CP on Lynching

I'm going to really upset the left, crazy liberals, people of color with a chip on their shoulder and dozens of others with no real understanding of history.

But here goes: "Lynching was a necessary evil of the late 1800's and early 1900's."

James Keating Moments Before His Execution 

I'll never forget a conversation I had in 1997 after the movie Rosewood came out. The Rosewood massacre took place in 1923, the movie, a fictionalized account of an actual event, was graphic and disturbing. One of my employees at the time, was a young black kid and he was so incensed by the movie that he refused to come to work saying he needed some time off, further explaining: "you white people enslaved and lynched my people". 

I was genuinely troubled by this statement and asked who? His reply was "my people". I pressed him asking who are you speaking of, a great grand father, a long lost cousin or grand uncle, when did this happen? He couldn't name anyone but he was sure it happened to them.

So here's the thing, back in 1997, the continued hysteria over lynching had become another chain of burden wrapped around the necks of African American youth by leaders of organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the NAACP. 

The chains of slavery, racism, and lynching are now so heavy that most African American youth can't move beyond their perceived lives of suffering. Now today we are adding to this lynching burden; "Driving While Black", "White Privilege" and the slogan "Black Lives Matter" which is to say "Black Lives Apparently Don't Matter" and let us not forget the burden of "ghetto names" and the minimum wage that is so low it is often referred to as the "Black Wage".

Heaping all this shame, burden and quilt then adding the unreasonable fear of inanimate Confederate statues and flags to the specter of a hooded member of the KKK with a hangman's noose, has created a large psychosis in much of Young Black America.

This is a major problem and I believe it leads to a cycle of poverty, violence and criminality within the African American community today. The sum total of this pervasive thinking seems to be; your life doesn't matter so you might as well get what you can anyway you can.

The Democratic Party is also guilty of continuing the myth of the poor "negro" to further their agenda. This PNS (Poor Negro Syndrome) is only possible because many African Americans believe they can not succeed without some form of government assistance, "because the white man wants to keep you down".

No doubt the period of history post civil war and pre civil rights movement was a raw time in America. 

But today the term lynching is over used and often misused. Clarence Thomas even used the term Lynching to describe Anita Hill's accusation that he was a sexual predator. 

Lynching by definition: "to put to death (as by hanging) by mob action without legal approval or permission." 

Yet term also once applied to other forms of mob action. Contrary to today's understanding Lynching was not invented by the KKK.

In fact the terms Lynching, Lynch Law, Lynch's Law or Judge Lynch began during the revolutionary war as a way to deal with loyalists opposed to the revolution.

Thomas Jefferson and Charles Lynch 

“The method of seizing them at once which you have adopted is much the best,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in August of 1780. 

Then the Governor of Virginia, Jefferson was writing in reply to Col. Charles Lynch of the Bedford County Militia. Col. Lynch, along with his entire regiment, were in the business of uncovering Tories, suspected of loyalty to the British crown. 

That July, they had discovered three such men. The Patriots whipped two and hanged the third. 

“You have only to take care that they be regularly tried afterwards,” warned Jefferson. He insisted upon speedy trial as “the sooner those found guilty can be sent down the better.” 

Jefferson otherwise praised Col. Lynch’s methods. Jefferson understood that a military commander deciding the guilt and sentence of a suspect was acting outside the law. This extra-judicial decision, had it not been for the time of war, would typically have been considered murder.
  
In 1896 the State of Ohio, became the first government body to define “Lynching” in legal terms. They ruled that “any act of violence exercised by a mob upon the body of any person shall constitute a ‘Lynching.'” Though the first, they seemed to lag behind the more popular definition requiring a death. 

As time went on, individual states defined lynching is various ways, most eventually coming to the conclusion that in order for it to be a lynching, a death had to occur at the hands of an extra-judicial mob. Often, even the number of people gathered together was important.

Despite the facts "Lynching" will forever be connected inexplicably to African Americans. 

