Lynching: Mass Mob Violence in the Late Nineteenth Century


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Lynching in the United States is a well-documented topic with countless journal articles and books written on the subject. What struck me was the proliferation of lynching after the high death counts caused by the civil war. The mass mob violence of lynching seems to counter how the nation was exhausted over of the amount of deaths. Half way through the Civil War, almost every household had mourned the death of a loved one. In Drew Faust’s book, The Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, she examines dying and killing and “explores how those experiences transformed society, culture, and politics in what became a broader republic of shared suffering.”[1] The shared suffering transformed how the United States dealt with the memory of death. Memories of shared suffering did not stop the mob violence killing of African Americans in the South. How have scholars argued the rise of lynching after the civil war and how have they been in conversation with each other?  I will argue what has been scholars common thread and how they expanded it in their own arguments. The common thread that has linked scholars is the Southern justification of lynching by labeling African-American’s as the “Black Rapist” and how they used lynching as a spectacle.

Throughout the Civil War Americans, from North and South, have become desensitized to killing. During this period the amount of killings became the norm. To continue killing, after the many years of suffering, a justification was needed in order for it to continue. Crystal N. Feimster’s article What If I am a Women: Black Women’s Campaigns for Sexual Justice and Citizenship provides a justification of how white southerners were depicting African American as the “Black Rapist.” Feimster writes, “In constructing the image of the “Black rapist,” southern white men sought to challenge black men’s and women’s rights to citizens, while expanding their own sexual power over African Americans. The portrayal of black men as beastly and unable to control their sexual desires served to justify lynching, segregation, and disfranchisement.”[2] Southern men using the “Black Rapist” justification essentially opened the flood gates to the amount of lynching. Feimster argues in addition to justifying violence again black men, it also help justified intimidainge black women. Feimster states, “At the same time as the justification of lynching as the protection for while womanhood allowed for unprecedented violence against African Americans, it also served to terrorize women and place limitations on their sexual freedom and political rights.”[3] Feimster using the “Black Rapist” narrative correlated the loss of equal rights black women were seeking during reconstruction. This was due to the loose or weak hold Northern troops had in this period. White Democrats power continued to grow and they were able to pass Jim Crow laws. “The possibility of black female citizenship dwindled as white democrats regained complete power in the former Confederacy. Sexual justice for black women disappeared as the Jim Crow South denied their Claim for equal protection under the law.”[4] The disappearance of the North and reclaiming political power of white Democrats by using Jim Crow legislation helped increase the large amounts of lynching and suppressed black women’s rights.

In Amanda K. Frisken’s article “A Song Without Words”: Anti-Lynching Imagery in the African American Press, 1889-1898 she builds on the “Black Rapist” argument, but expands on how imagery justified lynching. Frisken argues, “The stereotype of the black rapist amplified the visual short-hand then developing in the sensational illustrated news…the Police Gazette gradually distilled a version of the southern rape/lynching narrative, namely that African American men had an innate tendency to rape white women, and the lynching was necessary to keep them in check.”[5] Frisken continues to use the imagery in her argument but she captures the response from other newspapers to counter the “Black Rapist” images. Other newspaper used imagery to gain support of African Americans and the burden they had to bear. The Indianapolis Freeman newspaper was the first African American newspaper to create and provide a visual challenge to rape and lynching. “Their drawings usually denounced racial discrimination and social inequality, and focused on Republican President Benjamin Harrison’s failure to stem racial violence.”[6] Frisken argues newspapers like the Indianapolis Freeman used images to highlight the “political and economic terrorism” to push pressure on lawmakers to view African Americans as voters and citizens.[7] Frisken explains, “Some images advocated self-protection as a “remedy for southern outrages’ but most stressed federal enforcement of citizenship rights to guarantee fair trials, equal opportunity, and voting rights in the face of southern violence. ‘Uncle Sam’ was the typical symbol for federal responsibility—or weakness—in many illustrations.”[8] Frisken also reveals the image of Ethiopia as a protector of African Americans equal rights. Due to the weak response from Northern Republican legislature Ethiopia’s image stood as the defender of democracy. In an another image, Freeman depicts Ethiopia gesturing killing of innocent African American men and women to Uncle Sam. The caption of the image states, “See how my people are murdered, maltreated and outraged in the South, Ethiopia says, “and you, with a great army and navy, are taking no measures to prevent it. Ethiopia, a recurring figure in Freeman iconography, stood for strong advocacy of equal protection and due process.”[9] Frisken ties her argument with the “Black Rapist” narrator through images of how white Southerners used it to justify lynching. However, she writes how it prompted black newspapers to respond to mob violence and to use images to put pressure on Northern Republican legislatures to provide protection laws for African Americans.

Christine DeLucia’s article Getting the Story Straight: Press Coverage of Italian-American Lynchings from 1856-1910 expands the “Black Rapist” notion by expanding this justification to other ethnic groups. She explains, “In justifying African-Americans lynchings, white southerners drew upon distinct constructions of black men as rapists, while violence against Sicilians was legitimated by construction of them principally as murderers.”[10] Focusing on Italians as inherent murderers is equal to the argument that African Americans are rapist. One justification DeLucia reveals in research is Italians association with organized crime. This was a basis of a series of lynchings in Louisiana. “The conviction that Sicilians had an inherent tendency toward criminality is emphasized by the common presumption of guilt in all of the lynchings…Both the press and public officials employed the most circumstantial evidence to prove guilt of the men, emphasizing their supposedly criminal characters.”[11] Character attacks of Italians was common and were used to justify lynching of the Italians. The continued character attacks in newspapers of Italians created a perception that became the norm. A local New Orleans newspaper reported that vindicated mob killing of Sicilians, “…the murdered Sicilians were a dangerous social menace who upset who upset the peaceful stability of the communities in which they settled.”[12] Another reason of the their suspicious character was due to Italian economic success after immigrating to America. DeLucia discloses the Italian financial success threatened the local community which justified lynching. “Resentment at the economic prosperity of Sicilians resulted in accusations that had been attained through corrupt and brutal business practices. Lynching then, were defended on the basis of preventing the expansion of organized crime by sending a strong message to immigrant communities.”[13] DeLucia used the “Black Rapist” notion as other scholars used but ties to the characterization of Italians as a people who had ties to murderous organized crime tendencies.

