Hate, Racism, & Fear

1. Hate, Racism, & Fear Race regulations in the South By: Patrick Bradley, Dylan Matousek, & Rachel Hall

2. Lynching • Done to enforce the “color line.” • Humiliation • Torture • Intimidation • Often done in public places. • Town Squares • Town Halls • Political changes and reform led to variations of what constituted as “lynching.” • Region • Opinion • Rituals Harris, J. William. “Etiquette, Lynching, and Racial Boundaries in Southern History: A Mississippi Example”

3. Lynching continued… • No clear definition of lynching or understanding • 1940: "there must be legal evidence that a person has been killed, and that he met his death illegally at the hands of a group acting under the pretext of service to justice, race, or tradition.” (qtd. in Meyers). • Hangings, beatings, shootings, burnings, and sadistic torture such as dismemberment and mutilation. • 1882-1930: 4,587 • 1889 and 1930: 3,724 (qtd. in Meyers). • “Our country's national crime is lynching” (Meyers). • Percentage increase from 1880s to 1920s (qtd. in Meyers). • NAACP: 87.9% of lynchings occurred in the South. • Lynching was directly connected to race. Meyers, Christopher C. "Killing Them by the Wholesale: A Lynching Rampage in South Georgia."

4. Lynching continued… • Accusations against lynching victims for 1882-1951: • 41% felonious assault, • 19.2% rape, • 6.1% attempted rape, • 4.9% robbery and theft, • 1.8% insulting White people, and • 27% miscellaneous offenses or no offenses at all • Those accused of rape were not always guilty • Lynched before getting criminal trials. • 25.3% of lynching victims accused of rape or attempted rape included innocent people. • “There is much reason to believe that this figure [25.3 percent] has been inflated by the fact that a mob which makes the accusation of rape is secure from any further investigation; by the broad Southern definition of rape to include all sexual relations between Negro men and white women; and by the psychopathic fears of white women in their contacts with Negro men.” Myrdal, Gunnar. An American Dilemma.

5. Jim Crow Laws • “Jim Crow was more than a series of rigid anti-Black laws. It was a way of life.” • Whites were the Chosen people, Blacks were cursed to be servants, and God supported racial segregation. • Craniologists, eugenicists, phrenologists, and Social Darwinists, believed that Blacks were “innately intellectually and culturally inferior to Whites.” • Integration = “the mongrelization of the White race.” • Newspaper and magazine writers routinely referred to Blacks as niggers, coons, and darkies; and worse, their articles reinforced anti-Black stereotypes. “What Was Jim Crow?”

6. Jim Crow Laws continued… • Plessy v. Ferguson: legitimized Jim Crow laws and the Jim Crow way of life. • In 1890, "Separate Car Law“: "equal but separate" cars for Blacks and Whites. No public accommodations provided Blacks with equal facilities. • Illegal for Blacks to sit in coach seats reserved for Whites, and Whites could not sit in seats reserved for Blacks. • Testing the waters: Homer A. Plessy: • “The Supreme Court stated that so long as state governments provided legal process and legal freedoms for Blacks, equal to those of Whites, they could maintain separate institutions to facilitate these rights. The Court, by a 7-2 vote, upheld the Louisiana law, declaring that racial separation did not necessarily mean an abrogation of equality. In practice, Plessy represented the legitimization of two societies: one White, and advantaged; the other, Black, disadvantaged and despised.” • Denied the right to vote by “grandfather clauses,” poll taxes, white primaries, & literacy tests. • “Plessy sent this message to southern and border states: Discrimination against Blacks is acceptable.” “What Was Jim Crow?”

7. Jim Crow Laws continued… • Jim Crow etiquette norms: • A Black male could not offer his hand with a White male because it implied being socially equal. A Black male could not offer his hand or any other part of his body to a White woman, because he risked being accused of rape. • Blacks and Whites were not supposed to eat together. If they did eat together, Whites were to be served first, and some sort of partition was to be placed between them. • Under no circumstance was a Black male to offer to light the cigarette of a White female -- that gesture implied intimacy. • Blacks were not allowed to show public affection toward one another in public, especially kissing, because it offended Whites. • Jim Crow etiquette prescribed that Blacks were introduced to Whites, never Whites to Blacks. For example: “Mr. Peters (the White person), this is Charlie (the Black person), that I spoke to you about.” • Whites did not use courtesy titles of respect when referring to Blacks. Instead, Blacks were called by their first names. Blacks had to use courtesy titles when referring to Whites, and were not allowed to call them by their first names. • If a Black person rode in a car driven by a White person, the Black person sat in the back seat, or the back of a truck. • White motorists had the right-of-way at all intersections. “What Was Jim Crow?”

