American Justice 1919 This is the Real Dope: Where Did We Go from Here? Willie Brown, accused of sexually assaulting a white woman, was lynched on 28 September 1919, outside of the Douglas County Courthouse in Omaha, Nebraska. Brown was hanged and shot repeatedly. Brown’s body was dragged behind an automobile through downtown Omaha and, eventually, burned at the intersection of 17th and Dodge Streets. Rights are so much more effectively destroyed by bullying a citizenry out of wanting to exercise them than any other means.—Uruknet

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Settlement Reached in Civil Suit Charging Franklin County, MS Role in 1964 KKK Murders—On Monday, June 21, Franklin County, Mississippi agreed to a settlement in an historic civil suit with the families of Charles Moore and Henry Dee, two 19-year-old Black men who were kidnapped, tortured and murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan on May 2, 1964. “This is the first time, to my knowledge, that any civil lawsuit against public officials for collaborating with the KKK has reached the point of settlement,” said Margaret Burnham, lead attorney for the family members who brought the suit against Franklin County. Klansman James Ford Seale went to prison in 2007 for his role in the murders; this landmark civil suit addressed the roles of Mississippi government officials in the double murder and subsequent cover-up of what had occurred.Cold Cases                                                                             photo: Henry Dee

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Lynchsong               By Lorraine Hansberry I can hear Rosalee See the eyes of Willie McGee My mother told me about Lynchings My mother told me about The dark nights And dirt roads And torch lights And lynch robes The faces of men Laughing white Faces of men Dead in the night sorrow night and a sorrow night 1951 Source: AmericanLynching

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Writer Lorraine Hansberry's sober eulogy of the death of Willie McGee weighed heavy on the hearts and minds of the American Left. On May 8, 1951, a crowd of five hundred lingered outside the courthouse of Laurel, Mississippi, to witness the execution of yet another black man convicted for allegedly raping a white woman. His 1945 lightning trial resulted in a guilty conviction delivered in less than two and a half minutes by an all-white, male jury, setting off a heated five-year legal struggle that drew national headlines. Despite an aggressive appeals defense team who attempted every legal maneuver in the book, the US Supreme Court ultimately chose not to intervene. With the legal lynching of the Martinsville Seven in February, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg's conviction in March, followed by the execution of McGee in May, 1951 was a bad year for Left-leaning lawyers (Parrish 1979; Rise 1995). Most discouraging, national news sources like the New York Times and Life magazine red-baited the "Save Willie McGee" campaign and—as Life reported—its "imported" lawyers (Popham 1951a; Life 1951). Few felt McGee's passing with as heavy a heart as his chief counsel, thirty-one-year-old Bella Abzug.

Before Abzug became a representative in Congress and a leader in the peace and women's movements, she confronted the Southern political and legal system at the height of the early Cold War. Retained in 1948 by the Civil Rights Congress (CRC)—a New York-headquartered Popular Front legal defense organization—the novice labor lawyer honed her civil rights . . .

Source: https://Litigation-Essentials.LexisNexis

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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan  /  The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll  /  Only a Pawn in Their Game

Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery

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Other Books on Lynching & Violence in America

 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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Dear Mr. Lewis,  I'm writing for a friend who is currently in possession of a very old postcard picturing 3 very well dressed black men who, unfortunately, have been hung. Doing research on Ida B. Well-Barnett I've found a story on three such men in Memphis on the date March 9, 1892. Handwritten in ink on the card is a date that seems to be 9/9/1892 but because of the age of the card the first 9 is a little intelligible. Is it possible that this incident could have been made a post card? I've never encountered anything quite like this before. Frank (4 May 2007)

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Strange Fruit Lyncing Report

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White Things           By Anne Spencer Most things are colorful things— the sky, earth, and sea. Black men are most men; but the white are free! White things are rare things; so rare, so rare They stole from out a silvered world—somewhere. Finding earth-plains fair plains, save greenly grassed, They strewed white feathers of cowardice, as they passed; The golden stars with lances fine, The hills all red and darkened pine, They blanched with their want of power; And turned the blood in a ruby rose To a poor white poppy-flower. They pyred a race of black, black men, And burned them to ashes white; then, Laughing, a young one claimed a skull, For the skull of a black is white, not dull, But a glistening awful thing Made, it seems, for this ghoul to swing In the face of God with all his might, And swear by the hell that sired him: "Man-maker, make white!"

