Anti-lynching movement

Last updated

Anti-lynching movement
Part of the nadir of American race relations
1917 Silent Parade, drummers.png
Marchers in the Silent Parade.
Date1890s-1930s (height)
Location
Caused by Lynching in the United States
Goals
  • Heavily criminalize lynching
  • Prosecute lynchers
  • End lynching as a practice
Methods
  • Convention meetings
  • Lobbying politicians

The anti-lynching movement was an organized political movement in the United States that aimed to eradicate the practice of lynching. Lynching was used as a tool to repress African Americans. [1] The anti-lynching movement reached its height between the 1890s and 1930s. The first recorded lynching in the United States was in 1835 in St. Louis, when an accused killer of a deputy sheriff was captured while being taken to jail. The black man named Macintosh was chained to a tree and burned to death. The movement was composed mainly of African Americans who tried to persuade politicians to put an end to the practice, but after the failure of this strategy, they pushed for anti-lynching legislation. African-American women helped in the formation of the movement, [2] and a large part of the movement was composed of women's organizations. [3]

Contents

The first anti-lynching movement was characterized by black conventions, which were organized in the immediate aftermath of individual incidents. The movement gained wider national support in the 1890s. During this period, two organizations spearheaded the movement—the Afro-American League (AAL) and the National Equal Rights Council (NERC). [3]

The first anti-lynching bill was the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill introduced in the 65th United States Congress by Representative Leonidas C. Dyer, a Republican from St. Louis, Missouri. The Dyer bill was re-introduced in subsequent sessions of Congress, but its passage was blocked in the Senate by a filibuster by Southern Democrats, and was never enacted. On January 4, 1935, Democratic Senators Edward P. Costigan and Robert F. Wagner together set out a new bill, the Costigan-Wagner Bill, that stated: "To assure to persons within the jurisdiction of every state the equal protection of the crime of lynching." The bill had many protections from all types of lynching. [4] In March 2022, the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, banning the practice and classifying it as a hate crime, passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law by President Joe Biden on March 29, 2022.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

In 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was established. The NAACP formed a special committee in 1916 in order to push for anti-lynching legislation and to enlighten the public about lynching. [3] This organization's purpose was to ensure that African Americans got their economic, political, social, and educational rights. The NAACP used a combination of tactics such as illegal challenges, demonstrations, and economic boycotts.

The NAACP youth were part of many rallies. They attended many protests against lynching and wore black in memory of all who had been murdered. They also sold anti-lynching buttons to raise money for the NAACP. The money they raised was to keep the fight against lynching going. They sold a huge number of buttons that said "Stop Lynching" and made about $869.25. The youth also contributed by having demonstrations to raise awareness about the horrors of lynching. They had these demonstrations in seventy-eight different cities all over the United States. [5]

According to Noralee Frankel, the anti-lynching movement originated during the Reconstruction era, following the Civil War. It cannot be described only as a result of the reforms during the Progressive Era. [6]

Women's contributions

Many women contributed to the anti-lynching movement through the Dyer Bill, including Ida B. Wells, Mary Burnett Talbert and Angelina Grimké. The bill exposed both lynching and the effects it had on the people.

Ida B. Wells

Ida B. Wells was a significant figure in the anti-lynching movement. After the lynchings of her three friends, she condemned the lynchings in the newspapers Free Speech and Headlight, both owned by her. Wells wrote to reveal the abuse and race violence African Americans had to go through. She was a prominent member of many civil rights organizations, such as the NAACP, the Niagara Movement, and the Afro-American Council. [7] Wells encouraged black women to work for anti-lynching laws to be passed. She was also part of the “First Suffrage Club for Black Women." [8] Ida B. Wells asked “Is Rape the ‘Cause’ of Lynching?” in their circular titled “The Shame of America,” that emphasized the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, when they were in the Anti-Lynching Campaigns. Wells drew attention to the number of 83 women being lynched in a time frame of 30 years in addition to the 3,353 men who were also lynched. [9] Because of her anti-lynching campaigning she received death threats from racist rioters. [3] In 1892, she published the editorial "Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases," in which she was deeply critical of the South's relationship with lynching. She said the following:

Nobody in this section of the country believes the old thread-bare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful, they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women. [10]

Having insulted white women's morality, the reaction in her hometown of Memphis was particularly violent; her newspaper was looted and burned down, and her co-owners were run out of town. Wells had been in the North when the editorial was published and was forced to remain in the North due to threats that she would be lynched if she returned to Memphis. [11] After having her children she got out of the organizations but she kept on protesting against lynching. In 1899 she protested the Sam Hose lynching in Georgia.

