Terror Lynching: When soldier refused to remove his army uniform-savage mob exacted their punishment

[kpete]

The report argues that atrocities carried out against African Americans during this period were akin to terrorism, and that lynchings were a tool to “enforce racial subordination and segregation”.

In 1931, the Alabama governor called the National Guard to the Scottsboro jail to protect a group of young black men who he believed might be lynched after being accused of raping two white girls. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis



Equal Justice Initiative report reveals history of racial violence and finds at least 700 more lynchings than previously recorded in southern states

In 1919, a black soldier returned home to Blakely, Georgia, having survived the horrors of the first world war only to face the terrors of a white mob that awaited him in the Jim Crow-era south. When the soldier, William Little, refused to remove his army uniform, the savage mob exacted their punishment.

Little was just one of 3,959 African Americans who were brutally and often publicly killed across the southern states between the end of the Reconstruction era and the second world war, which is at least 700 more lynchings in these states than previously recorded, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). The authors’ inventory of the nearly 4,000 victims of what the report calls “terror lynchings” reveals a history of racial violence more extensive and more brutal than initially reported.

Many of the victims were, like Little, killed for minor transgressions against segregationist mores – or simply for demanding basic human rights or refusing to submit to unfair treatment. And though the names and faces of many who were lynched have slipped from the pages of history, their deaths, the report argues, have left an indelible mark on race relations in America.

...........

The report, titled Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror, is the result of nearly five years of investigation by EJI, a nonprofit organization based in Montgomery, Alabama, into lynchings that occurred in 12 southern states between 1877 and 1950. It explores how the legacy of racial inequality in America was shaped and complicated by these violent decades, which saw thousands of African American men, women and children killed by “terror lynchings”, horrific acts of violence inflicted on racial minorities.

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MORE:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/10/history-of-lynchings-and-racial-violence-continues-to-haunt-us

[MineralMan]

3. How does President Obama figure in this discussion?

I'm not getting it. This is about something else. Maybe you should reread the OP.

[uponit7771]

4. I think they forgot the sarcasm tag but its' what wingers do, blame Obama for anything

[MineralMan]

5. Sarcasm or not, using "Obummer" when referring to

President Obama is a bush-league teabagger thing. That's my opinion about that.

[ck4829]

2. William Little's 'crime' - "Refusing to remove his army uniform"

What goes through a person's head, when they see a man wearing a uniform, wearing the uniform of the armed forces of your very own country, and that person thinks "I HAVE to beat this person to death!"?

Those who participated in these lynchings were traitors; traitors to their country, but also traitors to their fellow man.

[salin]

6. The report is very comprehensive - and very important to read

http://www.eji.org/files/EJI%20Lynching%20in%20America%20SUMMARY.pdf

A challenging read. I applaud EJI's work on this and their plan to place markers to commemorate the victims of the terror lynchings.

[Solly Mack]

7. My grandfather (born 1900) was 9 when he saw his first lynching victim.

He and a friend were walking to Dalton, GA from his home a few miles away. They wanted to go to the "city" to look around.

They came across a body hanging from a tree, all bloated and crusted with blood. He was more detailed in what he saw than I will relay. What he saw was forever etched into his memory. He was in his 70's when he told us about it. Hearing his voice you could tell he was reliving that life altering moment. That he could still see it.

My grandfather said he and his friend both pee'ed their pants and, after they could move, turned tail. They ran all the way back home and he never went to Dalton again until he was an adult. Even then he was afraid.

It was a reign of terror. Lynchings were meant to instill fear. To scare people so badly they would never speak up. Never fight back. Never demand more. To cause people to live in fear every second of their lives. To know, that on somebody else's whim, you could be brutally murdered for nothing more than existing.

My grandfather couldn't escape those feelings of paralyzing terror and he was white.

Now imagine you're a 9 year old African-American.

Even today, where all too often the rope has been replaced by the legal veneer of a policeman's gun.

[Kaleva]

8. Not our problem. Let the Southernenrs deal with this.

[dissentient]

9. America has been committing terrorism on various minorities for decades

Yesterday it was Native Americans and Blacks, today its brown skinned people in the middle east.

Oh sorry, I forgot, its not terrorism when we do it, its killing the evil doers. We are the good guys and I must not insult the Homeland.