Ira M. Wasserman took a spin on the “Black Rapist” view in her article Media Rhetoric and Images of Lynching in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries by introducing African newspaper writer Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s view that white women were to blame. “Black newspapers strongly condemned lynching of the black people by whites, but the fate of Ida B. Wells-Barnett in Memphis in 1892 illustrated the danger of this extreme protest…Ms. Wells-Barnett, and editor of the The Memphis Beacon-Light, strongly protested the action of the white mob. In this context, she stated that white women secretly desired sex with African-American men.”[14] Wasserman expands her article by noting the similarity of Western and Southern lynching in relation to the media’s perception. The national media was supportive of lynching in the West. During the frontier years of 1850 to 1890 there was not yet any formal legal systems. Lynching out West was conducted by a formation of vigilante groups. Wasserman writes, “The Western press usually had a favorable view of these self-appointed law officials (e.g., The Los Angeles Times, 1894, 1913), perceiving them as protectors of community values…Western media emphasized the social respectability of these vigilante groups, pointing out that many upper-class members of the community belonged to them.”[15] The vigilante groups were seen by Western press as a group that was to maintain law and order for the community. Some vigilante groups could also be found in the South in the late nineteenth century in Texas and Florida. The Florida vigilante group consisted of businessmen who wished to stop the labor movement. They wanted to prevent any interference to their business activates. “As in the West, the local and state media had a favorable view of these vigilante groups, justifying their actions as necessary to maintain public order and safety.”[16] Many Southerns suffered from poverty after losing to the North in the Civil War. White Southern cities could not afford their own law enforcement so they created their own deputized posses to maintain peace and order. The local media supported the posses and depicted them positively in their news reports. Wasserman states, “They were usually incited by extreme racial prejudice. Since the posses were quasi-legal groups, and because there was a fine line between a lynching and a justifiable execution (e.g., the level of resistance of the suspected felon), the Southern media were usually favorable disposed to their terrorist activates.”[17] Wasserman expands the lynching narrative out West. She is able to compare similarities of how both were able to justify lynching. Lynching is not often thought in the West and mainly associated to the South. She does a good job of researching lynching and moving it out West.

One region that is often not associated with lynching is the North. Michael J. Pfeifer uncovers lynching conducted by Catholic Irish Americans. Pfeifer argues that the Catholic Irish American opposed the expansion of rights for African Americans. Catholic Irish Americans wanted to defend Irish kinfolk that been victimized by unproven criminality. Pfeifer states, “They revealed substantial resistance among Northern Irish Catholics to the war’s implication of racial egalitarianism and the extension of rights to African Americans. They indicated that portions of the Northern populace rejected Republicans’ advocacy of an expansive, activist state and legal system that might guarantee and protect the right of black; they favored instead of a limited government responsive to the needs of their particular, racially defined communities.”[18] Pfeifer claims the Catholic Irish Americans lynching of African Americans had nothing to do with race that was often the justification in the South. The Catholic Irish Americans lynched for the rejection of expanding equality to the African Americans. The equality of African Americans threatens the labor system and moving jobs traditionaly held by Catholic Irish Americans to the free African American with new legal protection. “Urban Irish Catholics were, then, innovators as they were among the first white Americans to lynch free blacks in a society organized around principles of free labor…racial lynching in the North stemmed from the clash between, on the one hand, the claims of an ascendant legal order in the early 1860s that was avowedly racially neutral…the acts of northern Irish paralleled, and indeed slightly anticipated, the practice and ideology of white southerners who would seize upon lynching as a means of rejection the Reconstruction state’s insistence on color-blind law.”[19] Pfeifer addresses the previous scholarship I have addressed earlier in this paper. Pfeifer indicates the recent field of U.S. lynching studies have done a great job expanding the lynching narrative to the West. “The literature on western and midwestern mob killing has developed significantly, with historians demonstrating that the practice of lynching has a national history, the victims of racially motivated lynching were as diverse as the targets of American racial prejudice, and the western lynching cannot be dismissed as insignificant compared to southern lynching or simply explained through the invocation of the ‘lawless frontier’.”[20] Pfeifer addresses lynching in the North as Catholic Irish Americans rejected the expansion of rights to African Americans. Their labor market was being undermined and potential loss of jobs that could be given to African Americans. These two reason justified lynching of African Americans in the North. Pfeifer also draws in recent lynching historiography of how historians are reaching out to others regions to be included in the narrative.

Scholars have used the “Black Rapist” narrative to argue why the Southerners justify the lynching. Each of the previous historians I have mentioned expanded the narrative into imagery and regional to justify lynching. Another reason lynching developed specifically in the south was how it was used as spectacle in the community. James Allen conducted research and collected lynching photographs and postcards for nearly twenty-five years for the Without Sanctuary book and online exhibition to expose how lynching was a spectacle. I reviewed many of the horrific photographs and stories to better understand how lynching became a spectacle. Black southerners recalled, “Back in those days, to kill a Negro wasn’t nothing. It was like killing a chicken or killing a snake. The whites would say, ‘Niggers jest supposed to die, ain’t no damn good anyways—so jest go on an’ kill ‘em.”[21] Black Americans were clearly expendable as they were viewed as animals. They were viewed as inferior and not human. A southern white stated, “We Southern people don’t care to equal ourselves with animals, a white Floridian told a northern critic. The people of the South don’t think any more of killing the black fellows than you would think of killing a flea…and if I was to live 1,000 years that would be my opinion and every other Southern man.”[22] Southern whites having these views of black inferiority made it easier to justify lynching and viewing it as a spectacle.

