African-American History - Lynchings
An end of the year round-up of the 1916 lynchings concentrating on the state of Georgia as the lynching champion for the second year in a row (Louisiana, Mississippi and Missouri were all tied for the 1914 title).
Reproduced here are the two pages from the Congressional Digest of 1922 which are composed of both the outline of the proposed legislation as well as the debate of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill.
The bill, which was introduced by Representative Leonidas C. Dyer (1871 - 1957)of Missouri, was intended to make lynching a felony that would have resulted in a short prison term and a $5,000.00 fine for all guilty participants. The proposed legislation passed the House of Representatives but not the Senate. Congressional debates concerning anti-lynching would be a topic for many years to come, however, the arguments presented against passage of this bill by the Southern Representatives make an interesting read.
Here is a very brief study of U.S. congressional anti-lynching legislation spanning the years from 1901 through 1922.
Click here for the Ku Klux Klan Archive. "Figures were presented at the National Lynching Conference showing that in the last thirty years 3,224 persons have been killed by lynching, 2,834 of them in Southern states which once were slave-holding."
The 1923 lynching of James Thomas Scott was precipitated by a case of mistaken identity. Falsely accused of rape, the World War I veteran was dragged from jail by a mob and hanged from a bridge before 1,000 onlookers. The Time journalist wrote:
"What they did, some people call murder; others, lynching." |
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