Poet Anne Spencer ((1882-1976)) lived and worked in the Pierce Street home from 1903 until death in 1975. Internationally recognized as a poet of the Harlem Renaissance period, Anne was the first Virginian and first African-American to have her poetry included in the Norton Anthology of American Poetry. Also an activist for equality and educational opportunities for all, she hosted such dignitaries as Hughes, Marian Anderson, George Washington Carver, Thurgood Marshall, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., James Weldon Johnson, and W.E.B. Dubois. The local chapter of the NAACP was founded from her home. The restored garden, where Anne was an avid gardener, and Edankraal, a one-room retreat where Anne did much of her writing, are also part of the property.—WEB Archives

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Please Dont Talk About Me  / Strange Fruit  /  The Blues Are Brewin'  Fine and Mellow  / What A Little Moonlight Can Do  *   *   *   *   * Lynching Index / The Lynching of James Cameron / Strange Fruit in Jena  A Time of Terror: A Survivor's Story James Cameron

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Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America Edited by James Allen These images make the past present. They refute the notion that photographs of charged historical subjects lose their power, softening and becoming increasingly aesthetic with time. These images are not going softly into any artistic realm. Instead they send shock waves through the brain, implicating ever larger chunks of American society and in many ways reaching up to the present. They give one a deeper and far sadder understanding of what it has meant to be white and to be black in America. And what it still means.—New York Times, January 13, 2000

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Lynchings in America . . . a bit of history that sheds light on the present and future

When I was a boy growing up in New Orleans, Louisiana, the word lynching was hardly ever mentioned. My parents only said these "mean" acts happened in the country (rural areas) with white men in white gowns (the KKK). In all my schooling, through high school and on to college, lynching was never part of a lecture or connected with American history. I knew of the word, lynching, but never, never the scope of this violent, hateful act. On Thursday, January 13, 2000, an article entitled, "An Ugly Legacy Lives on, Its Glare Unsoftened by Age," by Robert Smith was published in the New York Times. This excellent article revealed a world not known by many Americans living today and especially by me. Without my explaining here, it should be read by all persons, especially as it pertains to race and hate. Without understanding this past evil history, we cannot understand why hate is on the rise today in this year of 2000.

After reading the New York Times article, I wanted to know more about lynching and what could possibly be presented on this squeamish subject. It turned out that an exhibit of rare collected photo postcards were on display featuring lynchings as they took place in America from 1883-1960. I saw this exhibit. It was on view at the Roth Horowitz Gallery in New York City until February 12, 2000. This small gallery took in only about fifteen people at a time, and the line was long. Watching the viewers as they exited revealed what was inside: people with tears, some with anguish, some looked surprised with the horror they had seen.

This New York exhibition presented the collected photocards of Mr. James Allen, a white Atlanta resident who, for fifteen years, sought out these images of racial horror and self-righteous vigilante acts as rare finds. Since most of these photocards were kept as "keepsakes" by some families, Mr. Allen had to solicit ads for purchase. He paid from fifteen dollars to as much as thirty thousand dollars for individual cards. The sixty photo postcards and other material were temporarily housed in the library at Emory University to allow scholars to have access to it, but are now being held by their owner at www.withoutsanctuary.org  /  Melvin Sylvester, Feb. 2000

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"Cloaking an Apology for Lawlessness"

 Ida B. Wells, Frances Willard and the Lynching Controversy, 1890-1894

Author: Amy Hackett

Advisor: Jean Humez

Abstract:

Between 1890 and 1894, as calls to protect the honor of white womanhood abounded in an American society ripe with conflict over race, gender and morality, there erupted a controversy over lynching between social reformer Frances Willard, the president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells. Ida B. Wells vehemently protested lynching, arguing that the justification for lynching predicated on the black rape of white women was a myth created by white men as an excuse to lynch black men in attempts to regain political and economic power in the post-Civil War era.

