Civil War Mary Church Terrell Summary

The time following the civil war was one of raising racial tension in the south. It was a time when southern whites could not truly accept the change that had came and did not want to give African Americans the chance to be equal. This often could lead to false accusations of rape which would then lead to the lynching’s of innocent African Americans. The lynching’s were in part to try and install fear and redact any new power African American’s could have had, but also centered around false rape accusations that were partially used to try and protect white women’s purity; instead of allowing the possibility that there could have been consensual relations between people of two separate races. Those who found ways to excuse lynching or defend

Mary Church Terrell clearly presents some of the hypocrisy provided by the typical southern narrative. She brings up the point that “one colored male in 100,000 over five years of age was accused of assault upon a white woman in the South in 1902, whereas one male out of every 20,000 over five years of age was charged with rape in Chicago during the same year”. This in part shows lynching was not about assault itself or else white men would have been facing the same consequences, it was solely about race. More specifically as Terrell suggests in her paper, it was about “race hatred”. Even with sex and sexuality playing a major role in lynching’s, it at its core comes back to southern white’s hatred of black people. That the idea African Americans could consider themselves equal to whites or be presented as such, was unacceptable to them as show in Page’s writings. The idea that a white woman could be with a black man, was inexcusable to them because of the hatred they had for African American’s so, although in part southern white men could conclude they were protecting the purity of their women, it could also be concluded it was purely as Terrell mentions, “a hatred of a strong people toward a weaker who were once held as slaves”. It was this remaining idea that can be seen throughout, that even the poorest white could see themselves as better than the richest of African American which is why lynching’s could so easily take