The last officially recorded lynching in the United States occurred in 1968. In fact, only 3 lynchings are known to have happened between 1947 and 1968. 

But it is the violent murder of James Byrd that has connected Lynching to African Americans for the last 20 years.

James Byrd was attacked by 3 white men, one who he thought was a friend, in Beaumont Texas back in 1998. Byrd was beaten and later dragged down a highway behind one of the attacker's pickup trucks.

The news media called this a “lynching” despite the facts that it was nothing more than murder. 

The case study is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Byrd_Jr.

Yet Byrd was not hung, no noose was placed around his neck. He was not accused of any crime, and therefore this was not some form of extra-judicial punishment.

However, his murder which was clearly a hate crime was inextricably linked to lynching.

Over the last 60 years the Southern Poverty Law Center, NAACP and the Equal Justice Initiative built their reputation in part by spreading the word about the Lynchings. 

Additionally an organization known as "Monroe Work Today" has built an online map titled "Map of White Supremacy Mob Violence" which is subtitled "The Lynchings and Riots to enforce racial supremacy in the US" yet this is great tool that details every possible instance of Lynching in the United States between 1835 and 1964. Except it only includes people of color and on rare occasions people who are identified as "other" who were "Lynched" along side the people of color.

If you look at this 130 year period in the context of racial hatred is pretty easy to be disillusioned.  

James Keating pictured above just before his death is included in the list of those "Lynched" during the period often called the "progressive era" perhaps that was just a little optimistic?

By today's standards "Lynching" was both barbaric and immoral. But in the 1930's rural American it was a necessary evil. Unlike the North, law enforcement resources in the rural South were scarce, jails, judges and courts even more so.

Few Americans today understand the meaning of "Circuit Court" or Circuit Court Judge. This legacy term refers to a traveling judge that may or may not hold court on a regular basis or from time to time as needed and traveling from municipality to municipality to do so.

In many cases throughout the rural South and West it would be weeks before a judge would hear a case. Local law enforcement was often ill-equipped to handle mob demands and threats of violence. 

Much of what we hear about today of Lynchings is the carnival like macabre nature of this mob violence. Without a doubt there was plenty of grotesque and appalling behavior, but while it is hard to imagine people conducting themselves as such savages it was not 2018 rather 1930. Lynchings were considered "family entertainment" yes I know that's a hard to accept concept by today's standards. Yet the violence witnessed by even small children is just as available today on cable television. 

The recent opening of The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery Alabama continues the myth and furthers the agenda of the NAACP and today's democratic party. The rusting brown cylinders represent people of color hanging in the breeze, this strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees once again serves as a burden to African Americans.

The Equal Justice Initiative which funded the project, as with the Monroe Work map is a black centric study. The EJI also continues the myth that 6 million African Americans fled the south to escape the racial violence. The reality is the entire south moved northward as farming gave way to the industrial revolution.  

No doubt cross burnings, white sheets, and lynching of innocent black men make for colorful images. But in the lawless south and west this was often the only justice available. 

At the height of lynchings in the US congress again and again failed to act. Several attempts were made at passing anti lynching laws, but each attempt was voted down by democrats. 

We today find it hard to accept that extra-judicial justice was a way of life a century ago, and its easy to believe that lynching then is not much different than police brutality today. But the sad truth is that lynching was at one time was a necessary evil, that served the various communities across the rural south. A form of extra-judicial justice that was allowed to happen condoned by both democrats and republicans in order to keep the peace. 

But clinging to the past and continually referencing Lynching has not advanced anyone. Ironic that the NAACP the National Association for the "Advancement" of Colored People thrives only when African Americans believe that are no better off today that 100 years ago.

Take this as you like, but we can't fully understand the past if we dwell in it everyday. Much of today's racial bias is simply not there. Those who keep living in the past will never achieve self-sufficiency much less success. So why live in the past and for what purpose?  

Sadly racism is everywhere, but those who rise above it will be victorious.