Preview

Lynch Law In America, By Ida B. Wells

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1022 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Lynch Law In America, By Ida B. Wells
Before Civils Rights Acts were put into place in the 60s, black Americans were subjugated by Jim Crow Laws, which are now paralleled by the absence of laws to protect LGBTQ individuals. One of the most violent anti-black ideas supported by Jim Crow Laws was lynching, whose horrors were brought into light by political activist, Ida B Wells, in her 1900 speech in Chicago, “Lynch Law in America”. In the speech, Wells explains that soon after the Civil War, “lynchings began...rapidly spreading into...various States until...the reign of the ‘unwritten law’ was supreme,” (4). In other words, whites, shielded by state legislators, had the right to kill blacks for even minute (often non-existent) crimes. Yet, even though lynching was outlawed with …show more content…
Before one can dive into King’s philosophy, one must look at his predecessor, Booker T Washington, who argued for pacifist change in the Reconstruction Era. Washington summarizes his beliefs in his 1895 Atlanta Exposition Address in which he encourages blacks to “”Cast down [their] bucket[s]’-cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded,” (Washington 1). He tells blacks to not only strengthen friendships between races, but to be submissive to whites. Though at first glance this may seem to be an anti-progressive philosophy, Washington believed that the best way for blacks to gain societal respect was through improving themselves educationally and economically. Overtime, blacks’ success would prove to whites that they are equal. Yet, while it’s true that such pacifism would decrease whites’ fear of blacks, Washington’s docile ideology didn’t do much to change views on blacks during his time. It was not until Martin Luther King began his rise to political fame that major advances began being made to desegregate America. Like Washington, King promoted nonviolence as a solution to racial inequality, but he took BTW’s ideas one step further by bringing attention to the cause through civil disobedience. Whereas in a similar situation, Washington might have kept quiet, when King was arrested, he used his situation to advocate for civil rights in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. In fact, he even explains why such direct action is best for the future of black Americans. He writes, “nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored,” (King 2). His words inspired younger blacks to rise up

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    Slavery and Mississippi during the nineteenth and twentieth century went hand and hand. Along with this slavery came prejudice, bigots, racism, and perhaps the worst of all; lynching. Lynching was commonly accepted in the south during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Governors approved, sheriffs turned a blind eye, southern blacks accepted, and for the most part the rest of the United States ignored it. Lynching in the south was seen as check on society, not a criminal offence it helped keep 'those niggahs in order.' However, there was one lynching in the summer of 1955 that the nation could not ignore; the press, NAACP, and Mrs. (Mammie) Till Bradley made sure of this. The lynching sent shock waves through most of the United States provoking the first signs of the Civil Rights movement. The young man that was lynched during the summer of 1955 was Emmett Till, his crime was boastfulness, cockiness, and having a picture of a white girl in his wallet. For this he died, and unfortunately it took his death to wake up a nation that was caught up in it's own self righteousness.…

    • 4748 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In Martin Luther King Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail” he responds to the “eight white religious leaders of the South” (King, par.1). That wrote a statement in a newspaper calling the peaceful and nonviolent civil rights demonstrations extremities. He voiced his disappointment in the statements made by the “white religious man” (King, par.1) that praised brutal and violent police men and called for an end to the peaceful demonstrations from the African American community. Throughout the extended letter King expressed the need for direct actions and willingness to fight peacefully against laws. King also talked about why the civil rights movement could wait longer and encouraged the “white religious man” (King, par.1) and the general public to take a moment and view through African American eyes why they fight for equality. Also throughout the letter King makes it a point to talk about the right timing, just and unjust laws, and the need to make a stand.…

    • 710 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    As can be seen, Dr. King rather uses non-violent direct action. It created a crisis which created a tension among the white people. It made them force to approach an issue even after refusing to negotiate. This action lead to many success at the end which granted “freedom”. As of now, it seems like we are heading into a similar situation in the near future. I would follow Dr. Kings steps to persuade the audience to create friendly environment where quality, diversity, and generosity exist throughout the whole…

