Lynching In The Nineteenth-Twentieth Century

Lynching was a widespread and profound phenomenon that obliterated the African American populace of the southern states throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Lynching was both physically cataclysmic, and psychologically calamitous. Lynching generated a level of fear and horror that surpassed that of all other forms of violence that the African American population had endured. Lynching was a gruesome spectacle that assumed tremendous symbolic power as a result of its physically and visually sensational and performative nature. Lynchings were often witness by thousands of white spectators, with tales of torture, hanging, mutilation and burning consequently reverberating swiftly around the region, further intensifying the fear associated

with the act. The lynchings that hundreds, sometimes thousands, of white spectators gathered and watched as their fellow citizens tortured, mutilated and hanged or burned their victims in full view were the most potently haunting. The sheer brutality of these mobs, as well as their flagrant disregard for legal order and authority, shocked and terrified. The issue of the victim's guilt is usually secondary, since the mob serves as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner. These spectacles produced and disseminated images of white power and black degradation, that served to instill and perpetuate a sense of racial supremacy in their white spectators. Lynching existed as a form of racial terror through its most sensational manifestations, conveying messages about racial hierarchy and the frightening consequences of transgressing that hierarchy.

In my essay, I aim to address how the variation in lynching over space and time can be explained. Explore how the brutal punishment gained such popularity and proliferation, and whether its use was stemmed in the affirmation of traditional values. Lastly, I aim to decipher the causal factors of the decline of lynching. Ultimately, I am aiming to explore the fundamental beliefs that were prolific within the southern states that allowed for the practice of lynching to flourish, and determine whether . . .