The ordinary ways executions were conducted was not enough for the crowd that witnessed it. The crowds wanted more and torture became a public theater. Allen writes, “Newspapers on a number of occasions announced in advance the time and place of a lynching, special ‘excursion” trains transported spectators to the scene, employers sometimes released their workers to attend, parents sent notes to school asking teachers to excuse their children for the event, and entire families attend, the children hoisted on their parents’ shoulders to miss none of the accompanying festivities.”[23] Lynching was no longer just a quick and simple hanging of a black man or women, but a well-planned and slow death. Allen states, “It is the story of slow, methodical, sadistic, often inventive forms of torture and mutilation.”[24]

The public spectacle of lynching included collecting body parts for souvenirs. When African Americans were lynched, body pieces were cut off to distribute among the white crowd. Allen describes the lynching of Sam Hose, “Before saturating Hose with oil and applying the torch, they cut off his ears, finders, and genitals, and skinned his face. While some in the crowd plunged knives into the victim’s flesh, other watched ‘with unfeigning satisfaction’…his heart and liver were removed and cut several pieces and his bones were crushed into small particles. The crowd fought over these souvenirs.”[25] The collection of body parts took lynching to another level and was another reason it grew as a spectacle.

Harvey Young’s The Black Body as Souvenir in American Lynching continues the argument on how souvenir and imagery promoted the spectacle of lynching. Young’s states, “Nor does my interest rest in the allegations and charges used to justify these assaults—from stories of sexual assaults on white women…These areas have been addressed, in books and articles, to the point of near-exhaustion. What captures my attention…the dismemberment of the black body for souvenirs following the lynching event.”[26]. Young focuses on the lynched body parts in the aftermath of the lynching event and participants retaining a souvenir from it. The meaning of the souvenir needed to be accompanied with the summary of the lynching in order for the souvenir to have meaning. Young explains, “First and foremost, it is incomplete and finds a sense of wholeness through an embrace of an accompany narrative. In the cases of the crisped liver of Sam Hose or the burnt flesh of Richard Coleman, it seems unlikely that anyone encountering either without the aid of a story to flesh out the details of the lynching event would know what she was seeing…It is only when the details of the burning of each individual are revealed that the objects become meaningful as souvenirs.”[27] Young refers to James Allens photograph and postcards collection that has added to the lynching narrative. Young was not only fascinated by the images of lynching, but how written words appeared on the back of the image. Lynching postcards are largely in the public setting and individuals who wrote on the back of them had no reservations with their descriptions. “On one card, a son, referring to the image of the burnt body of William Stanley…writes to his mother, ‘This is the Barbecue we had last night, My picture is to left with a cross over it, You son. On another, an unidentified author, on a postcard depicting the March 1910 murder of Allen Brooks, notes: Well John—This is a token of a great day we had in Dallas, March 3, a negro was hung for an assault on a three year old girl. I saw this on my noon hour. I was very much in the bunch. You can see the negro on a telephone pole.”[28] Young argues that souvenirs that accompany a story is what gives it its value. It draws the experience with the object. Young also ties the spectacle of lynching to James Allen’s lynching collection. He reveals that the postcard collection with a description or story written on the back adds value to lynching participant experience.

Leigh Raiford’s article Photography and the Practices of Critical Black Memory explains how images demonstrate as powerful tool for Southern whites and African Americans. Raiford refers to the images from James Allen Without Sanctuary collection and the Southern white written commentary that accompanies them. Raiford describes the “Dogwood Tree” postcard which the dogwood tree is Southern symbol of rebirth. The image consists of the “Dogwood Tree” with five African American victims silently hung from the tree. Below is the image rich  poem that celebrated the dogwood tree.

“This is only the branch of the Dogwood tree;

An emblem of WHITE SUPREMANCY

A lesson once taught in the Pioneer’s school;

That this is a land of WHITE MAN’S RULE.

The Red Man once in an early day

Was told by the Whites to mend his way.

The Negro, now by eternal grace,

Must learn to stay in the negro’s place.

In the Sunny South, the Land of the Free,

Let the White Supreme forever be.

Let this a warning to all Negros be,

Or they’ll suffer the fate of the DOGWOOD TREE.”[29]

 

Raiford writes how images serve as icons that can mask difference and conflict. He states, “The narrative of the black rapist finds it ‘antithesis’ in the image of the ‘the lynched black man,’ which has emerged and evolved as visual shorthand, as a powerful icon paradigmatic of the suffering of all African Americans and understood only through the abject black male body.”[30] Raiford continues the conversation with other scholars on how imagery is an effective tool.

Many books and articles I have included is this historiography are from scholarship of recent decades. Scholars have researched the cultural impact of lynching. Many bring in the narrative of the Ku Klux Klan and its growth after the Civil War. However, it is only included briefly to provide some context of previous historiography themes conducted. A current theme that is argued is how the federal government, during reconstruction, had limited power even after the winning the war against the South. Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur book The World The Civil War Made wrote a collections of essays that feature the challenges that the Federal government in maintaining control in the South and out West. Downs and Masur state,”…the essays in this collection see the government less in terms of it constitutional prerogatives than in it concrete forms. They depict a state threatened not only by constitutional limitations and political conflict by also bit is constituent members, government less self-restrained then besieged by forces it could not control.”[31] By focusing on this new narrative, called the “Stockade State”, the state was unable and had limitations to enforce projections African Americans and other minorities out west provided a better understanding of how mob violence, vigilante justice, and lynching proliferated during and after Reconstruction. I believe this narrative of recent scholarship can translate arguments into the public arena. I suggest an area that can grow from recent scholarship is using it in public history.

