Lynching in Popular Culture
Images of Lynching
Between 1882 (when reliable statistics were first collected) and 1968 (when the classic forms
of lynching had disappeared), 4,743 persons died of lynching, 3,446 of them black men and
women. Mississippi (539 black victims, 42 white) led this grim parade of death, followed by
Georgia (492, 39), Texas (352, 141), Louisiana (335, 56), and Alabama (299, 48). From 1882
to 1901, the annual number nationally usually exceeded 100; 1892 had a record 230 deaths
(161 black, 69 white). Although lynchings declined somewhat in the twentieth century, there
were still 97 in 1908 (89 black, 8 white), 83 in the racially troubled postwar year of 1919 (76,
7, plus some 25 race riots), 30 in 1926 (23, 7), and 28 in 1933 (24, 4).
Marion, Indiana: A mob of 10,000 whites took sledgehammers to the county
jailhouse doors to get at these two young blacks accused of raping a white girl;
the girl’s uncle saved the life of a third by proclaiming the man’s innocence.
Omaha, 1919
Waco, 1916
Jessie Washington, age seventeen, worked on a farm outside Waco, Texas. In May
1916, he was convicted of murdering Lucy Fryer, his employer, who was white.
Washington confessed to the crime and was sentenced to death by hanging. Within
minutes of the sentencing, court spectators overwhelmed the officials and seized
Washington. He was beaten, stripped, and dragged screaming to the lawn in front of
city hall. There, the mob built a bonfire, immersed Washington in coal oil, lifted him
up with a rope, and slowly lowered him into the fire.
“Strange Fruit”
Billie Holiday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs&feature=related
Nina Simone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVxVa3D11n4&feature=related
Hip Hop: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHEi7_m1Yo&feature=related
“The Lynching of Jube Benson,” 1904, Paul Laurence Dunbar
http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/contents/4900/4963/4963_txt.html
James Cameron
NPR: Strange Fruit: Anniversary Of A Lynching
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129025516