Negro holocaust: the terrors of the lynch era, indicting the north for silence, along with night-rider violence in the south.

Ida Wells takes a stand.

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Ida Wells: Crusade for Justice
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What I did not yet know so intensely was the hatred of the white American for the black,
a hatred so deep that I wonder if every white man in this country, when he plants a tree,
doesn't see Negroes hanging from its branches.

~Jean Genet~
Quoted in Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson


Baggage of history:       America's bloody, racist past

God uses a woman of valor to blow the whistle

Ida B. Wells lifts her voice to expose
the terrors of the lynch era atrocities

ida b wells
Ida B. Wells: Crusader for Justice


To Tell the Truth Freely
See
The Bloody Shirt:
Terror After Appomattox

by Stephen Budiansky

The crucifixion of Black Man across America

How Ida Wells began her crusade for justice (anti-lynching)

Her little newspaper "Free Speech" had been burned to the ground in Memphis for her having dared to speak out openly against the evil of lynching innocent Negroes.

She realized that underlying the viciousness of anti-Negro hostilities was white man's obsession over the mere thought of sexual friendship between black men and white women.

She writes:

Such relationships between white men and colored women were notorious, and had been as long as the two races had lived together in the South. This was so much a fact that such unions had bleached a large percentage of the Negro race, and filled it with the offspring of such unions. These children were and are known as mulattoes, quadroons, and octoroons. [Crusade for Justice, p 69]

Many stories of the antebellum South were based upon such relationships. It has frequently been charged in narratives of slave times that these white fathers and masters brought their mulatto and quadroon children to the North and gave them freedom and established homes for them, thus making them independent.

All my life I have known that such conditions were accepted as a matter of course. I found that this rape of helpless Negro girls and women, which began in slavery days, still continued without let or hindrance, check or reproof from church, state or press until there had been created this race within a race -- and all designated by the inclusive term of "colored." [Crusade for Justice, p 70]

I also found that what the white man of the South practiced as all right for himself, he assumed to be unthinkable in white woman. White men could and did fall in love with the pretty mulatto and quadroom girls as well as black ones, but they professed an inability to imagine white women doing the same thing with Negro and mulatto men. Whenever they did so and were found out, the cry of rape was raised, and the lowest element of the white South was turned loose to wreak its fiendish cruelty on those too weak to help themselves.

No torture of helpless victims by heathen savages or cruel red Indians ever exceeded the cold-blooded savagery of white devils under lynch law. None of the hideous murders by butchers of Nero to make a Roman holiday exceeded these burnings alive of black human beings. This was done by white men who controlled all the forces of law and order in their communities and who could have easily chosen to LEGALLY punish any rapists and murderers, especially black men who had neither political power nor financial strength with which to evade any justly deserved fate.

The more I studied the situation, the more I was convinced that the Southerner had never gotten over his resentment that the Negro was no longer his plaything, his servant, and his source of income. The federal laws for Negro protection passed during Reconstruction times [even the 14th & 15th Amendments] had been made a mockery by the white South where it had not secured their repeal. This same white South had secured political control of its several states, and as soon as white southerners came into power they began to make playthings of Negro lives and property. This still seemed not enough to "keep the nigger down."

Hence came lynch law to stifle Negro manhood which defended itself, and the burning alive of Negroes who were weak enough to accept favors from white women. The many unspeakable and unprintable tortures to which Negro rapists (?) of white women were subjected were for the purpose of striking terror into the hearts of other Negroes who might be thinking of consorting with white women. [Crusade for Justice, p 71]

I found that in order to justify these horrible atrocities to the world, the Negro was being branded as a race of rapists, who were especially mad after white women. I found that white men who had created a race of mulattoes by raping and consorting with Negro women were still doing so wherever they could, these same white men lynched, burned, and tortured Negro men for doing the same thing with white women; even when the white women were willing victims.

It seemed horrible to me that death in its most terrible form should be meted out to the Negro who was weak enough to take chances when accepting the invitations of these white women; but that the entire race should be branded as moral monsters and despoilers of white womanhood and childhood was bound to rob us of all the friends we had and silence any protests that they might make for us.