Wells also radically contended that white women were engaging in these types of relationships, even seducing black men, deceiving white society by denying that relationships could be consensual, and then standing by while African American men were lynched for rape. Her suggestion that white women might voluntarily engage in sexual relationships with black men, provocatively challenged the concepts of the purity, chastity and morality of white womanhood central to the conceptual framework of the W.C.T.U.

As the president of one of America's foremost social reform organizations, Frances Willard called for the protection of the purity of white womanhood from threats to morality and safety. In her attempts to bring Southern women into the W.C.T.U., Frances Willard accepted the rape myth and publicly condoned lynching and the color line in the South. Wells argued that as a Christian reformer, Willard should be speaking out against lynching, but instead seemed to support the position of Southerners.

While Willard strongly refuted Wells' claims and made statements denouncing lynching, she continued to accept the rape myth, denying that white women could possibly take part in sexual relationships with black men. For Willard, accepting Wells' position on voluntary interracial sex would have meant admitting that true white women were not pure, chaste and moral, undercutting the basic conceptual underpinnings of her organization.

This paper examines the lynching controversy between Frances Willard and Ida B. Wells as a lens through which to view the broader subject of race relations in white-founded social reform movements, especially the issues of white womanhood, African American manhood, and sexuality in the late nineteenth century America.

First, this paper explains Frances Willard's personal and professional background, as well as the early history of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. I focus on how Willard's childhood experiences shaped her understanding of the "woman question" and her interest in education and social reform. I also explore how Willard's political strategy as the president of the W.C.T.U., specifically in recruiting Southern white women and African American women to membership, had consequences for her position in the lynching controversy.

Second, this paper focuses on Wells' persona and professional background and how she came to commit her energies to a campaign against lynching. In this section, I focus on Wells' personal experience as a single African American woman in the South, and how she turned to protest of racial discrimination as a central focus of her professional career.

In both of the first two sections, I argue that the early experiences of both women shaped their approaches to activism and the values they espoused in their advocacy.

Third, this paper details the lynching controversy itself, providing an analysis of the debate through examining the speeches and publications of Wells and Willard on the lynching between 1890 and 1894. Lastly, this paper attempts to explain why Wells and Willard were unable to come to any agreement on the lynching controversy. Central to this discussion is understanding how Wells and Willard envision protection for women. Willard's and Wells' concepts of protection for women included an implicit stance on white and black sexuality, as well as white womanhood and black manhood, particularly in the context of the debate. Ultimately, Wells and Willard spoke at cross purposes and were unable to see each other's positions.

In this paper, I utilize the speeches and publications of Wells and Willard between 1890 and 1894, which convey their positions on race relations, concepts of womanhood, lynching and rape, to produce a complex picture of the lynching controversy. In order to develop an understanding of Wells' personal history and position on the controversy, I extensively rely upon Wells' autobiography, Crusade for Justice, and Patricia Schechter's recent biography of Wells, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and American Reform, 1880-1930, as well as other biographical works on Wells.

Similarly, I make extensive use of Willard's published journal and Ruth Bordin's biography on Willard, Frances Willard: A Biography, and her book on the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Woman and Temperance, in addition to other biographies written on Willard (although these biographies are quite dated) to explain Willard's background and the history of the W.C.T.U. I also utilize scholarship on Southern sexual politics, lynching and concepts of white womanhood, including works by Paula Baker, Robyn Wiegman, Gail Bederman, Glenda Gilmore and Hazel Carby.

This paper may be of interest to students and scholars of history and American Studies who are examining race relations in white-founded social reform movements in America in the late nineteenth century. This paper is specifically relevant of those examining issues of white womanhood, African American manhood and sexuality during this time.