Has there been in past public exhibitions lynching, Jim Crow, and racial injustice? Yes, there have been many exhibitions that have followed the narrative of how Southern whites through white supremacy laws and enforcement and intimidation by the Ku Klux Klan. I have been able to reveal very little public exhibitions that argues the “Stockade State” having its limitations were unable to control racial inequality. In addition, to shaping a new exhibition  from the view of the “Stockade State” incorporating culture themes will reveal how ordinary individuals contributed in mob violence. James Allen included a digital component to his “Without Sanctuary” book. By using his photographs and postcard collection that includes written comments, this can support how ordinary Southern whites were capable of conducting lynching with limited Federal government intervention. Ordinary Southern whites were able to enforce their own justice. A photograph from James Allen’s digital exhibit of two Italian immigrants, Castenego Ficarrotta and Angelo Albano left hanging over a Florida swamp with a note affixed to one of their feet states, “Beware! Others take notice or go the same way. We know even more, We are watching you If any citizens are molested look out. The note was signed, Justice”[32] By using these sources in a public exhibition the viewer no longer associates lynching to radical Ku Klux Klan members, but to ordinary people. This can prove to be more powerful and shows that everyone can contribute to unspeakable violence against others.

The new public exhibitions cannot just be limited to the “Stockade State” in the South, but include the West. Lynching was not just limited to the South, but also to the West too. The lynched victims in Los Angeles Chinatown massacre in 1871 illustrate how the “Stockade State” has limited control out West. It shows how local white businessman and Chinese companies enforced the justice in Los Angeles. In addition, how ordinary citizens of Los Angeles carried out mob violence, public executions, and lynching of innocent Chinese immigrants. West mob violence and vigilante justice is not often highlighted in the national narrative of mob violence and lynching. Including the West will help the remembrance of the horrific events before they are lost in the public memory. Scott Zesch author of The Chinatown War: Chinese Los Angeles and the Massacre of 1871 writes, “Still forgetting what happened in Chinatown that night would further diminish all of us. The very act of remembering the eighteen victims of the Los Angeles massacre makes us make more mindful of the vulnerable, marginalized people around us, as well as those who gang up on them—not only in the streets but also in the news media and the halls of government—so much the better.”[33]

I do see a glimmer of hope with seeing the memory of lynching in the South and West. The nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative is an organization that challenges poverty and racial injustice and has been conducting recent research on racial injustice. In February 2015 they completed five years of research of lynching’s in the South. The report titled Lynching in America: Confronting the legacy of Racial Terror reveals the an updated total of lynching between 1877 and 1950.[34] Included in the report is lynching based on allegations of crime, including the “Black Rapist” narrative. In addition, a section of the report addresses the public spectacle of lynching. From the report they identified lynching sites where organization plans to erect markers and memorials. In August 2016 the Equal Justice Initiative announced plans to build a museum and national lynching memorial. Details of the projects are still in the early phase, but I would hope the examine the recent scholarship of the “Stockade State” will be included in the museum exhibitions. Furthermore, hopefully lynching, mob violence and vigilante justice of the West will be included in their narrative. Public History has an opportunity to incorporate recent scholarship narratives and ordinary citizens primary sources to provide additional memory, analysis, and remembrance to the horrific period of lynching in America.

 

Bibliography

 

Allen, James. Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography of Lynching in America. Twin Palms Publishers, 2000.

 

Allen, James “Without Santuary: Photographs and Postcards of Lynching in America.” Without Santuary: Photographs and Postcards of Lynching in America. Accessed October 12, 2016. http://withoutsanctuary.org/main.html

 

DeLeucia, Christine “Getting the Story Straight: Press Coverage of Italian-American Lynchings from 1856-1910.” Italian Americana 21, no. 2 (2003): 212-221

 

Downs, Gregory P., and Kate Masur. The World the Civil War Made. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

 

Equal Justice Initiative. “Lynching in America: Confronting the legacy of Racial Terror.” Equal Justice Initiative, http://eji.org/reports/lynching-in-america (accessed December 12, 2016).

 

Faust, Drew Gilpin. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. New York: Vintage Books, 2008.

 

Frisken, Amanda K. ““A Song Without Words”: Anti-Lynching Imagery in the African American Press, 1889–1898.” Journal of African American History 97, no. 3 (2012): 240-269.

 

Pfeifer, Michael J. “The Northern United States and the Genesis of Racial Lynching: The Lynching of African Americans in the Civil War Era.” The Journal of American History 97, no. 3 (Dec 2010): 621-635.

 

Raiford, Leigh. “Photography and the Practices of Critical Black Memory.” History and Theory 48, no. 4 (Dec 2009): 112-129.

 

Wasserman, Ira M. “Media Rhetoric and Images of Lynching in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.” Michigan Sociological Review 12, (Fall 1998): 68-94.

 

Young, Harvey. “The black body as souvenir in American lynching.” Theatre Journal 57, no. 4 (2005): 639-657.

 

Zesch, Scott. The Chinatown War: Chinese Los Angeles and the Massacre of 1871. Oxford University Press, 2012.

[1] Drew Gilpin Faust, The Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Vintage Civil War Library, 2008), xv.

[2] Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur, The World the Civil War Made (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 261.

[3] Downs and Masur, 261.