For all these reasons it seemed a stern duty to give the facts I had collected to the world.


Phyllis Chesler, commenting on Paul Cadmus drawing (To the Lynching) writes: The political and spiritual dismemberment of dark men: their capture, the sale, the betrayal of dark-skinned men by other dark-skinned men -- who bore their African captives into slavery in Catholic Europe, in Catholic-European South America, in Moslem Asia, in the Protestant United States. The madness of slavery captured in one explosive image: the lynching, the torture, the castration, the hanging of black men by white men; the "strange fruit" on Southern trees.


Helene Deutsch in Psychology of Women reports on the Rape Complex of many white women. Though her views were sharply questioned in later years (by Susan Brownmiller and many others), they seem to make a point. Deutsch writes: "Rape fantasies have such irresistible verisimilitude that even the most experienced judges are misled in trials of innocent [Black] men accused of rape by hysterical women. My own experience of accounts by white women of rape by Negroes (who are often subjected to terrible penalties as a result of these accusations) has convinced me that many fantastic stories are produced by the masochistic yearnings of these women. [Brownmiller, pp 229-230]

Black Man Crucified

Payback for Yankee Oppressions?

Crime Against Humanity

Christ Crucified
Christ Crucified
America's great crime against humanity

JESUS sacrifice - HANGED UPON A TREE
Acts 5:30


This infamous "Strange Fruit" photograph was the August 8, Lynching in Marion, Indiana. The photographer was a small town local, Lawrence Beitler. A Time of Terror The supposed rape was almost certainly bogus. One of the most recent studies resulted in "Lynching in the heartland: race and memory in America," by James H. Madison.

The lynching of blacks seems to have begun largely with the Era of Reconstruction, but the presence of Union troops stationed in the South worked both as a damper on attacks on blacks, as well as a stimulus to white and KKK resentment. The irony is that while the real target of southern hate was the tyrant Lincoln and the federal government (them dam yankees), the immediate lightning rod was "uppity" blacks. The worst period for lynching has been called the years between1889 and 1918.

Besides the Ku Klux Klan (date normally regarded as the inception, December 24, 1865, Pulaski, Tennessee) there were other secret orders of white men in the South. Shortly after the KKK was formed, Nathan Bedford Forrest assumed the leadership. Other secret orders that arose during that period were Knights of the White Camelia (Louisiana), the White Brotherhood (Mississippi), the Knights of the White Rose, the Pale Faces, the Union Guard and the White League.


maledictus omnis qui pendet in ligno

Galatians 3:13 - cursed is he who is hanged on a tree



 :  

Interracial Justice

The Negro Holocaust
Emmett Till's mother pleas
Ida B. Wells: a short biographic
Susan Brownmiller: race, sex, rape
Gordon Allport on jealous white males
Abby Ferber on why we have white bullies
LYNCHING: America's Carnival of Death
Etymology : the word picnic did not originate in America
The cross of Christ - and the LYNCHING tree
Calvin Hernton on deep rooted 'jungle fever'
Without Sanctuary: documentary photos
THE DEBT: America's soul-searching
THE American Taboo : interracial sex
Fad or real phenomenon? white cuckolds
The Tiger Woods sex-lust syndrome
The Negro Holocaust (Gibson)
Raising her voice: Jessie Daniel Ames
Freedom Hero: Jessie Daniel Ames
Deeper scholarship (documents)


When they burn your brother down in the name of freedom
I don't care if it's left or right
It's wrong.
kris kristofferson, this old road


The lynching of Blacks was relatively common between Reconstruction and World War II. According to Tuskegee Institute data, between the years 1882 and 1951, 4,730 people were lynched in the United States: 3,437 Black and 1,293 White.7 Many of the White lynching victims were foreigners or belonged to oppressed groups, for example, Mormons, Shakers, and Catholics. By the early 1900s lynching had a decidedly racial character, that is, White mobs lynched Blacks. Almost 90 percent of all the lynchings of Blacks occurred in Southern or border states.