Lastly, this paper may be of particular interest to those focused on examining the link between power and sexuality in the political and social climate of Reconstruction, and the consequences for the African American community. Roundtable UMB

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But that same year Frederick Douglass said, "Nor is the south alone responsible for this burning shame. . . . The sin against the Negro is both sectional and national; and until the voice of the North shall be heard in emphatic condemnation  and withering reproach against these continued ruthless mob law murders, it will remain equally involved with the South in this common crime."

The Cleveland Gazette reported in 1898 violence against two Negro postmasters: the shooting of Isaac H. Loftin in Georgia and the burning of the post office and lynching of a Postmaster Baker in Lake City, South Carolina. His wife, three daughters, and a son were wounded and a baby in arms was killed. In both of these cases, the paper stated, concerning the mob, "No effort to arrest and punish them has ever been made."

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Miriam DeCosta-Willis, The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells (Review)

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Ida B. Wells: a Passion for Justice

Documents the dramatic life and turbulent times of the pioneering African American journalist, activist, suffragist and anti-lynching crusader of the post-Reconstruction period.

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Ida B. Wells--A demand for the arrest and punishment of lynchers became a major Negro crusade at the turn of the century. the outstanding figure at the turn of the century. the outstanding figure in this movement was a Negro woman, Ida B. Wells, who compiled in 1895 the first statistical pamphlet on lynching, The Red Record. Miss Wells, born in Mississippi in 1869, taught school in Memphis, Tennessee, until she became the editor and part-owner of a newspaper, the Memphis Free Speech, which circulated throughput the Mississippi Delta.

When in May 1892, her paper exposed some of the forces involved in the lynching of three young Negro businessmen in Memphis, her offices were demolished by white hoodlums and she was driven from the city.

In Chicago, Ida B. Wells married the militant race leader Ferdinand Barnett and both became active in the National Equal Rights League. Mrs. Wells-Barnett became chairman of the Anti-Lynching Bureau of the National Afro-American Council and a famous speaker at home and abroad on Negro rights.

Statistically she proved that the "protection of white womanhood," as the South claimed, was not the basis for lynchings, since in no given year had even half of the Negroes who were lynched been charged with rape or attempted rape and that in 1900 less than 15 per cent of those lynched had been so suspected. Lynching, she contended was a form of intimidation to preserve the plantation economy and the white ballot box of the South.

Source: Langston Hughes, Milton Meltzer, and Langston Hughes. A Pictorial History of Blackamericans. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1983.

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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll   Photo left: Hattie Carroll / Right William Zantzinger W. D. Zantzinger, Subject of Dylan Song, Dies at 69    The Art of Bob Dylan's ``Hattie Carroll'' (Phil Ochs)

The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll—From the album The Times They Are a-Changin' "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" is a topical song written by the American musician Bob Dylan. Recorded on October 23, 1963, the song was released on Dylan's 1964 album The Times They Are A-Changin' and gives a generally factual account of the killing of 51-year-old barmaid Hattie Carroll by the wealthy young tobacco farmer from Charles County, Maryland, William Devereux "Billy" Zantzinger (whom the song calls "William Zanzinger"), and his subsequent sentence to six months in a county jail. Dylan's song, however, sentenced Zantzinger to lifelong infamy. The song never mentions that Zantzinger was white, and Hattie Carroll black, it's understood, according to Dylan biographer Howard Sounes, "a mark of Dylan's skill, the song combines the artistry of a poet and the economy of a news reporter." The lyrics are a commentary on the racism of the 1960s, which valued a black woman's life so lightly. In 1963 when Hattie Carroll was killed, Charles County was still strictly segregated by race in public facilities such as restaurants, churches, theaters, doctor's offices, buses, and the county fair. The schools of Charles County were not integrated until 1967. The main incident of the song took place in the early hours of February 9, 1963, at the white tie Spinsters' Ball at the Emerson Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland. Using a toy cane, Zantzinger drunkenly assaulted at least three of the Emerson Hotel workers: a bellboy, a waitress, and at about 1:30 in the morning of the 9th Carroll, a barmaid. In addition to her work at the hotel, Hattie Carroll, at 51, was the mother of eleven children.

