Books by Walter White

The Fire in the Flint (novel,1924) / Flight (novel,1926)  / Rope and Faggot: A Biography of Judge Lynch (1929)

How far the Promised Land? 955) / A Man Called White (autobiography,1948).

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Books on Lynching & Racial Violence

 The Chronological History of the Negro in America (1969) /  Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism (1975)

 But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction (1984) / Lynch Law ( 1905)  / An American Dilemma (1944)

The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation (1984) / Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. (1989)

Rope and Faggot ( 1929)  /  The Tragedy of Lynching (1933)  /  Race Riot in East St, Louis (1964)  / Urban Racial Violence (1976)  /

Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968)  /  Violence in America (1969)

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Roosevelt Letter

The White House

Washington

March 19, 1936

My dear Mr. White:

Before I received your letter today I had been in to the President, talking to him about your letter enclosing that of the Attorney General. I told him that it seemed rather terrible that one could get nothing done and that I did not blame you in the least for feeling there was no interest in this very serious question. I asked him if there were any possibility of getting even one step taken, and he said the difficulty is that it is unconstitutional apparently for the Federal Government to step in in the lynching situation. the Government has only been allowed to do anything about kidnapping because of its interstate aspect, and even that has not as yet been appealed so they are not sure that it will be declared constitutional.

The president feels that lynching is a question of education in the states, rallying good citizens, and creating public opinion so that the localities themselves will wipe it out. However, if it were done by a Northerner, it will have an antagonistic effect. I will talk to him again about the Van Nuys resolution and will try to talk also to Senator Byrnes and get his point of view. I am deeply troubled about the whole situation as it seems to be a terrible thing to stand by and let it continue and feel that one cannot speak out as to his feeling. I think your next step would be to talk to the more prominent members of the Senate.

                                                                                      Very Sincerely yours,

                                                                                       Eleanor Roosevelt

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"With minor exceptions, until the civil rights movement of the mid-1960s, the South was able to frustrate any national effort to make a dent in America's apartheid. In this climate, it was not even possible to pass so basic an expression of a national commitment to justice as an antilynching bill.

"The NAACP fought for such a law. Walter White was a confidant of Eleanor Roosevelt and, through her, gained access to Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1935, FDR tried to explain to White why he had chosen to sacrifice the rights of black Americans to the economic needs of the country as a whole: 'I've got to get legislation passed by Congress to save America. The southerners by reason of the seniority rule in Congress are chairmen or occupy strategic places on most of the senate and House committees. If I come out for the antilynching bill now, they will block every bill I ask Congress to pass to keep America from collapsing.' By 1940, there had been almost 3,500 lynching in the country, mostly in the small towns and rural areas of the South. Between V-J day, the end of the war against Japan, and June 1947, less than two years later, there were twenty-six lynchings of blacks" (16-17).

"Truman's civil rights programs later became crucial for the advancement of black people and, indeed, his committee on civil rights fashioned the agenda for the civil rights developments of the next twenty years" (17).

Source: Jack Greenberg, Crusaders in The Courts: How A Dedicated Band of Lawyers Fought for the Civil Rights Revolution (1994)

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Note from Editor: 

I think that the several civil and voting rights laws (1957, 1964, 1965, 1968) brought the federal government into the protection of the rights of blacks, which meant that the FBI was forced to protect blacks from any local intimidation and thus investigations were required. Of course, the laws in themselves did not stop blacks from being intimidated and murdered by whites. But the whole system of legislation, undermined the KKK and the white citizen councils, and then with the election of blacks to office the whole tenor of white terrorism was forced to change.

There are a couple of articles on ChickenBones (access from opening page) on lynchings that you might want to check out:Lynching And Racial Violence: Histories & Legacies and Lynching By State and Race . In any event, I think there was never an antilynching bill passed. It seemed that the court cases won by the NAACP and the civil rights and voting rights bills were sufficient to bring the Justice Department into matters of white terrorism and intimidation. At least, in the punishment stages. But as you know, with the Till case, the federal government did nothing and the killers got away scot free.

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Bill Moyers Interviews Douglass A. Blackmon

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06202008/watch2.html

Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (2008)

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update 2 July 2008