Summary Of The Lynching By Claude Mckay

In the book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome written by Dr.Joy DeGruy she explains how the past events in American history has lead to post traumatic slave syndrome. She explains that the way African Americans were treated during the slave era and after has had an everlasting effect on African Americans. The book goes on to describe how America has been denying its past and has not helped to integrated and level all the playing fields for African Americans. The book brings to light how we can try to contribute in making America a fair and equal place for all as most claim it to be.

Willie Lynch was a British slave owner in the West Indies. He also wrote letters and gave speeches to other slave owners. The letters and speeches were to show other slave owners, on how to control your slaves. The speech was delivered in 1712, on the bank of James River in the colony of Virginia. Willie Lynch also came up with the word “lynching”. The word lynching means, to put to death, especially by hanging. Throughout history, dominant groups have used lynching as a way of controlling minorities.

In 1920, Lynching was very common. In order to understand why this was such a big problem, we need to look at the numbers of people who were lynched. From 1882 to 1962, almost 5,000 lynchings took place in the United States alone with about 70% of people who were lynched being black. Lynching started becoming a heavily used punishment among the African-American community in the 19th century. After the Civil War ended, there were financial issues in the country, all of which were blamed on the blacks that had recently been freed from slavery. It was speculated that people who were angry with blacks saw lynching as a way to relieve tension between the two groups of people. Because of the blatant aversion many people had towards black people, they were subject to many hate crimes. With the levels of violence as high as they where, protection was necessary, and Anti-Lynching laws would have been

Richard Wright’s poem “Between the World and Me” mourns the tragic scene of a gruesome lynching, and expresses its harsh impact on the narrator. Wright depicts this effect through the application of personification, dramatic symbolism, and desperate diction that manifests the narrator’s agony.

The lynching of enslaved people during the 1800’s came from Charles Lynch, the founder of Lynchburg, Virginia. The term "lynch" first came to be associated with vigilante "justice" when linked to Revolutionary War militia officer and farmer Charles Lynch of Bedford County, on Virginia 's western frontier. Colonel Lynch controlled an extralegal military court that sentenced suspected Tories and Tory sympathizers to punishments of "tar and feathering," flogging, and, in extreme cases, hanging to death from a walnut tree standing in his yard. After the Revolutionary War, Lynch was cleared for his wartime activities by Virginia 's lawmakers. The “Lynch Law” as some would call it would be placed onto people to show an example to scare other slaves so that they would not try to go against the law and especially not run away. The Lynching and killing of slaves and former slaves led to rebellions, Boycotts and

"Southern Horrors and Other Writings " by Ida B. Wells (with an introduction by Jacqueline Jones Royster) focuses on the cruel acts of lynching and why it exists. Ida was a school teacher but dedicated most of her life fighting for social injustices for African American people. In the pamphlet "Lynch Law in all its Phases" Ida examines how African Americans were portrayed as a "bestial race", and brutalized as they became individualist.

The Short story, “The lynching of Jube Benson”, by the African-American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar, takes place in the southern parts of the USA in the 1900s, which is at the same time as the emancipation of the slaves. More accurately, the story takes place in Gordon Fairfax’s library, where three men were present; Handon Gay, who is an educated reporter, Gordon Fairfax, who is an library owner and Doctor Melville, who is a doctor. The author collocate these three men at jobs which is powerful in the society. The story is about a white narrator, Doctor Melville, who explains, to the two others, that he has been involved in a lynching of his black friend, Jube Benson. Unfortunately, false accusations were made against

Humans tend are entertained by the most iniquitous things. Stephen King makes many significant points, one point being “the horror film has become the modern version of the public lynching” (paragraph 6). This is agreeable because all humans have some type of psychological problem, an evil and a good side, emotions that need satisfaction, and the similarities between horror films and public lynching. People may not recognize these things, but it does exist in everyday life. Stephen King’s article helps point these things out to readers.

