The Lynching Of Young Blacks

During the nineteenth century, lynching was brought to America by British Isles and after the Civil War white Americans lynching African American increased. Causing and bringing fear into their world. In the Southern United States, lynching became a method used by the whites to terrorize the Blacks and to remain in control with white supremacy. The hatred and fear that was installed into the white people’s head had caused them to turn to the lynch law. The term lynching means to be put to death by hanging by a mob action without legal sanction. So many white people were supportive of lynching because it was a sign of power that the white people had. “Lynching of the black people was used frequently by white people, their is no specific detail of how many times they had done it, but lynching of black people has lasted from 1882 to 1968. Lynching also is in fact a inhuman combination of racism and sadism which was used to support the south’s caste system,’’(Gandhi).

‘Fire in a canebrake’ is quite a scorcher by Laura Wexler and which focuses on the last mass lynching which occurred in the American Deep South, the one in the heartland of rural Georgia, precisely Walton County, Georgia on 25th July, 1946, less than a year after the Second World War. Wexler narrates the story of the four black sharecroppers who met their end ‘at the hand of person’s unknown’ when an undisclosed number of white men simply shot the blacks to death. The author concentrates on the way the evidence was collected in those eerie post war times and how the FBI was actually involved in the case, but how nothing came of their extensive investigations.

When I was in class i had watched Jesse William speak on BET on his belief and what he feels should stop happening. Two things i found that me and Mr. William had a common thoughts about is the killing of young black people by cops and the un equal rights black people have. When i was young all the things i seen was people who looked like me struggle every day, having more jobs than anyone else and more death than anyone else. I have wondered why is this once proud race of people in such a crippled state.

Most people born during Jerry’s generation have an innate belief in white superiority. Known throughout the south, lynching African Americans was a way to maintain this hierarchy and this directly connected the denial of political and social equality to blacks during the 19th century. Although the “frequency of lynching began to decline in 1900, those incidents that did occur were often characterized by extreme barbarity” (SoRelle, 518). One case of extreme

Lynching, I would have to said was one of the most interesting and disturbing topics we have talked about. The word lynching came from the name Charles Lynch who was an owner of land in Virginia in 1790. Charles would hold illegal trials of people who would steal, cheat, basically break the rules in his front yard. Charles would hang the victims and hang and tied them to a tree in front of his home. Lynching is unlike from any other murders because it’s committed outside the boundaries by a mob of white people wanting to achieve against blacks for whatever blacks did which was nothing. In the19th century, lynching frequently enjoyed the approval of the public. Lynching had become an event, where people from different towns would come and watch an African Americans get lynched. It is a practice that was committed, for white people to show there were more superior to African Americans. In the late,

Recently, an L.A. Times article (dated 2/13/00) reviewed a new book entitled "Without Sanctuary", a collection of photographs from lynchings throughout America. During the course of the article, the author, Benjamin Schwarz, outlined some very interesting and disturbing facts related to this gruesome act of violence: Between 1882 and 1930, more than 3,000 people were lynched in the U.S., with approximately 80% of them taking place in the South. Though most people think only African Americans were victims of lynchings, during those years, about 25% were white. Data indicates that mobs in the West lynched 447 whites and 38 blacks; in the Midwest there were 181 white victims and 79 black; and in the South, people lynched 291

Leigh Raiford’s piece entitled “The Consumption of Lynching Images” portrays the horrific truth of what racism looked like in the “New South” after emancipation. Similar to the film we watched in class: Without Sanctuary, The lynching photographs have the images of postcards that depict lynching and the spectacle these public executions caused at the time with crowds of people coming from all over the state to watch someone be killed. Leigh Raiford claims that through these lynching photographs whites are trying to hold on to their supremacy and identity in this new south after slavery has been abolished. The whites are frightened with the perceived loss of power and economic loss since the slave plantations will no longer be bringing in the income that they had with slaves. The lynching photographs also served as a new wave of technology by using print media for those who came to view the lynching, but were not close enough they could buy a souvenir.