Mary Burnett Talbert

Mary B. Talbert was a civil rights and anti-lynching activist, preservationist, international human rights proponent, and educator. She was born and raised in Oberlin, Ohio. She was the president of the National Association of Colored Women from 1916 to 1920. In 1923 she became vice president of the NAACP, and her last contribution was leading the Anti-Lynching Crusaders during the anti-lynching movement. [12] In 1922 Talbert and other African American women among the Anti-Lynching Crusaders raised $10,000 for the NAACP. [13]

Angelina Weld Grimké

Angelina Weld Grimké, niece of the white Angelina Grimké, was a New Negro poet and often wrote about the effects of lynching. In one of her most famous plays, Rachel , she addressed both the lynching problem and the psychological affects that it had on African American people. [14] This anti-lynching play was first performed before the NAACP's Anti-lynching Drama Committee. One of Grimké's main goals was to get White women to empathize with the Black women who witnessed the lynching of their husbands and children. [15]

Juanita Jackson Mitchell

Juanita Jackson was employed by the NAACP as their national youth director. Mitchell did everything she could to get young people involved in the NAACP and protesting against lynching. She got the young to campaign for anti-lynching legislation. She also got to send anti-lynching messages through a radio broadcast: in 1937 Juanita Jackson convinced the National Broadcasting Company to broadcast fifteen minutes on the need for anti-lynching laws. [16]

Anti-Lynching Crusaders

The Anti-Lynching Crusaders were a group of women dedicated to stopping the lynching of African Americas. Before the Anti-Lynching Crusaders was founded all these group of Crusaders were involved with churches that helped them learn how to lead with gender problems and power. [9] The organization was under the guidance of the NAACP and was founded in 1922. The Crusaders women organization started with sixteen members but grew to nine hundred members within three months. [9] This organization focused specifically on raising money to pass the Dyer Bill and stopping the killings of innocent people. [17] Mary Talbert was the leader of the group; her objective was to unite 700 state workers, specifically women, but of no distinguishing color or race. Talbert was an active fundraiser for the Crusaders and affirmed the organizations desire "to raise at least one million dollars...to help us put over the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill." [9] They raised over $10,800 by the spring of 1923. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angelina Weld Grimké</span> American journalist and playwright

Angelina Weld Grimké was an African-American journalist, teacher, playwright, and poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ida B. Wells</span> American journalist and civil rights activist (1862–1931)

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Wells dedicated her career to combating prejudice and violence, and advocating for African-American equality—especially that of women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Monroe Trotter</span> American newspaper editor, businessman, and civil rights activist

William Monroe Trotter, sometimes just Monroe Trotter, was a newspaper editor and real estate businessman based in Boston, Massachusetts. An activist for African-American civil rights, he was an early opponent of the accommodationist race policies of Booker T. Washington, and in 1901 founded the Boston Guardian, an independent African-American newspaper he used to express that opposition. Active in protest movements for civil rights throughout the 1900s and 1910s, he also revealed some of the differences within the African-American community. He contributed to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walter White (NAACP)</span> American civil rights activist (1893–1955)

Walter Francis White was an American civil rights activist who led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for a quarter of a century, from 1929 until 1955. He directed a broad program of legal challenges to racial segregation and disfranchisement. He was also a journalist, novelist, and essayist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carrie Williams Clifford</span> American feminist author, clubwoman and civil rights activist

Carrie Williams Clifford was an author, clubwoman, and activist in the women's rights and civil rights movements in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Florence Kelley</span> American activist (1859–1932)

Florence Moltrop Kelley was an American social and political reformer who coined the term wage abolitionism. Her work against sweatshops and for the minimum wage, eight-hour workdays, and children's rights is widely regarded today.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill</span> U.S. bill intended to prevent lynching

The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill (1918) was first introduced in the 65th United States Congress by Representative Leonidas C. Dyer, a Republican from St. Louis, Missouri, in the United States House of Representatives as H.R. 11279 in order “to protect citizens of the United States against lynching in default of protection by the States.” It was intended to establish lynching as a federal crime. The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill was re-introduced in subsequent sessions of United States Congress and passed, 230 to 119, by the House of Representatives on January 26, 1922, but its passage was halted in the United States Senate by a filibuster by Southern Democrats, who formed a powerful block. Southern Democrats justified their opposition to the bill by arguing that lynchings were a response to rapes and proclaiming that lynchings were an issue that should be left for states to deal with.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lynching in the United States</span> Extrajudicial killings in the United States by mobs or vigilante groups

