Lynching In America Summary

The story in this book talks about an overview of the lynching in America. The meaning of lynching comes from Lynch's Law originated during the American Revolution when Charles Lynch, a Virginia justice of the peace, ordered out unlawful punishment for Tory acts. Tory act was an act that reveals citizens who remained loyal to Great Britain during the year 1776. But for some reason we stuck on to this law but changed it up a bit.

To now it meaning a group or mob of people kill a person by, hanging them by their neck with a noose on a tree branch. The poem mainly states how whites use to hang blacks because of the color of their skin. In the poem it describes the scenery and scent for example “black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees” to the poem reading “the bulging eyes and twisted mouth, the scent of

magnolia sweet and fresh “. It tells the reader a very gruesome sight but it comes off as a nonchalant way, as if the scene is completely normal.

After the poem, the writer speaks on about 9/11, an attack on the world trade center and the pentagon.

It goes on to saying the nation was unexploited on such an assault. That only showed destruction and the tragic loss of life doesn’t happen in America. A prominent scholar by the name of cornel west has a totally different view of this situation. He professed that America has been in the word “Niggerized”. To African American we known what it was meant to be part of random and senseless violent acts. America comes from the background of lynching. The practice of lynching in the U.S is an event that every scholar continuously analyze. Where did the motivation of lynching a race come from? What is the reason for this hatred and outrage violence towards once race? This act was used for providing immediate justice and trying to speed up the legal process, to know used for a punishment to people behavior that wasn’t socially accepted. Don’t get me wrong lynching wasn’t the only methods they used to punish slaves. They had very inhumane ways of punishments for example brandings, shootings, and floggings and many

more.

But this is one thing that followed throughout America. After the civil war and Abraham Lincoln granted The Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all the slaves. They tried giving African Americans ways to feel like we are human by giving them civil participation and constitutional protection of their freedom, by letting black males vote , somewhat providing full rights of citizenship but failed at protection them physically . Those laws where just written words on a piece of scratch paper. The government failed to enforced how serious these laws were supposed to be. We been fighting since for protection. African Americans has seen first handed what power that laws gave whites to control their fate. All this was due to white supremacy.

The story continues to explaining about how whites used this method for racist purposes , and how blacks has always struggled for freedom and justice for acts that could’ve been avoided by simply leaving African American where they were before bring them to America . There were many other methods that could’ve work to bring peace between Blacks and Whites. We America made lynching an okay thing to do while the burning of the world trade center is considered the worst thing to happen in history due to it being “so violent”. To me American doesn’t have its priorities straight and we still have a long away of changing to go.