[4] Downs and Masur, 261.

[5] Amanda K. Frisken ““A Song Without Words”: Anti-Lynching Imagery in the African American Press, 1889–1898.” Journal of African American History 97, no. 3 (2012): 241.

[6] Frisken, 242.

[7] Frisken, 242.

[8] Frisken, 242.

[9] Frisken, 242.

[10] Christine DeLucia “Getting the Story Straight: Press Coverage of Italian-American Lynchings from 1856-1910.” Italian Americana 21, no. 2 (2003): 216.

 

[11] DeLucia, 216.

[12] DeLucia, 216.

[13] DeLucia, 217.

[14] Ira M. Wasserman “Media Rhetoric and Images of Lynching in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.” Michigan Sociological Review 12, (Fall 1998): 78-79.

[15] Wasserman, 80.

[16] Wasserman, 80.

[17] Wasserman, 80.

[18] Michael J. Pfeifer “The Northern United States and the Genesis of Racial Lynching: The Lynching of African Americans in the Civil War Era.” The Journal of American History 97, no. 3 (Dec 2010): 623.

[19] Pfeifer, 624.

[20] Pfeifer, 625.

[21] James Allen, Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography of Lynching in America (Twin Palms Publishers, 2000), 12.

[22] Allen, 13.

[23] Allen, 14.

[24] Allen., 14.

[25] Allen, 9.

[26] Harvey Young “The Black Body as Souvenir in American Lynching.” Theatre Journal 57, no. 4 (Dec 2005): 640.

[27] Young, 643.

[28] Young, 645.

[29] Leigh Raiford “Photography and the Practices of Critical Black Memory.” History and Theory 48, no. 4 (Dec 2009): 115-116.

[30] Raiford, 124.

[31] Downs and Masur, 7.

[32] Allen, James “Without Santuary: Photographs and Postcards of Lynching in America.” http://withoutsanctuary.org/main.html (accessed October 12, 2016).

 

[33] Scott Zesch, The Chinatown War: Chinese Los Angeles and the Massacre of 1871 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 220.

[34] Equal Justice Initiative “Lynching in America: Confronting the legacy of Racial Terror.” http://eji.org/reports/lynching-in-america (accessed December 12, 2016).

Disaster Citizenship: Survivors, Solidarity, and Power in the Progressive Era


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Historian Jacob A. C. Remes book Disaster Citizenship: Survivors, Solidarity, and Power in the Progressive Era examines how citizens and government responded to city disasters in Halifax, Nova Scotia and Salem, Massachusetts. The Halifax fire occurred in 1914 and the Salem fire in 1917. The book focuses on the relationships between victims, first responders, formal organizations, and the state. Remes analyzes each groups perspective on how they responded to the disasters. For example, during the Halifax fire, Remes breaks up the responders in three different groups: the relief workers, relief managers, and survivors. Many of the relief workers left their workplace to volunteer in hospitals due to the overwhelming amount of victims. Relief workers with no formal hospital training were able to organize themselves and adapt quickly to the needs of the hospital. Remes states, “The created order and efficiency without direction…middle-class volunteers who appear to have had little or no connection with those they were helping were not being randomly altruistic. Rather, they were reenacting their own everyday solidarity in extraordinary times.” (p. 29) During the disaster the group that appeared to be disorderly were the relief managers. Relief managers consisted of leaders from businesses, formal organizations, and politicians. The relief managers, due to their lack of knowledge, were not able to responds to the magnitude of the disaster. Due to communication lines being down throughout the city they were unaware of the impact in the city’s North End. In addition, the relief managers did not immediately go to city hall as they tended to their own needs first, securing their homes from the disaster. This was in contrast to the relief workers who also had a lack of knowledge of how to assist in the hospital, but still in their preexisting social order were able to adapt. The lack of knowledge for relief managers prohibited them from adapting quickly. In addition, because of the lack of knowledge they were not able to supply adequate solutions just as yaremenko stated in her post.  The survivors were able to create their own order. Remes writes, “Like relief workers, the built this order on the basis of their preexisting communities, relationships, and networks.” (p. 23) The survivors used the order they built to assist family and close friends.

In Disaster Citizenship, all the actors during and after the disaster had to renegotiate the relationship between each other. After the disasters the state took a more active role to better protect their citizens and improve interaction and formal organization in response to future crisis’s. Remes extensive use of primary sources included the Red Cross, city, military, diaries, personal narratives, church records and newspapers. Remes also provides a well written introduction providing a clear argument and a theme for the book.

The World the Civil War Made


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The United States federal government expanded its roll during the Reconstruction period. The federal government, led by Republicans helped the passage of the Reconstruction Amendments. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment provided equal protection and citizenship rights for all persons. The Fifteenth Amendment prohibits discrimination of voting rights by “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” The Amendments expanded the federal government while enforcing the protections. How was the federal government able to enforce the protections in the south and the far west? What challenges did the federal government face during the Reconstruction period? The World the Civil War Made is a collection of essays that help answer these questions. When historians began to study the aftermath of the Civil War they focused on the “political power and the organization of labor.” (p. 4). Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masure in the introduction state, “Reconstruction refers to the dynamic period of political debate and social upheaval in the South that followed the Civil War.” (p. 4) The essays concentrate on how the federal government had a limited role due to the state local forces. Downs and Masure express this period at the Stockade State, “a collection of outposts—both military and civilian—powerful within narrow geographical boundaries but limited in their reach, sometimes capable of enforcing their will, sometimes overpowered…” (p. 6) I agree with yaremenkolena that “The World the Civil War Made has shifted the focus on the history of the Civil War era from the influence of the federal and state governance to the entitles on the ground…” Local resistance on the ground made it difficult to enforce Reconstruction protections due to the federal governments reach was overstressed. “…federal officials were often frustrated by the army’s incapacity, its limited size, and it dispersal across the vast lands.” (p. 8)

One example of local forces challenging the federal government Reconstruction protections was the physical and psychological terrorization of African Americans from white southern night riders. The terrorization was to stop African Americans newly gained equality. Southern white intimidation imposed fear on African Americans to the point they were afraid to fight. “Oftentimes, the night riders’ mere presence…had the power to reduce, as Herman puts it, “victims’ sense of autonomy” and undermine their willingness and ability to resist.” (p. 163) Even though African American had full and legal protection of the federal government, their lack of reach prohibited protection due to the brutal coercion of the southern night riders. This one example demonstrates how the federal “Stockade State” was undermined by local ground forces in the Reconstruction protections.