Lynching was the widespread occurrence of extrajudicial killings which began in the United States' pre–Civil War South in the 1830s and ended during the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Although the victims of lynchings were members of various ethnicities, after roughly 4 million enslaved African Americans were emancipated, they became the primary targets of white Southerners. Lynchings in the U.S. reached their height from the 1890s to the 1920s, and they primarily victimized ethnic minorities. Most of the lynchings occurred in the American South, as the majority of African Americans lived there, but racially motivated lynchings also occurred in the Midwest and border states. In 1891, the largest single mass lynching in American history was perpetrated in New Orleans against Italian immigrants.

The American Crusade Against Lynching (ACAL) was an organization created in 1946 and headed by Paul Robeson, dedicated to eliminating lynching in the United States. A strong advocate of the Civil Rights Movement, Robeson believed "a fraternity must be established in which success and achievement are recognized and those deserving receive the respect, honor and dignity due them." In his speech "The New Idealism", delivered as a Rutgers College valedictory address, Robeson supported the idea that all – both colored and white people – need to take part in the creation of the new "American Idealism"; which led to the development of the American Crusade Against Lynching.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Archibald Grimké</span> American lawyer and diplomat (1849–1930)

Archibald Henry Grimké was an African-American lawyer, intellectual, journalist, diplomat and community leader in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He graduated from freedmen's schools, Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and Harvard Law School, and served as American Consul to the Dominican Republic from 1894 to 1898. He was an activist for the rights of Black Americans, working in Boston and Washington, D.C. He was a national vice-president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as well as president of its Washington, D.C. chapter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Burnett Talbert</span> American activist (1866–1923)

Mary Burnett Talbert was an American orator, activist, suffragist and reformer. In 2005, Talbert was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georgia Douglas Johnson</span> American poet and playwright (1880–1966)

Georgia Blanche Douglas Camp Johnson, better known as Georgia Douglas Johnson, was a poet and playwright. She was one of the earliest female African-American playwrights, and an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leonidas C. Dyer</span> American politician (1871–1957)

Leonidas Carstarphen Dyer was an American politician, reformer, civil rights activist, and military officer. A Republican, he served eleven terms in the U.S. Congress as a U.S. Representative from Missouri from 1911 to 1933. In 1898, enrolling in the U.S. Army as a private, Dyer served notably in the Spanish–American War; and was promoted to colonel at the war's end.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jessie Daniel Ames</span> American civil rights activist

Jessie Daniel Ames was a suffragist and civil rights leader from Texas who helped create the anti-lynching movement in the American South. She was one of the first Southern white women to speak out and work publicly against lynching of African Americans, murders which white men claimed to commit in an effort to protect women's "virtue." Despite risks to her personal safety, Ames stood up to these men and led organized efforts by white women to protest lynchings. She gained 40,000 signatures of Southern white women to oppose lynching, helping change attitudes and bring about a decline in these murders in the 1930s and 1940s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daisy Elizabeth Adams Lampkin</span>

Daisy Elizabeth Adams Lampkin was an American suffragist, civil rights activist, organization executive, and community practitioner whose career spanned over half a century. Lampkin’s effective skills as an orator, fundraiser, organizer, and political activist guided the work being conducted by the National Association of Colored Women (NACW); National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); National Council of Negro Women and other leading civil rights organizations of the Progressive Era.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NAACP</span> Civil rights organization in the United States

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an American civil rights organization formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, Moorfield Storey, Ida B. Wells, Lillian Wald, and Henry Moskowitz. Over the years, leaders of the organization have included Thurgood Marshall and Roy Wilkins.

