Examples Of Lynching In The 19th Century

Lynching In The 19th Century
Lynching in the 19th century was an act of punishment caused by large groups, mobs, or vigilantes, in order to punish an alleged criminal, or to show authority over a certain minority group. Lynching was said to be first started in 1811, after William Lynch, who created “Lynch’s Law”. “This was an agreement with the Virginia General Assembly (Virginian state legislature) on September 22, 1782, which allowed Lynch to pursue and punish criminals in Pittsylvania County, without due process of law,” (New World Encyclopedia, Etymology, p.1)
Lynching was also an act of killing the criminal even after they have already been taken into custody. In the story Abe Wildner, the “posse”, a group of people or men who would help with the law enforcement back then, had already captured Wildner when suddenly word was released that “officers assisted by the military were coming to rescue the prisoner from them, had taken him into Bill Nelson’s field, about two miles southwest of Red Branch and had there burned him.” (1901, A Texas Lynching, p. 92) Lynching can be thought as being similar to murder, because immediately we think they are both forms of killing. But in some cases murder is far different then lynching, lynching can be seen as a form of punishment given to those who have committed a serious crime. Murder is an

intentional act of violence, no reasoning behind it, or is considered very different then acting as a form of punishment. In cases that lynching is a form of murder is when the group or mobs who lynch someone(usually by hanging) is only committing the act to show authority over another race, in particular the black community during that period of time.
During the time of “Jim Crow America”, African Americans were segregated when it came to public facilities. Blacks and Whites were not considered equal during this time, they allowed African Americans to have more benefits similar to those of White Americans, but were still not allowed to share the same public facilities with one another. The chances of someone being lynched during this time were great especially for those of the African American community. White’s did not favor the fact that blacks were given the same opportunity as them during this time, because they felt that they were greater than those who were of different ethnicity. White Americans believed they had authority over those who were not the same as them, which led to hate crimes such as lynching.
Lynching has been photographed since the 19th century, and many of these horrendous photos were then transferred and printed as postcards.

These postcards were to show people what they had done, and were handed out to onlookers who watched the crime, as souvenirs. In an article written about a lynching of three black men in 1920 it read that at the location of the hate crime, pictures were taken where men seemed as if they wanted to be within the photo. As if these men were showing off a prize buck that had just been shot down in a hunting lodge, “this was a significantly posed photo.” (Julin, A Mob Lynches Three Black Men,

p.1)
A sanctuary is commonly known as a sacred area, where no harm is done, and is a “holy” place in all aspects, or in other cases it can be your own place of comfort. The website that held many of these photographs and lynching postcards was called “Without Sanctuary”. Titled this because many of the photographs were far from comforting, and in no way was harm not being done to those who were victims of lynching.
Using an interactive map about lynching in the United States, it was apparent that many lynching’s occurred in the South East of the United States. In the South, the lynching’s of the black community greatly outnumbered those of the white, and in the North, tables were turned. The greatest difference for these numbers were the people that lived in those states during that point of time, there was larger population of African Americans in the South in which many of them were being accused of crimes that they may or may not have committed in comparison to the white community that lived there.