    • 575 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    King’s leadership resulted in one of the the greatest non-violent mass protests in the history of the western world. King represented a sense of hope and promise to the followers of the Civil Rights Movement. The most important aspect to understand in this debate is King’s non-violence. With many other African-American leaders, such as Malcolm X, taking a more aggressive, violent approach to change, King saw the potential in Ghandi’s peaceful protests. As Fairclough writes, “Few blacks believed that the city’s businessmen would have accepted desegregation but for the double pressure of the demonstrations and the economic boycott of downtown stores” (209). The only effective events in the Civil Rights movements were those that followed King’s system of non-violence. While Carson argues that rather than King’s presence, “the success of the black movement required the mobilization of black communities…”(219), this assertion is made under the assumption that a non-violent leader would organize the masses. Without King’s leadership, there may have been an violent uprising that only led to more tensions between the…

    • 587 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    King used ethos and pathos. Ethos means appeal to authority. In Dr. King’s letter, he stated the reason for the nonviolence protest after they had waited for more than three hundred and forty years for their constitutional and God giving rights. Dr. King also stated, “The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation”. After Black Americans waited for years and years without any favorable law and conditions, which will at least be, just, they had to protect because as the saying goes if persuasion fails force is applied, they needed to do sometime in order for the authorities to do something and see their seriousness. Even though black American knew the law would not be in their favor, they wanted the lawmakers and the authorities to negotiate with them for a suitable law, which will be just. Nevertheless, pathos, which means appeal to emotions. Black Americans were tired of waiting, bad thing were happening to their family and hardly answered when being asked by their children” Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?, when colored people first name becomes ‘nigger,’ their middle name becomes ‘boy’ however old they were”, they felt they were forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”. Black Americans felt they were being avoided which was true and they hope something will be done about…

    • 1148 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Bobby Seale was born on the 22nd of October 1936 in Dallas, Texas. He was the first born in a family of three. Seale grew up dug in destitution with an injurious father, and the family brought their battles with them when they moved the nation over to California. Seale went to Berkeley High School, and it was amid this period that he began to end up politically minded. Seale served in the United States air force and later joined the Merritt College in Oakland, California.…

    • 1252 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” he shows that nonviolence is the way to get the positive attention that his plight deserved. He believed that to use violence was negative on a couple of points. First, violence always gets negative attention. Second, violence was the way the Klu Klux Klan went about their business. He wanted to expose unjust laws and do it in a fashion that conveyed his beliefs without causing other problems. In Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” he is trying to convince his “fellow clergymen” (566) that his fight for the civil liberties is a just one, and that the march was a nonviolent one and one that was surely needed. Dr. King stated, “we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny” (566). King is saying that it’s something that can no longer be ignored, that he can no longer sit on the sideline and be an idle observer. The black man has to take it to the streets. In this letter, Dr. King showed that nonviolence, direct action, and the ability to stand by one’s convictions are the right path.…

    • 668 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    EN1320 WEEK 3 LAB

    • 1068 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The main point of Dr. Kings speech was that an injustice had been done to the black people. They were promised freedom from the emancipation proclamation, and up to that point they still were not free. They were segregated and treated like second class citizens. Were they supposed to just sit down and let white men at that time humiliate them, beat them, bomb their houses, and strip them of human dignity? NO! Dr. King was preaching to all who listened, that now was the time to metaphorically cash this check, a check that will give them upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. But to do this, not with violence or retaliation, “we must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence “ (bourne, 1998). This would be the way Dr. King would want to see his dream played out, with non-violence. Were all his efforts done in vain?…

    • 1068 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Based on “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King states “A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law.” This shows that King is saying that anyone has the right to break the laws if those laws are unjust without using violence. King also reveals “My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure.” This demonstrates that King believes that violence isn’t the key to fix problems. King proclaimed that African American must make changes to achieve true…

    • 467 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    King was trying to explain non violence to the angry, oppressed black men and women who wanted to do nothing more than to take their rifles and dispose of their problems. However, how could he get people to follow the nonviolent movement when the Vietnam war was anything but. Martin Luther King asserts in the passage, “Their questions hit me, and I knew that i could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - - my own…