Polished Paragraph – Spectacle of Lynching


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The purpose of my historiography paper is to examine after the Civil War what were the contributing factors of the proliferation of lynching in the south. Specially, the factor I plan to focus on is the historiography of the rise of the lynching as a spectacle. During my initial research there has been a lot of examining of the socioeconomics of lynching in the south. However, there has been a recent turn to the complex culture effects that produced white mob violence.

The latest turn in scholarship highlights how lynching formed a culture of violence. In Michael Pfeifer’s 2004 Rough Justice: Lynching in American Society, 1874-1947 that “rough justice” a culture complex authorized harsh, demeaning, and communal punishment. William Carrigan’s 2006 The Making of Lynching Culture: Violence and Vigilantism in Central Texas, 1836-1916 proposes how historical memory of harsh punishment in the antebellum period affirms mob violence and the historical tradition of a culture of violence. Jacqueline Goldsby’s 2006 A Spectacular Secret: Lynching in American Life and Literature builds off Pfeifer and Carrigan’s use of traditional historical methods. Goldsby employs a poststructuralist approach to her analysis. Karlos K. Hill of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaigns book review states, “…she argues that discursive representations of lynching such as poems, novels, plays, and short stores are important historical sources because they capture culture processes that tend to be muted or omitted from traditional lynching sources…” Amy Louise Wood’s 2009 Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America 1890-1940 expands from Goldsby’s research and studies technology of this period and how white southerners used it to strengthen white supremacy with the use of photography. Bringing another perspective of the use of photography is Amanda K. Frisken article, “A Song without Words”: Anti-Lynching Imagery in the African American Press, 1889-1898. Frisken’s perspective counters how the lynching imagery helped fuel the anti-lynching movement. Frisken writes, “Recent scholarship shows that in the early 1900s, the black press published lynching photographs and postcards, redeploying the propaganda of the lynch mob to prove that lynching occurred, and gradually to present a visual critique of lynching.” One gap, through my initial research, is how women and children responded of the use if imagery. There is very little or not any scholarship on how women and children responded to the mob violence and its imagery. This may be my argument for the future direction of my topic that could be expanded.

Ari Kelman – A Misplaced Massacre


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A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek by Ari Kelman describes the Sand Creek massacre from the aftermath of the massacre to the creation of the Sand Creak Massacre National Historical Site. Kelman uses traditional methods using archival records, like newspapers and letters to name a few, but his main methodology is the use of oral histories. He writes, “As I began doing this research for this book, I realized that I would have to move beyond archival records and consult oral histories as well. As a result, I conducted well over a hundred interviews that eventually produced in excess of 3,500 pages of transcribed text.” (p. x) One of the main goals of the book is to recount the massacre through memory, “You hold in your hands the result of my efforts: a sturdy of the collision of history and memory, of past and present, at Sand Creek.” (p. x) I would like to build off Robert Huitrado insight,  “I found Professor Kelman’s use of multiple angles out of the ordinary.”, due to Kelman’s approach of understanding this approach through memory. The reason the massacre is hotly contested is through the different ways participants remember this event. Memory was central to Native Americans, more importantly than written accounts. Kelman writes, “…the descendants viewed oral histories as crucial to their cultural sovereignty. For Larid Cometsevah, oral histories were the best way to transmit Cheyenne history.” (p. 111)

Chapter Two I found very interesting from a public history perspective with the creation of monuments. Kelman discusses how memory also has an impact on how monuments are created. He states, “The upsurge in memorialization was akin to what students of collective memory call ‘the invention of tradition,’ the way that societies create historical narratives or rituals to suit contemporary political or cultural conditions, Invented traditions are often crafted to maintain power relations and uphold the status quo.” (p. 73) During the beginning of the twentieth century when many Civil War monuments were created, the Americans viewed the war through nostalgia remembering the brave sacrifices of the military. The monuments captured this view and as Kelman states, “…inspired onlookers to venerate a shared iteration…” (p. 73) The collective memory of the early twentieth century helped dictate how the Civil War monuments would be depicted. As we know through time, views change often with more information of an event and also the cultural politics of the current day. This reminds me of how cultural politics were used in previous articles in Beyond the Founders. During the mid-twentieth century the Native Americans voices permeated Sand Creak as a massacre versus a battle. A reaction to the Native American voice was a creation of a second monument providing how the memory of the event can be viewed as a battle or massacre. “Bearing a bronze plaque headed by the mixed message “Sand Creak: ‘Battle’ or ‘Massacre,’ the state column suggested that by 1950, cultural politics had already begun complicating efforts to memorialize the violence.” A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek seeks to discover the memory and how it can impact and change the view of history.