The violent markings of the photo album and its images, however, produce an equally powerful message that jars the memory as it disrupts and distorts the photographic chronicle of her life and that of her family and friends. The result is a complex visual experience that addresses the use of images in producing knowledge and making history.

Photography gave a face to the people that were often over looked; women, slaves, and non western now were being portrayed in greater numbers than before. Even as the portrayal of these people grew, the depiction of these groups were manipulated by the photographers in order to convey and fulfill the desired perceptions of the western society. These groups of people became a commodity in western society due to the the efforts by photographers to shape the portrayal of the photo’s subject(s), but these efforts were overridden by the agency that the subjects utilized, either by reshaping or refusing to fit the stereotypes placed upon them.

The purpose of this paper will be to offers answers to a number of questions including the following. How does a photograph portray injustices issues from around the world?

Many black artist were mistreated and had many of their works covered by white artists; which sadly got the fame and fortune for their hard work. African Americans in the past and till today have had to suffer violence, prejudice, and racism from society in many instances. Lynching is one form of violence and injustice that was passed by white people to the blacks because they had too much freedom, and thought that blacks were getting away with too much. Lynching of black people was mostly high in the south, but there was still no laws against lynching.

Photography is powerful. It has the ability to create images that perpetuate dominant ideologies. Perhaps a camera can be more dangerous than a gun. When we look at the ideology of Western hegemony, this becomes clear. The imposed dominant narrative of the superior White man can be found comfortably settled inside numerous minds throughout the world. Images play a powerful role in perpetuating this ideology, but they also play a powerful role in countering it. W.E.B. DuBois’ and Malik Sidibe’s photographic work are testiments to the latter. DuBois and Sidibe used photography as counter images. In the United States, DuBois produced photography that countered the eugenics pseudoscience of the 20th century. In Africa, after the independence movements, Sidibe produced photography that countered the romanticization of African society as backwards and underdeveloped. Although in two different parts of the world, both DuBois and Sidibe used photography as a way of reclaiming representation.

Claude McKay shows how differently death was symbolized in the poems. In the poem “The Lynching” shows that man did not have a chance to speak for themselves and was randomly taken from their family and hangs to death. A black man was lynched while other people watch the cruel act of the white men. The last two sentence from the poem “And little lads, lynchers that were to be, Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee” shows racism and a continuation of lynching. The little lads represent the future generation of lynchers. Therefore, we can say that black man will still be a target for the white men in the future. In contrast, the poem “If We Must Die”, the African men wishes to choice their own death; be it an honourable death than

From recording historic moments in time to savoring the special memories in one’s life, photography has long been a tool used for documentation. Common examples include the photographs seen in textbooks, museums, and even those that we keep in our photo albums. Such photographs, or slices of time, are evidence of an already occurred event, that when looked back on, one would associate feelings and formulate stories of before and after relative to the photograph at hand. Recently, however, the true meaning of a photograph and what’s depicted have been questionable as the interpretation and perception of such photographs can be altered with simple editing and software that is now readily available to the public. In his photographic essay, “Harlem Gang Leader”, author Gordon Parks managed to take photographs that functioned both as historical documentation and, to some extent, personal memorabilia. Gordon Parks had a vision of gang members that he wanted to share, but with the curators at Life Magazine, this vision became blurred and seemingly manipulated through the process of selecting and cropping of photographs that resulted in an apparently different perspective of the subject matter.

In America there has always been two debating sides when it comes to the subject of races, the fight between racist Americans and oppressed people of color ,have made a mark in American history through the Jim Crow era."Jim Crow," or "Jump Jim Crow," was the name of a minstrel practice performed in 1828 by its author, Thomas Dartmouth ("Daddy") Rice, and by many imitators. The term came to be a derogatory epithet for blacks and a designation of their segregated life. During the Reconstruction era, "carpetbaggers" from the north moved to the South and formed a coalition with freedmen (freed slaves) and whites who supported Reconstruction. Together they politically controlled former Confederate states for varying periods.