Rachel is a play that was written in 1916 by African American teacher, playwright and poet Angelina Weld Grimké. Grimké submitted the play to the Drama Committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). For the first production of the play the program read: "This is the first attempt to use the stage for race propaganda in order to enlighten the American people relative to the lamentable condition of the millions of Colored citizens in this free republic."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flossie Bailey</span> American civil rights and anti-lynching activist

Katherine "Flossie" Bailey was a civil rights and anti-lynching activist from Indiana. She established a local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Marion, Indiana, in 1918 and became especially active fighting for justice and equality following the double lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in 1930. As president of the Indiana NAACP, Bailey was pivotal in lobbying for passage of a statewide anti-lynching law in Indiana in 1931 and advocated for a similar bill at the national level. She was also a recipient of the national NAACP's Madam C. J. Walker Medal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Butler R. Wilson</span> American attorney

Butler Roland Wilson (1861–1939) was an attorney, civil rights activist, and humanitarian based in Boston, Massachusetts. Born in Georgia, he came to Boston for law school and lived there for the remainder of his life. For over fifty years, he worked to combat racial discrimination in Massachusetts. He was one of the first African-American members of the American Bar Association. Wilson was a founding member and president of the Boston branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nellie Griswold Francis</span> Suffragist and civil rights activist

Nellie F. Griswold Francis was an African-American suffragist, civic leader, and civil rights activist. Francis founded and led the Everywoman Suffrage Club, an African-American suffragist group that helped win women the right to vote in Minnesota. She initiated, drafted, and lobbied for the adoption of a state anti-lynching bill that was signed into law in 1921. When she and her lawyer husband, William T. Francis, bought a home in a white neighborhood, they were the targets of a Ku Klux Klan terror campaign. In 1927, she moved to Monrovia, Liberia, with her husband when he was appointed U.S. envoy to Liberia. He died there from yellow fever in 1929. Francis is one of 25 women honored for their roles in achieving the women's right to vote in the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial on the grounds of the State Capitol.

References

  1. Cedric J. Robinson (February 20, 1997). Black Movements in America. Psychology Press. p. 105. ISBN   978-0-415-91222-8 . Retrieved April 12, 2012.
  2. Lynne E. Ford (2008). Encyclopedia of Women and American Politics. Infobase Publishing. p. 37. ISBN   978-1-4381-1032-5 . Retrieved April 12, 2012.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Paul Finkelman (November 2007). Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-First Century. Oxford University Press. pp. 78–82. ISBN   978-0-19-516779-5 . Retrieved April 12, 2012.
  4. Walter, David O. (June–July 1935). "Previous Attempts to Pass a Federal Anti-Lynching Law". Congressional Digest. 14 (6/7): 169–171 via EBSCOhost.[ permanent dead link ]
  5. Bynum, Thomas (2013). NAACP Youth and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1936–1965. University of Tennessee Press. p. 8. ISBN   978-1-57233-982-8.
  6. Noralee Frankel (December 22, 1994). Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era. University Press of Kentucky. p. 148. ISBN   978-0-8131-0841-4 . Retrieved April 12, 2012.
  7. Paul Finkelman (November 2007). Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-First Century. Oxford University Press. pp. 78–82. ISBN   978-0-19-516779-5 . Retrieved April 12, 2012.
  8. "Woman Journalist Crusades Against Lynching". Library of Congress. December 10, 1998. Retrieved May 24, 2017.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 Zackodnik, Teresa (2011). Press, Platform, Pulpit: Black Feminist Publics in the Era of Reform. United States of America: The University of Tennessee Press/Knoxville. p. 4.
  10. Wells-Barnett, Ida B. "Southern Horrors: Lynch Law In All Its Phases". www.gutenberg.org. Retrieved November 22, 2022.
  11. Giddings, Paula (1984). When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America. Harper Collins. p. 29. ISBN   978-0688146504.
  12. Williams, Lillian (1999). Strangers in the Land of Paradise: Creation of an African American Community, Buffalo New York. Blooming IN: Indiana University Press. p. 241. ISBN   978-0253335524.
  13. Morgan, Francesca (2005). Women and Patriotism in Jim Crow America. p. 148.
  14. Rucker and Upton, Walter and James (November 30, 2006). Encyclopedia of American Race Riots, Volume 1. Greenwood. p. 64. ISBN   978-0313333019.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  15. Brown- Guillory, Elizabeth (1996). Women of Color: Mother-Daughter Relationships in 20th-Century Literature. University of Texas Press. pp.  191. ISBN   978-0-292-70847-1.
  16. Bynum, Thomas (2012). NAACP Youth and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1936–1965. University of Tennessee Press. pp. 6–8. ISBN   978-1-57233-982-8.
  17. Rucker, Walker (2007). ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN RACE RIOTS. Greenwood Press. p. 64.

Further reading