    • 854 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Through the history of lynchings, we can see that most lynchings happened right after 1880 until about 1920 and then started to decrease a lot. We know that not all lynchings have been published, but we can look at the ones we certainly know about to gather information. The press also tells us that an abundance of lynchings occurred in Arkansas and Louisiana. Ida B. Wells-Barnett would say that many of these lynchings were caused because of rapes. She discusses her personal observations of the killings of black men by white men. When a black man was accused of raping a white woman, then a lynching occurred. Not only instances of rape, but even something as small as an African American speaking to a white person in the wrong way to anger them. Ida explained how these were threatening to a whole community; leaving them in fear. One of the most common lynchings we learn of through the press is of Henry Smith; a teenage boy accused of whistling at a white woman. He was tragically decapitated by the white men, and Smith’s mother chose to have an open casket to show what a horrific thing was done to him for something he did not do. Therefore, lynchings can be arbitrary from case to case, because each one happened due to something different, no matter how big or small, leaving people to act violently on their anger by publicly killing someone in front of their…

    • 1907 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Getting Fired

    • 1500 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Summary: Martin Luther King Jr.’s “The Ways of Meeting Oppressions”, clearly states his beliefs on how African American’s should rise against oppression in the South. Mr. King believed that people could become so overcome with oppression that they give up fighting their oppressor. He did not believe that giving in to oppression was the answer to solving civil rights issues in the south. King also believed physical violence was not the answer either, stating “Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral” in paragraph 4 of his writing. King believed that non-violent resistance was the way to fight for justice. By using non-violent resistance as a way to fight oppression, King believed it would be possible for African Americans to remain living in the South as they fought for their rights.…

    • 1500 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Jim Crow laws were enforced by lynchings (Mackaman). “Lynchings were violent and public acts of torture that traumatized black people throughout the country and were largely tolerated by state and federal officers” (Mackaman). The impact of lynching in the South, much like the pogroms against Jews in Germany, went far beyond those actually killed and their immediate families (Mackaman). There were many types of lynching. Some lynchings resulted from a wildly distorted fear and interracial sex, in response to casual social transgressions (Mackaman). There were public spectacle lynchings and some were based on the allegations of a serious violent crime (Mackaman). Lynchings that escalated into larger-scale violence targeting the entire African American community (Mackaman). There were numerous lynchings of sharecroppers, ministers, and community leaders who resisted mistreatment (Mackaman). More savage was the lynching of Mary Turner and her unborn child, killed for protesting her husband’s murder(Bouie). Historian Philip Dray in At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America writes, “[B]efore a crowd that included women and children,” writes Dray, “Mary was stripped, hung upside down by the ankles, soaked with gasoline, and roasted to death. In the midst of this torment, a white man opened her swollen belly with a hunting knife and her infant…

    • 884 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the era that directly followed the civil war, the South was in a state of Chaos, they had just lost the Civil War and slavery was abolished, so millions upon millions were set free and were eager to begin life as free citizens. Unfortunately, the south was not ready yet to give the newly freed African Americans, all of the liberties as free citizens they had just been granted, this was just the beginning of the plight for freedom. This time period saw a sharp increase in the number of lynchings of free African Americans. According to Ida B Wells, this occurred due to the fact that the Southern whites strongly desired a way to control the Blacks. This meant that if a black man or woman violated one of the south's Unwritten laws called the Jim Crow Laws, that he or she could and probably would be lynched by…

    • 567 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Martin Luther King had a ginormous impact on a huge amount of people in the past, present and it is safe to say, the future. The way he spoke, grabbed the attention and addressed his audience was powerful in many different aspects. He earned the respect of many individuals who listened to him. In the document Non-Violence and Racial Justice, Martin Luther King addresses justice, oppression, respect and non-violence resistance. Martin Luther King was a peaceful man and never the less, tried to influence, impact and persuade others to be peaceful as well. Throughout his document, he utilized different techniques to grab the reader’s attention and hold onto to them until he had portrayed the information he had wanted. By the end of this document, the reader should have at least gained knowledge, understanding and insight about non-violence resistance. It is said…”Violence doesn’t solve anything.” Martin Luther King was illustrating that violence will not accomplish anything.…

    • 866 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays