Badlands Polaroid: no wiwayaka

afrodiaspores:

“Lynchings By States And Counties in the United States 1900-1931 (Data from Research Department, Tuskegee Institute),” 1931

From 1889 to 1918, more than 2,400 African Americans were hanged or burned at the stake. Many lynching victims were accused of little more than making “boastful remarks,” “insulting a white man,” or seeking employment “out of place”…

They were hanged from trees, bridges, and telephone poles. Victims were often tortured and mutilated before death: burned alive, castrated, and dismembered. Their teeth, fingers, ashes, clothes, and sexual organs were sold as keepsakes…

Lynching was community sanctioned. Lynchings were frequently publicized well in advance, and people dressed up and traveled long distances for the occasion. The January 26, 1921, issue of the Memphis Press contained the headline: “May Lynch 3 to 6 Negroes This Evening.” Clergymen and business leaders often participated in lynchings. Few of the people who committed lynchings were ever punished. What makes the lynchings all the more chilling is the carnival atmosphere and aura of self-righteousness that surrounded the [grisly] events.

Railroads sometimes ran special excursion trains to allow spectators to watch lynchings. Lynch mobs could swell to 15,000 people. Tickets were sold to lynchings. The mood of the white mobs was exuberant—men cheering, women preening, and children frolicking around the corpse.

Photographers recorded the scenes and sold photographic postcards of lynchings, until the Postmaster General prohibited such mail in 1908. People sent the cards with inscriptions like: “You missed a good time” or “This is the barbeque we had last night.”

Lynching received its name from Judge Charles Lynch, a Virginia farmer who punished outlaws and Tories with “rough” justice during the American Revolution. Before the 1880s, most lynchings took place in the West. But during that decade the South’s share of lynchings rose from 20 percent to nearly 90 percent. A total of 744 [B]lacks were lynched during the 1890s. The last officially recorded lynching in the United States occurred in 1968. However, many consider the 1998 death of James Byrd in Jasper, Texas, at the hands of three whites who hauled him behind their pick-up truck with a chain, a later instance.

The Census Bureau estimates that 4,742 lynchings took place between 1882 and 1968. Between 1882 and 1930, some 2,828 people were lynched in the South; 585 in the West; and 260 in the Midwest. That means that between 1880 and 1930, a [B]lack Southerner died at the hands of a white mob more than twice a week…

Apologists for lynching claimed that they were punishment for such crimes as murder and especially rape. But careful analysis has shown that a third of the victims were not even accused of rape or murder; in fact, many of the charges of rape were fabrications. Many victims had done nothing more than not step aside on a sidewalk or accidentally brush against a young girl. In many cases, a disagreement with a white storeowner or landowner triggered a lynching…

(via super1eklectic)