8. Jim Crow Laws continued… • Stetson Kennedy, the author of Jim Crow Guide, lists “simple rules” that Blacks were supposed to observe in conversing with Whites: • Never assert or even intimate that a White person is lying. • Never impute dishonorable intentions to a White person. • Never suggest that a White person is from an inferior class. • Never lay claim to, or overly demonstrate, superior knowledge or intelligence. • Never curse a White person. • Never laugh derisively at a White person. • Never comment upon the appearance of a White female. Kennedy, Stetson. Jim Crow Guide: The Way it Was.

9. Lynching in Georgia • Georgians had the most lynchings between 1880 and 1930 • 549 lynchings between 1882 & 1927, 510 (92.8%) were black • 460 lynchings between 1880 & 1930, 441 (95.8%) were black (qtd. in Meyers). • “There is every reason to believe that there were more lynchings in Georgia, but some probably took place in such remote locations that they were never discovered or publicized” (Meyers). • Georgia had a law to prevent mob violence. • Passed in 1893, it “made it the duty of law enforcement officials, when they learned of mob activity, ‘to prevent such mob violence’ and to ‘use every means in their power to prevent such mob violence.’” • “The law required the sheriff to arrest those participating in mob activity and ‘place them in the common jail of the county’” (qtd. in Meyers). • More lynchings in Brooks County • “More than half of the twenty-four confirmed victims killed between 1880 & 1930 died in this single incident, which was literally a lynching rampage” (Meyers). • The center of Brook’s County is 2 hours & 40 minutes away from Macon, Georgia (Google Maps). Meyers, Christopher C. "Killing Them by the Wholesale: A Lynching Rampage in South Georgia."

10. Examples from The Color Purple • “Your daddy didn’t know how to git along, he say. White folks lynch him. Too sad a story to tell pitiful little growing girls” (Walker 181). • “Well, his store did so well that he talked two of his brothers into helping him run it, and, as the months went by, they were doing better and better. Then the white merchants began to get together and complain that this store was taking all the black business away from them, and the man’s blacksmith shop that he set up behind the store, was taking some of the white. This would not do. And so, one night, the man’s store was burned down, his smith destroyed, and the man and his two brothers dragged out of their homes in the middle of the night and hanged. […] When the neighbors brought [the] body home, it had been mutilated and burnt” (Walker 174-5). • “Any marker, I ast. He look at me like I’m crazy. Lynched people don’t git no marker, he say. Like this something everybody know” (Walker 182).

11. Examples continued… • Things that could have let to lynchings: • Sofia’s actions. • “Sofia say, Hell no. Mayor look at Sofia, push his wife out the way. Stick out his chest. Girl, what you say to Miss Millie? Sofia say, I say, Hell no. He slap her” (Walker 85). • Harpo’s speak-easy/juke-joint. • “Walking down to Harpo and Sofia house it feel just like old times. Cept the house new, down below the juke-joint, and it a lot bigger than it was before” (Walker 217). • Squeak’s parents. • Revealed on page 91, that Squeak is half-white. • Miss Millie (car situation). • Confrontation could have led to lynching.

12. Images of Horror Source: http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0309/lm18.html Source: http://www.displaysforschools.com/images/samcarter.jpg

13. Discussion http://be-think.typepad.com/bethink/files/HstryLynch.pdf

14. Works Cited "The Brute Caricature." Ferris State University: Michigan College Campuses in Big Rapids MI, Grand Rapids MI, Off Campus Locations Across Michigan. Web. 19 Feb. 2012. Harris, J. William. “Etiquette, Lynching, and Racial Boundaries in Southern History: A Mississippi Example.” The American Historical Review 100.2 (Apr. 1995): 387-410. Web. 20 Feb. 2012. Kennedy, Stetson. Jim Crow Guide: The Way It Was. Boca Raton: Florida Atlantic University Press, 1950/1990. 116-117. Print. Meyers, Christopher C. "Killing Them by the Wholesale: A Lynching Rampage in South Georgia." Georgia Historical Quarterly 90.2 (2006): 214-235. Academic Search Complete. Web. 14 Feb. 2012. Myrdal, Gunnar. An American Dilemma. New Brunswick: Harper & Bros., 1944. 561-62. Print. Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Harvest, 2003. Print. "What Was Jim Crow?" Ferris State University: Michigan College Campuses in Big Rapids MI, Grand Rapids MI, Off Campus Locations Across Michigan. Web. 19 Feb. 2012.