Many of these victims were ritualistically tortured. In 1904, Luther Holbert and his wife were burned to death. They were "tied to trees and while the funeral pyres were being prepared, they were forced to hold out their hands while one finger at a time was chopped off. The fingers were distributed as souvenirs. The ears . . . were cut off. Holbert was beaten severely, his skull fractured and one of his eyes, knocked out with a stick, hung by a shred from the socket." Members of the mob then speared the victims with a large corkscrew, "the spirals tearing out big pieces of . . . flesh every time it was withdrawn."

Above is from online source (blog)


"Human Sacrifice" in America

Very often the victim's genitals were also mutilated. Sometimes he was castrated altogether

America's Lynch Era
Very often the victim's genitals were mutilated, too

The lynch mobs of the American South often justified their atrocities by alleging the rape or attempted rape of white women by Negroes. The fear of sexual pollution or violation by the allegedly subhuman race is close to the heart of the murderous or genocidal racism whenever and wherever it appears. In the racist imagination, Negroes have been somewhat more likely than Jews to be viewed as violent sexual predators. The myth of the oversized black phallus ... [etc]
George M. Fredrickson: Racism a short history

"I am white; I am white"
bob shepherdBob Shepherd
My Recurring Nightmare
Is this my whiteman guilt?
_____________________

I had a recurring nightmare - two or three times (or more). In it, I was on the street. A woman came by, a young woman, pretty enough, blond I believe. She was friendly seeming, and I was pleased that she noticed me, and did not reject my interest. She lingered, sauntering past me, clearly aware of me. I wanted to compliment her, what a nice sculpted ass. She was wearing sky high stilettos and they shaped her butt into the cutest bubble. She then gave me full attention, but my complimentary gaze and appreciation suddenly offended her. Not acknowledging her own instigation, she turned on me. "What's your problem, dirtball. Get away from me. HELP! ----- HELP! Get away, CREEP!" Suddenly I was surrounded, and there was angry men all over, threatening me. They are mauling me, man-handling me. My clothes are ripped off. I hear the same woman: "Lust Maniac!! The N-word tried to rape me!" There were imprecations and curses, and racial epithets, the N-word, and somebody appeared with a rope. I am stark naked. A woman said, take that whip, and skin this (N-word) alive. Beat the skin off his back. Was she trying to save my neck? Was she trying to save my life? I was being dragged off somewhere. It was out in the country. I was going to be lynched? A woman said, "Cut his *%#@&* off. Teach this (N-word) a lesson he'll never forget." Was she trying to save my life? Suddenly I woke up, frighteningly wide awake. Why did I keep having the same dream? I was wide awake, and terrified. Now, I could not sleep, so as before I got up. The scene was seared in my brain. I'm sure my eyes were bulging in terror. It was like a "horror of great darkness" had fallen upon me (Genesis 15:12). Why did I keep having this same spine-chilling nightmare. I am white. I am white. I kept trying to make myself return to normalcy, looking at my hands, my arms -- rechecking my skin color, looking in the mirror. I got something to eat. Science says we all have Africa in us, in our DNA. We all have every race in our DNA, but my family is white. Besides, I meant no harm. She was pretty, I was only complimenting her. God help us all. [3/13/2012]

Strange Fruit
LYNCHING: 'Human Sacrifice' in America
RELATED:
  • Sandra Gunning (Race, rape, and lynching: the red record of American literature, 1890-1912);
  • Jacquelyn Dowd Hall (Revolt against Chivalry:
  • Jessie Daniel Ames and the Women's Campaign against Lynching) see;
  • Mildred I. Thompson (Ida B. Wells-Barnett: An Exploratory Study of an American Black Woman);
  • Linda O. McMurry (To Keep the Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells); Laura Wexler (Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America);
  • Fitzhugh Brundage (Lynching in the New South);
  • Robert Gibson (The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States);
  • Miriam Decosta-Willis (The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells);
  • Stephen Budiansky (The bloody shirt: terror after Appomattox).

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