Despite liberation after the Civil War, African Americans still experienced extreme inequality and injustice. Many of them were still being persecuted, for one hundred African Americans were lynched each year during the 1880s and the 1890s. A female African American writer in Memphis, Tennessee wrote about these terrors. Her name was Ida B. Wells. She published pamphlets that illustrated the injustices being inflicted upon the African Americans. On Lynchings includes pamphlets such as Southern Horrors, Red Record, and Mob Rule in New Orleans. The pamphlets included within the book provide sources and facts about the executions. The book itself is about a black women’s cry for help through her writing and how she overcame

In the book, Benching Jim Crow: The Rise and Fall of the Color Line in Southern College Sports, written by Martin H. Charles. Charles H. Martin is an associate professor of history at the University of Texas at El Paso. The book, is divided into different eras that range from 1890 to 1980. Charles’ reveals how southern colleges implemented their racially exclusive programs and then integrated to a diverse competition.

Henry Morrow was an African American male who said something to a white women, and because of that Robert Teel felt he had to stand up for her because he thought Morrow should not be talking to her. The altercation arose and because of that Morrow was eventually shot and killed by Teel. This can be considered one of the grey areas of that definition of crime used above. While the murder of Morrow was obviously an example of crime, what happened before that can be interpreted different ways. While it was not illegal for an African American to talk to a white women, it was considered so wrong to do within the society it was almost like an unwritten law. This killing just reiterated the fact that there was a clear difference in the two groups. It showed that they were in fact not going to be treated equally, and that they had no intentions of changing that anytime soon. This murder just paved the way for the whites to treat the African Americans however they wanted to, which would lead to several more racially motivated crimes to occur. Another of example of crime in the book is the burning down of businesses. This started from the unrest that was started when the businesses of the whites were being challenged by the success of the African American

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is an enticing tale of Douglas as he changes from slave to man. Near the beginning of the book, his first witness of a whipping reveals the entrance to the horrors that would come throughout his experience with enslavement. “No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim…” (4) it displays the physical, emotional, and spiritual breaking of an individual; powerful words to create an understanding of the terror of slavery. Beating into absolute submission strikes a sense of sadness, pity, justice in the reader that encourages them to see slavery in a different light. Throughout his narrative he continues to attack these points to encourage similar feelings of pity and acknowledgement “to enlighten white readers about both the realities of slavery as an institution and the humanity of black people as individuals deserving of full human rights.”.

Within the 1920’s there were approximately around 3,496 and counting reported lynchings all over the south, In Alabama there were 361, Arkansas 492, Florida 313, Georgia 590, Kentucky 168, Louisiana 549, Mississippi 60,North Carolina 123, South Carolina 185, Tennessee 233, Texas 338, and Virginia 84 lynchings (Lynching in America). These are just some of the numbers introduced during the 1920’s for the reported lynchings. Lynching was used for public appeal for the people to show justice on the blacks and to punish them so the whites could return to “white supremacy”. At first lynching was only for slaves that tried to escape, it then turned into all blacks, then before lynching was illegal the mobs (such as the KKK and jim crow laws) would lynch different religions and races. The majority of the crimes the people were charged for were fake or over exaggerated, the people that were lynched did not receive a fair

The Harlem Renaissance was a period of revolutionary styles of music, dance, and literature that presented the hardships and culture of African Americans. The “Trumpet Player,” by Langston Hughes portrays the theme of the therapeutic effects of music through the development of an African American trumpeter’s music. The free verse poem “Trumpet Player” epitomizes the Harlem Renaissance and Jazz through the unique use of inconsistent rhymed and unrhymed lines mixed with the use of colloquialisms.

Racial tensions during the 1920s, in which “Incident” was written, were especially high, with a dramatic increase in membership of the KKK and Klan “manipulation of state and local politics” (3), an uptick in hate crimes, race rioting resulting in imprisonment or death for hundreds of black Americans, and the poor treatment of black soldiers coming home from WWI all contributing to one of the most racially charged time periods in American history. Despite racism being a daily and lifelong experience for the vast majority of African Americans during this time, Cullen depicts racism as solely singular throughout the duration of the poem, extending its singularity even to the title itself—“Incident.” So then, given the prevalence of racism at the time, why did Cullen make the decision to limit the experience to one isolated