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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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AALBC.com's 25 Best Selling Books

For July 1st through August 31st 2011
 

Fiction

#1 - Justify My Thug by Wahida Clark
#2 - Flyy Girl by Omar Tyree
#3 - Head Bangers: An APF Sexcapade by Zane
#4 - Life Is Short But Wide by J. California Cooper
#5 - Stackin' Paper 2 Genesis' Payback by Joy King
#6 - Thug Lovin' (Thug 4) by Wahida Clark
#7 - When I Get Where I'm Going by Cheryl Robinson
#8 - Casting the First Stone by Kimberla Lawson Roby
#9 - The Sex Chronicles: Shattering the Myth by Zane

#10 - Covenant: A Thriller  by Brandon Massey

#11 - Diary Of A Street Diva  by Ashley and JaQuavis

#12 - Don't Ever Tell  by Brandon Massey

#13 - For colored girls who have considered suicide  by Ntozake Shange

#14 - For the Love of Money : A Novel by Omar Tyree

#15 - Homemade Loves  by J. California Cooper

#16 - The Future Has a Past: Stories by J. California Cooper

#17 - Player Haters by Carl Weber

#18 - Purple Panties: An Eroticanoir.com Anthology by Sidney Molare

#19 - Stackin' Paper by Joy King

#20 - Children of the Street: An Inspector Darko Dawson Mystery by Kwei Quartey

#21 - The Upper Room by Mary Monroe

#22 – Thug Matrimony  by Wahida Clark

#23 - Thugs And The Women Who Love Them by Wahida Clark

#24 - Married Men by Carl Weber

#25 - I Dreamt I Was in Heaven - The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang by Leonce Gaiter

Non-fiction

#1 - Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
#2 - Confessions of a Video Vixen by Karrine Steffans
#3 - Dear G-Spot: Straight Talk About Sex and Love by Zane
#4 - Letters to a Young Brother: MANifest Your Destiny by Hill Harper
#5 - Peace from Broken Pieces: How to Get Through What You're Going Through by Iyanla Vanzant
#6 - Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey by Marcus Garvey
#7 - The Ebony Cookbook: A Date with a Dish by Freda DeKnight
#8 - The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors by Frances Cress Welsing
#9 - The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter Godwin Woodson

#10 - John Henrik Clarke and the Power of Africana History  by Ahati N. N. Toure

#11 - Fail Up: 20 Lessons on Building Success from Failure by Tavis Smiley

#12 -The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

#13 - The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life by Kevin Powell

#14 - The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore

#15 - Why Men Fear Marriage: The Surprising Truth Behind Why So Many Men Can't Commit  by RM Johnson

#16 - Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire by Carol Jenkins

#17 - Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority by Tom Burrell

#18 - A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle

#19 - John Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary Activism by Keith Gilyard

#20 - Alain L. Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher by Leonard Harris

#21 - Age Ain't Nothing but a Number: Black Women Explore Midlife by Carleen Brice

#22 - 2012 Guide to Literary Agents by Chuck Sambuchino
#23 - Chicken Soup for the Prisoner's Soul by Tom Lagana
#24 - 101 Things Every Boy/Young Man of Color Should Know by LaMarr Darnell Shields

#25 - Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class  by Lisa B. Thompson

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Sex at the Margins Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry By Laura María Agustín This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London

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Debt: The First 5,000 Years By David Graeber Before there was money, there was debt. Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems—to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it. Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.  Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it. Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.   Economist Glenn Loury  /Criminalizing a Race

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The White Masters of the World

From The World and Africa, 1965

By W. E. B. Du Bois

W. E. B. Du Bois’ Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization (Fletcher)

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Ancient African Nations

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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan  /  The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll  /  Only a Pawn in Their Game

Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery / George Jackson  / Hurricane Carter

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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg

The Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804  / January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of Haiti 

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BLACK CLASSIC BOOKS   BCP Digital Printing

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update 2 July 2008