Slavery was legal and an integral part of American society from the late 1600s to the mid-1860s. The largest concentration of slaves worked the cotton plantations of southern landowners. Every slave was treated like property, neglected and mistreated. They have no access to healthcare, education, or civil rights. However, they are also indispensable. Owners depend on them to survive. Slaves had to work the farms or the economy of the American South would collapse. The white man’s economic dependence on the slave, combined with his sense of moral superiority, may have contributed to their violent treatment.
The Civil War ended in 1865 and slavery was abolished. During the Reconstruction era in America, or the postwar decade, many free blacks and formerly enslaved people enjoyed civil rights protections thanks to several federal laws. But this idyllic period came to an abrupt end when, in the mid-1870s, the economic decline of the South forced politicians to use terrorism-inspired methods of violent intimidation to keep blacks in line. These methods included regular beatings, harassment, and in most southern states the passage of various “segregation laws” or racial segregation laws. These laws wiped out all the economic and political gains African Americans enjoyed during Reconstruction. The name “Jim Crow” is also highly pejorative and dates back to slave drama cartoons of the 1820s.
Then came nearly a century of systemic racism in which legally free black Americans were deliberately oppressed. From the 1880s to the mid-60s, the American South was characterized by racial segregation, white-only schools, hospitals, facilities and services, and discrimination at every level of the workplace, even in housing or urban zoning codes.
From the 1880s to the 1930s, lynchings were commonplace, killing more than 6,000 African-Americans, mostly men, wrongly accused of murdering, raping, and abusing white women, even of other faiths. Lynchings are public spectacles that draw crowds from across the state. Women and children often participated, and victims were beaten, hanged and hung from trees. The 1899 murder of Sam Hose, an African American, was particularly violent when he was doused in oil and had his facial features, fingers and genitals cut off.
Trying to figure out why many ordinary men, women, and children were involved in lynchings is difficult and, for many, understandably impossible. Based on generations of psychological and sociological persuasion and brainwashing, Southerners claimed that lynching protected them from “black aggression” and defended “the natural, God-given racial order of the world.” They believed that “the whole race has no personality” and that it was necessary to “intimidate and contain the lawless elements of the black population”.
These beliefs were reinforced when they lost the Civil War and created a false sense of victimhood, failure, and fear, leading to a sense of “justifiable” violence that was terribly wrong and false.
Unfortunately, the unfortunate and horrific legacy of Jim Crow and lynching continues, and many Black Americans feel oppressed and disenfranchised as racism continues to be challenged in America today.
Directed by: Lewis Waller