Supplementary Reading – Beyond the Founders


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Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic is a collection of essays examining the early American republic synthesizing a new political history methodology of understanding of the early republic. One aspect of the new political history is bringing culture and the influence it has on politics to the reader. The introduction describes a popular culture and cultural politics approach, “Cultural politics has the virtue of seeing the political aspects of other social phenomena, of seeing conflict as well as consensus in them, and most of all, of bringing other actors into the political field.”[1] In the essay, The Cheese and the Words, a popular culture function in banquets was the use of toasts. Toasts were used as a political platform to inform the community of political elections, party politics, and political events. This provided an opportunity to have dialog with the community. “Toasts were also taken seriously enough to sometimes warrant follow-ups, reviews, and rebuttals.”[2] In the second essay, Voting Rites and Voting Acts author Andrew W. Robertson explains the term “deferential participant” in political culture. That “deference” and “participation” are linked together and provide imaginary power to the marginalized community.[3]  Even though the marginalized were unable to vote, this provided a voice for agreement or disagreement of a political discourse. Robertson states, “…deferential politics was oftentimes an essential precursor for mass-based politics.”[4]

Fast forward to the twenty-first century; I would like to examine cultural politics and how cultural participation can influence a community into activism. In Daniel McClure’s 2012 article Brokering Culture: Elma Lewis, Cultural Politics, and Community Building in Postwar Boston, he investigates the impact of Elma Lewis who forms a “cultural base” upon which boosted calls for “community control” and activism. McClure argues, “Unlike black freedom work that emphasized agitation for jobs, equitable education, and political representations, Lewis focused on ‘cultural politics’. She created black cultural institutions that helped define and frame the significance of black cultural communities both within and beyond Boston.”[5] The first part of the article focuses on how Lewis was influenced on her development of cultural politics. At an early age she participated in the local chapter of the United Negro Improvement Association led by Marcus Garvey. Lewis taught under Garveyism. Self-help, racial pride, and community building shaped her approach on activism. In 1950 she founded the Elma Lewis school of Fine Arts which established education and cultural programs for the African-American community. “Locally, the institution Lewis established…served as sites of community building, resource mobilization, and intergenerational activism.”[6] Lewis’s goal was to use education and culture as a tool for African-American empowerment which McClure calls “community cultural development”. Community cultural development provides a space for cultural politics while building identity and a common collective between individuals. This participatory engagement is similar to the “deferential participant” in Andrew W. Robertson’s article Voting Rites and Voting Acts. Lewis’s community cultural development provides political engagement and influence just like the marginalized individuals who were able to use deferential politics. McClure’s article also focuses on Lewis’ later worker in the creation of the Elma Lewis Playhouse in the Park. It was built on the same premise of her previous work. She combined education and cultural tools, but the playhouse was not limited to the African-American community. The park chosen for her playhouse was in Franklin Park in the heart of Boston’s African-American community. Franklin Park’s location was known for prostitution and drug activity.  Lewis wanted to bring the local and outside communities together for quality cultural programs which she was able to successfully do. Plus, bringing attention to city government through her cultural politics she helped foster empowerment and reclaim community institutions. Lewis wrote an open letter in the Boston Globe newspaper about schools she established through community support, not city support, helped remove moral blight and bring outside communities to share in culture. Bringing communities together helped continue the success of the playhouse and Lewis was able to establish an all community volunteer Franklin Park coalition which raised money for the upkeep of the park. Lewis focus on culture politics helped redefine a community that empowered local and non-local individuals to revitalize and take ownership through community control.

 

[1] Jeffrey L. Pasley, Andrew W. Robertson, and David Waldstreicher, Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early Republic (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 9.

[2] Jeffrey L. Pasley, Andrew W. Robertson, and David Waldstreicher, Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early Republic (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 41.

[3] Jeffrey L. Pasley, Andrew W. Robertson, and David Waldstreicher, Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early Republic (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 58.

[4] Jeffrey L. Pasley, Andrew W. Robertson, and David Waldstreicher, Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early Republic (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 75.

[5] Daniel McClure, “Brokering Culture: Elma Lewis, Cultural Politics, and Community Building in Postwar Boston,” Black Women, Gender and Families 6, no. 2 (Fall 2012): 55.

[6] Daniel McClure, “Brokering Culture: Elma Lewis, Cultural Politics, and Community Building in Postwar Boston,” Black Women, Gender and Families 6, no. 2 (Fall 2012): 58.

Final Paper Proposal


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For my final paper proposal titled, “The Memory of Lynching: Analyzing the Culture Narratives of Lynching in the United States in the Late Nineteenth Century,” I will investigate the cultural narratives expressed through white participates and African American antilynching activists. Specifically, how each narrative differed from each other and justified their position for or against lynching. Through my initial research on the historiography of this topic I plan to use the book of historian Edwin T. Arnold author of “What Virtue There Is in Fire: Cultural Memory and the Lynching of Sam Hose” which investigates the lynching of Sam Hose on April 23, 1899, in Newman Georgia. What brought attention to this particular lynching was the brutal torture of Hose by mutilating him, tying him to a tree, burning him alive, and carrying off parts of his remains as souvenirs. One primary source I will be using is white southern newspapers the help answer my historical question, how the language propagated justification of lynching that nourished violence from the white community to become judge and executioner of alleged black criminality. A potential archive I would like to access is the Tuskegee University Archives Repository. This archive has an extensive collection of southern newspapers which focuses on  lynching in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Here is a link of a sample of their newspaper collection. To gain a culture perspective of the antilynching activist I will use the online collection from “African American Perspectives, Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection” in partnership with the Library of Congress American Memory project. This collection includes pamphlets, journals, songs, and sermons of antilynching activists.

