and border states. Maryland, Illinois, West
Virginia, Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Indiana,
Ohio, Kansas, Florida, and Kentucky were the lynching states.
I hasten to point out that Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New
Hampshire and Vermont were the exceptions to this practice.

Ralph Ginzburg wrote the second vivid account of lynchings.
His "100 Years of Lynchings" is a gruesome testimony to the low
level a sick, ignorant, racist Caucasian could go. Unfortunately,
Ginzburg's book was not widely circulated until Black Classic's
Press republished same.

Dray admits that before he visited the Tuskegee Institute's lynching
archive, he had no vivid image of lynchings other than those of the
rough frontier justice and aberrational racial violence in the Deep
South.

As he looked at Tuskegee's file cabinets, storage boxes, folders,
and stacks of magazines and newspapers reaching the ceiling that
addressed the thousands of lynchings that had taken place in the
United States, he heard himself say, "A Holocaust."

The Tuskegee Records indicate that within the years 1882 and
1885, the number of whites lynched in the United States to have
exceeded the number of Blacks. After the year 1886, when the
school recorded the lynching of 74 Blacks and 64 whites, the
number of Blacks always exceeded whites. In 1892 the archive
records 162 Blacks put to death outside the bounds of the law,
chiefly in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia (Dray devotes an
entire chapter to the mistreatment of Blacks in Georgia), Louisiana,
Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Kentucky.
Through 1944 when lynchings first began to decline, Tuskegee
recorded 3, 417 lynchings of Blacks and 1, 291 of whites.
Not until 1952 did a year pass without a single lynching.

It must be stated that in 1919 the NAACP (National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People) published "Thirty Years of
Lynching in the United States, 1889-1918," which crystallized the
causes of lynchings and the circumstances under which those
diabolical crimes occurred.

Furthermore, the NAACP sponsored antilynching legislation such as
the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill and other proposals to make lynching a
federal crime.

Leonidas C. Dyer was elected to the House in 1910; he introduced an
anti-lynching bill as early as 1911. The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill provided
fines and imprisonment for persons convicted of lynching in federal courts
and fines and penalties against states, counties, and towns which failed to
use appropriate means to protect citizens from mob violence. The bill was
killed in the senate by the filibuster of Southern senators.

I am compelled to point out that there were some Southern Caucasian
organizations that did condemn lynchings during the two decades before
World War II. Two of them were the Commission for Interracial
Cooperation and the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention
of Lynching.

Another very significant denunciation against lynching came from President
Warren Harding. Harding supported the idea of anti-lynching legislation; he
aptly described lynchings as a "very sore spot on our boast of
civilization."
A 1921 address by Harding to the nation's lawmakers had included the
admonition: "Congress ought to wipe the stain of barbaric lynching from the
banners of a free and orderly representative democracy."

Philip Dray's detailed research informed him that lynching was not solely
germane to the South as was pointed out, but had actually begun on the
colonial frontier. Because there was no rule of law, or courts, citizens
became judge, jury and executioners. During the American Revolution, a
Virginian named Charles Lynch, set up his own court. Lynch was a justice
of the peace in the town of Chestnut Hill Virginia (neighboring Lynchburg
is named for his brother). Lynch was a renegade Quaker who used
profanity incessantly, much to the dismay of his fellow Quakers.
As a result, he was banned from attending Quaker meetings.

Lynch's foul mouth, mean temper, and Quaker banishment gave him the
impetus to create an informal court to punish plundering English Tories.
When the Tories sued, the legislature exonerated Lynch, ruling that his
actions were justified by imminent danger. Today the word "lynch"
means to execute with due process of the law.

As was stated, lynching was not a crime committed exclusively against
Black people. Before the Civil War, more Caucasian Americans were
lynched than African Americans. Most Black people were slaves,
and therefore, as private property, were punished by their masters.

The pattern of almost exclusive lynching of Black people came during
the Reconstruction period. Former slaves wanted to own land, get an
education for themselves and their children, participate in the political
process--bear in mind that the Reconstruction period ushered into
existence a number of Black politicians.

Caucasian Southerners wanted Blacks to remain landless, uneducated
and indigent. Thus, lynching and the rape of Black were utilized as a
means to "keep Niggers in their place."

Hundreds of Black people were lynched each year during
Reconstruction, and many times that number each year following the
North's retreat in 1877.

According to the Tuskegee Institute numbers, between the years 1882
and 1951, 4,730 people were lynched in the United States: 3,437 were
Black, and 1,293 were Caucasian American. The largest number of
lynchings occurred in 1892.

