4,000 Lynching Victims Named

[DonViejo]

Source: TDB/NYT

From 1877 to 1950, nearly 4,000 blacks were lynched across the South. On Tuesday, their names were finally revealed. The Equal Justice Project released an inventory that includes 700 people whose deaths were previously unaccounted for in lynching records. “If you’re trying to make a point that the amount of racial violence is underestimated, well then, there’s no doubt about it,” said Professor E.M. Beck of the University of Georgia, who has worked on researching and revising other lynching records. “What people don’t realize here is just how many there were, and how close. Places they drive by every day.” The organization plans to erect markers and memorials across the 16 states where blacks were hung, shot, beaten, stabbed, castrated, and set on fire.

Read it at The New York Times

###

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/02/10/4-000-lynching-victims-named.html

Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/02/10/4-000-lynching-victims-named.html

---

[SpankMe]

1. You can add Lennon Lacy to the list

The klan - or modern day wanna-be's - are alive and well:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/15/justice/north-carolina-lennon-lacy/

[BlueCaliDem]

5. DEFINITELY add Lennon Lacy to that list! According to the evidence, the environment

he found himself in (KKK dominated area), his relationship with a 31-year-old White woman, the shoes he wore which were two sizes to small, his stature at 5 foot 9 inches while the swingset arch is over 7 foot high, the dog leashes, not belts, used to hang him...there are just too many inconsistencies to rule his death a "suicide". He was clearly lynched.

[heaven05]

11. +1000

read about that. Very obvious what happened to this young man in KKK territory in this the 21st century.

[annabanana]

2. k&r . . .n/t

[CountAllVotes]

3. K&R

& recommend.

[mountain grammy]

4. I think the horrifying truth is..

4000 is low.

Reparations now! The time is long past due. Names are known, families can prove losses. Nothing will ever make it right, but reparations are necessary.

One of the best things I've read on the subject:

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

[atreides1]

6. "... hung, shot, beaten, stabbed, castrated, and set on fire..."

"At least they weren't beheaded"...that's what the FOX Snooze people will say about this!

[Judi Lynn]

28. Actually the Fox geniuses can't say that, even. Remember the Klan killing of James Byrd in Texas.

Man Guilty of Murder in Texas Dragging Death

By RICK LYMAN
Published: February 24, 1999

JASPER, Tex., Feb. 23— With exceptional swiftness, a jury today declared John William King, a white man, guilty of capital murder for dragging a black man to his death behind a pickup truck.

The jury began deliberations after less than five days of testimony and barely an hour of closing arguments, chose its only black member as foreman and returned two and a half hours later with the strongest possible verdict. Jurors then quickly began hearing evidence on whether Mr. King should be sentenced to death or life imprisonment for killing James Byrd Jr.

''Justice has been served,'' said a tearful Mary Verrette, one of Mr. Byrd's sisters, as she emerged from the 110-year-old Jasper County Courthouse. ''It was not decided on emotion but on facts, and that's all we wanted.''

Mr. King, 24, slumped slightly as the verdict was read by Judge Joe Bob Golden of State District Court. Mr. Byrd's relatives and others in the packed courtroom burst into applause as the jury rose to leave the courtroom after the announcement.

Mr. King is one of three white men charged with killing Mr. Byrd, 49, in the dark, early hours of June 7, 1998, dragging him on a chain behind a pickup truck for three miles down rural roads in the pine woods east of Jasper. Trial dates have yet to be set for the other defendants, Lawrence Russell Brewer, 31, who met Mr. King when the two were in prison, and Shawn Berry, 23, who has known Mr. King since high school.

The case, which drew international attention and brought back memories of Southern lynchings from decades past, began with the discovery of Mr. Byrd's body, scattered in pieces along the country road where he was dragged. Mr. Byrd had last been seen alive in the back of the pickup after hitchhiking home from a late-night party. His head and right shoulder were sheared off when the truck sped around a sharp corner and he slammed into a sharp-edged culvert. His lower body was found a mile down the road, dumped outside a cemetery and black church.

Prosecutors argued that Mr. King was plotting to form his own white supremacist gang in Jasper -- the Texas Rebel Soldier Division of the Confederate Knights of America -- and had hoped to use the death of a local black man to help recruit members and, perhaps, to provide a blood initiation into the gang for Mr. Berry.

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/24/us/man-guilty-of-murder-in-texas-dragging-death.html

[valerief]

7. No more lynching now that it's legal to shoot people while standing ground. nt

[BlueCaliDem]

12. KKK-Rightwingers are sentimental folk. They like to keep to tradition.

[uponit7771]

17. +1

[Manifestor_of_Light]

8. Most people have never heard of the Tulsa race riots either.

In which the National Guard BOMBED the black neighborhood in North Tulsa from the air.

I don't know of the government bombing their own citizens from the air again until the MOVE firebombing in Philadelphia in the 1970s where a whole block was destroyed.

I hope the guy puts up more and more monuments.

[niyad]

9. so many people are ignorant of the history of this "greatest country in the world"

[BlueCaliDem]

13. Or about Black Wallstreet. Or Rosewood. Everywhere Blacks finally gain income equality,

hateful KKK-supremacists come in and destroy their communities. This is rarely reported and mostly only known among the Black community.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022937754

[heaven05]

10. thank you, very much

I was hoping to find something like this at SPLC, them being anti-racist and all. Thank you again for your input/research.

[Skidmore]

14. Just wanted to add the link for the actual report

It is a pdf file. It is heartwrenching. The pictures are graphic but the text is even more graphic than the grainy pictures. The picture of the students at Howard protesting lynchings in 1943 made me gasp. You don't see that picture when the civil rights movement tale is told. So many predecessors. So many strong people standing up and saying "No more."