I would also like to investigate how lynching became a grand spectacle for the white southern community. Collector James Allen’s online exhibit, “Without Sanctuary: Photographs and Postcards of Lynching in America” is a collection of photographs and postcards of lynchings taken as souvenirs. The online exhibit accompanies Allen’s book with the same name, “Without Sanctuary”. I would like to reveal the reason why white southerners needed to have lynching photograph and postcards. An additional source I would like to use is historian Amy Louise Wood book “Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940” which uncovers spectators who created a community bond by witnessing lynchings together. To help add context to my paper I will refer to Michael J Pfeifer author of “The Roots of Rough Justice: Origins of American Lynching” as he explores the chronology of collective violence from early nineteenth century, Antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction. Lastly in my paper, I would like to bring to light new arguments that can be added to this historiography.

David Sims A Union Forever


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David Sims uncovers that Irish studies have not explored a connection between Irish nationalism and the United States as he writes, “Though we have a number of exceptional studies of Irish America, we have a few that seriously historicize Irish nationalism and its complex connections with the American Union over the long nineteenth century.” (p. 2). This book attempts to fill this gap is the historiography. A Union Forever The Irish Question and U.S. Foreign Relations in the Victorian Age marks how the United States dealt with foreign policy through a transnational approach. Sims methodology continues to build off Gould’s argument of the United States desire to gain respect in the global community. Responding to the Irish question, U.S. Whig and Republican statesmen took an opportunity to act against global dependency and promote American ideals. Sims states, “Both were committed of freeing the United States form what they saw as it commercial dependency of Great Britain, and to this end, both promoted the “American System”, an interlocking cluster of economic policies including development of internal communications, a protective tariff for domestic industries, and the cultivation of market for domestically produced goods.” (p. 9) American statesmen were able promote the “American System” with the response to the Irish famine. Great Britain was not able to fully respond to the famine and depended on American agricultural to help feed Ireland thus promoting American produced goods in the global market. Consecutively this helped generate sympathy to Irish Americans which would help power their aspirations for Irish independence.

The United States was able to exercise a transnational approach to foreign policy through Irish American expatriates in Ireland. Expatriates in Ireland were subject to British law and their U.S. naturalization was disregarded. Sim explains about British rule, “… they asserted a doctrine of perpetual allegiance, stating that those born under the jurisdiction of British Crown remained it subjects. British law assigned no value to the adoption of U.S. citizenship.” (p. 98) The British “perpetual allegiance” reshaped the “legal construction of citizenship” of naturalized Irish Americans. Indirectly this provided support to Irish Americans and positioned the United States to respond to Great Britain on naturalization. The United Stated responded with the 1868 Expatriation Act which brought Great Britain and the United States to a settlement on the issue of naturalized citizens. This strengthened U.S. foreign policy, as an example to the global community, gained respect among nations through a transnational approach. Conversely, after reaching the agreement with Great Britain support of Irish Americans for Irish independence began to dwindle. Overall, the settlement between the two nations supports Sims argument that America obtained transnationalism and added to the historiography of Irish nationalism connection to the United States.

One issue I have is Sims could have provided a better background with the Irish question by connecting it to the “Age of Revolution” just as andrewjarralkelly stated in his response and added to the “Age of Revolution” narrative. Sims used an assortment of sources including manuscripts, newspapers, journals, and government files in the United States and Great Britain to name a few. I have not studied much on Irish American history but overall I liked this book and it helped fill in my own personal gaps with Irish Americans history.

Final Paper Proposals


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  1. Negro baseball player’s contribution to the origins of baseball in the nineteenth century.
  1. The impact of slave music in American culture.
  1. The emergence of lynching after the Civil War.

Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development


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Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman bring a collection of essays that weave together the economic impact of slavery capitalism in early America. In recent years’ historians have taken a rigorous look at the relationship of slavery in New England and Mid-Atlantic regions. The scholarship has taken a “new” history of capitalism methodology. This methodology, “…brings business history, labor history, and political economy together under a single umbrella to challenge the perception of capitalism as an inevitable or natural system of organizing markets. (p. 9) The essays focus on economic dimensions of slavery which include “entrepreneurial innovation, ‘rational’ calculation, and sophisticated coordination mechanisms that made human bondage a big business.” (p.10) Beckert and Rockman begin with essays with the relationship of slavery in the plantations. The first essay by Edward Baptist introduces the term “pushing men” of which how the enslaved viewed their white slave owner. I was intrigued by the introduction of this term as I have not heard of it before. The slave owners used the “pushing men” idea to find better ways and techniques to control labor to maximize time and produce more cotton to bring to market. The innovative ways, which included violence, helped pave the way America was able to dominate the cotton industry globally. The second set of essays focused on slavery and finance. The essays brought a new level to the discussion of slavery finance by adding enslaved human beings as a commodity. Bonnie Martin uncovers how many slaves were purchased through mortgages. “Mortgages proved especially useful for gaining the anticipated value of an enslaved child before his or her value appreciated with the onset of physical maturity.” (p. 17) Martin used a vast amount of data to support her argument. She collected data over “10,000 Virginia, South Carolina, and Louisiana loans in which slaves served as collateral.” (p. 109) Including enslaved human as a commodity and determining their mortgage value added to a more thorough understanding of slavery capitalism. Beckert and Rockman included essays on how slavery capitalism impacted national institutions and natural boundaries. The essay by John Majewski argues why the North opposed the expansion of slavery. He reveals how education and innovation are reasons why the North opposed slavery expansion. Northerners argued the core strength of economy is education. Pushing for a strong education system will create innovation which is a cornerstone of capitalism. The Northerners felt that if there was an expansion of slavery this would threaten a strong education system. The elite Southern slave and landowners did not want a strong education system but preferred to keep it for themselves to control politics and the economy of the South. The collection of essays brings the “new” history methodology and how slaves were viewed not as just humans but a valuable commodity to slavery’s capitalism.