Of the 230 persons lynched that year, 161 were Black and 69 were
Caucasian. Dray not only tells the story of Black lynch victims,
but also of the struggles that Black leaders waged such as Frederick
Douglas, Walter White, W. E. B. DuBois, William Monroe Trotter,
James Weldon Johnson, Mary Church Terrell and others, but the
most prolific, the most steadfast, the most determined of them all
was Ida B. Wells.

Ms. Wells was the pioneer crusader against lynchings. She was the
editor of the Memphis Free Speech. She almost single-handedly
rallied anti-lynching sentiment in the United States and England.
She served as chairwoman of the Anti-Lynching Bureau of the
Afro-American Council. Ms. Wells published several pamphlets
exposing the barbarity of lynching, including A Red Record written
in 1894.

Her most incisive quote was: "One had better die fighting against
injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap."

Her tireless research and lectures demonstrated the clarity of the
myth and outright lie that lynching was necessary to protect so-called
white women from ravenous Black men. This absurd lie was used to
shroud the real reason which was the safeguard of "white supremacy."
Ms. Wells discovered that few mob victims were ever accused of
rape.

Furthermore, the Tuskegee Institute's records for the years 1882 to
1951 gave credence to Ms. Wells' findings.

According to the institute's records for those years were: 41 percent
for felonious assault, 19.2 percent for rape, 6.1 percent for attempted
rape, 4.9 percent for robbery and theft, 1.8 percent for insult to white
persons, 22.7 percent for miscellaneous offenses or no offense,
11.5 in the last category, and all sorts of trivial offenses such as
disputing with a so-called white man, attempting to register to vote,
unpopularity, self-defense, testifying against a so-called white man,
asking a so-called white woman for marriage, and peeping in a
window.

Ms. Wells took strong issue with the claim that Black men had an
insatiable sexual appetite for Caucasian women; she referred to such
a claim as calumny, "A falsehood of the deepest dye." If this was so,
she asked, why did it not manifest itself before and during the Civil War,
when white Southern men confidently left their women alone with the
slaves, or during Reconstruction when hundreds of white "Oberlin girls"
came south to work as teachers in the most heavily Black districts?

To add to Ms Wells' points historian, Ulrich B. Phillips, investigated
Virginia records covering the years 1783 to 1863, he found only 105
convictions of Blacks for sexual assault, 73 for rape and 32 for
attempted rape. Ironically, all but 2 were so-called white women.

Another statistical fact which refutes the fallacy of rape as being the
primary cause of Black lynchings was between 1882 and 1927,
92 women were victims of lynch mobs: 76 Black and 16 Caucasian.

Philip Dray's book is more than a history of lynchings; it is also a story
of the quest for justice and the recognition of human life and dignity.
It looks at the political, social, economical and ideological causes of
racism, and race hatred with clear bifocals.

The book is informatively readable; it has 504 pages, copious notes
and bibliography. There are a number of other historical connections
that he cites as a means to give his theses substance--one is the
lynching incident of Leo Frank, the Jew, who allegedly raped and
murdered Mary Phagan, a Southern Caucasian girl.

Moreover, Dray's book is full of history that we need to know and
remember. Lynching was the last great skeleton in America's closet.
For centuries it devoured Blacks, and made them prone to untold
misery and paranoia.

Lynching was a part of the American fabric; it was generally accepted
as a way of life. Dray discusses why this was so. He shows that there
was more silence than there was outcries.

I believe that Dray's book Ginzburg's "100 Years of Lynchings,"
James Cameron's personal account of his near fatal death at the hands
of a lynch mob in his book "A Time of Terror A Survivors Story,"
(Black Classics Press) will and can contribute to the discussion of why
reparations should be granted to the still terrorized descendants of
African slaves.

In conclusion, it is my belief that Dray's book also enhances the fact
that slavery, lynching, and continued racism is Black America's
Holocaust; therefore, we too, should say with stronger conviction
"Never Again, and we will "Never Forget."

We should declare those statements with constructive action; then
and only then will we put an end to the daily assaults that we now
suffer at the hands of brute beasts.

It is befitting to cite a stanza from poet, Claude McKay:
"If we must Die, Let it not be like hogs hunted and penned in an
inglorious spot...
Like Men We'll Face the Murderous, Cowardly Pack, Pressed
to the Wall, Dying, but Fighting Back."

Note: It is highly suggested that one read Ms Ida B. Wells
autobiography titled "Crusade for Justice."
Also, the biography by Linda O. McMurry titled "To Keep the
Waters Troubled The Life of Ida B. Wells."

*=====
Adib Rashad (RashadM@aol.com) is an education consultant, education
program director, author, and historian. He has lived and taught in
West Africa and South East Asia.

This article was previously published by theMarcusGarveyBBS (an entity of TheBlackList)
and TheBlackList at http://lists.topica.com/lists/TheBlackList/read

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