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

[damnedifIknow]

16. That's plain sick as hell

I can't believe the crowds that showed up to watch this sick shit. WTF?

[Skidmore]

18. Fear and loathing in America.

And a sense of entitlement. Reading this report makes it difficult to understand the idea that people cannot recognize white privilege or its roots even today. This is information, no matter how ugly, that must be kept alive and given to our children.

[Skidmore]

23. People did and the tactics changed

in some ways. Changes are still needed because Jim Crow is still with us but not as overtly. Lynchings have now been replaced by shootings and long incarcerations which are the equivalent of being buried alive over trivial charges. Lynchings have been replaced by hate crimes. The KKK is still here as are other such groups. Stand up now and address this in the context of our times. Black lives matter. Muslim lives matter. All lives matter.

[mountain grammy]

35. and lynchings were replaced by the death penalty as well.

The mobs and mob mentality are alive and well. They showed up at the Bundy ranch and populate militias and white supremacy groups all over America, and even exist in our public police forces.

Yes, it must be addressed in the context of our times.

[Curmudgeoness]

19. Thanks for posting this, and the warning.

I hesitated as to whether to open it, but in the end, I felt that I should know more about this. I have only skimmed it, but will read it all later. Some of the torture, along with lynchings, is difficult to imagine, and I am shocked by the number of people gathered to watch these things. These "fine upstanding citizens" would be the conservatives of today, who are appalled by beheadings and a human burned to death---even though this sort of thing is what was happening in this country not all that long ago. I guess it is who it is happening to that matters to them, not the act itself.

[Skidmore]

21. From the report:

In 1940, Jesse Thornton
was lynched in Luverne,
Alabama, for referring to
a white police officer by
his name without the title
of “mister.”

I put this report and the article on my FB page and shared it with everyone. We all should do this. It is too important to let these historical facts be swept under the carpet to serve the narrative the current group of politicians are trying to create.

[Curmudgeoness]

24. From the report (warning, detailed account of killings):

If this doesn't horrify everyone with a speck of morality in them, nothing would.

Large crowds of white people, often numbering in the thousands and including elected officials and prominent citizens, gathered to witness pre-planned, heinous killings that featured prolonged torture, mutilation, dismemberment, and/or burning of the victim. White press justified and promoted these carnivallike events, with vendors selling food, printers producing postcards featuring photographs of the lynching and corpse, and the victim’s body parts collected as souvenirs. These killings were bold, public acts that implicated the entire community and sent a message that African Americans were sub-human, their subjugation was to be achieved through any means necessary, and whites who carried out lynchings would face no legal repercussions.

In 1904, after Luther Holbert allegedly killed a local white landowner, he and a black woman believed to be his wife were captured by a mob and taken to Doddsville, Mississippi, to be lynched before hundreds of white spectators. Both victims were tied to a tree and forced to hold out their hands while members of the mob methodically chopped off their fingers and distributed them as souvenirs. Next, their ears were cut off. Mr. Holbert was then beaten so severely that his skull was fractured and one of his eyes was left hanging from its socket. Members of the mob used a large corkscrew to bore holes into the victims’ bodies and pull out large chunks of “quivering flesh,” after which both victims were thrown onto a raging fire and burned. The white men, women, and children present watched the horrific murders while enjoying deviled eggs, lemonade, and whiskey in a picnic-like atmosphere.

[Skidmore]

25. Horrific indeed.

I didn't put that level of detail here because there have been people on DU who request that graphic detail not be posted up front, hence the warning I gave when I posted the link to the report.

THe level of disregard and lack of humanity is staggering.

[WillyT]

15. K & R !!!

[Solly Mack]

20. K&R

[Veruca Salt]

26. The depravity

Of large swaths of people from these eras disturbs me to no end. And what gets me most, what I just can't fathom, is that at one point it was accepted in society.

[Octafish]

34. And many had children...

...to whom they passed on their hatred.

[freshwest]

27. K&R because it needs it. The nightmare can't hide anymore.

[Blue_Tires]

29. k+r

[Judi Lynn]

30. "Report on lynching in the US shows historical numbers, like killings by police, are underreported"

Tue Feb 10, 2015 at 09:28 AM PST.

Report on lynching in the US shows historical numbers, like killings by police, are underreported

by Shaun King


[font size=1]
attribution: Public Domain photo of Lige Daniels - an African American teenager lynched in Texas
[/font]
You can tell a lot about a nation by the sociological data it chronically underreports. Today, in the United States, the egregiously underreported number would be how many people are killed by police. While the FBI has admitted that 2013 was the deadliest year ever for people killed by police, with 461 documented deaths, new studies are showing that the number is at least 1,100—an astounding 58 percent error. So wide is the gap between how many people are killed by police and what is actually reported that the Washington Post just went ahead and declared that nobody really knows how many people the police kills.

In a new report released by the Equal Justice Initiative documenting the history of lynching in America, the number of people lynched in the United States is significantly higher than ever previously reported. In the NY Times, Bryan Stephenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, details how from 1877-1950 in the United States that 4,000 men, women, and children were murdered as a form of racial terrorism to African Americans—a number drastically higher than has been previously reported.

“Lynching and the terror era shaped the geography, politics, economics and social characteristics of being black in America during the 20th century,” Mr. Stevenson said, arguing that many participants in the great migration from the South should be thought of as refugees fleeing terrorism rather than people simply seeking work.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/10/1363557/-Report-on-lynching-in-the-US-shows-historical-numbers-like-killings-by-police-are-underreported

[KauaiK]

31. Approx 1 per week for 73 years....

I have no words.

[Cha]

32. In the name of faux "Christianity".

[DeSwiss]

33. ....

[center][/center]

[lovemydog]

36. K & R