In 1899, a young black sharecropper, on a farm outside Atlanta in the United States of America, got into a dispute with his landlord and ended up killing him in self-defence. A rumour circulated that he had raped the landlord’s wife. A white mob of nearly 4,000 people collected to watch the anticipated lynching of the black sharecropper. WEB Du Bois (1868-1963), an African-American with a PhD from Harvard, who taught sociology at Atlanta University at the time, heard about the prospective lynching, prepared a letter of protest and rushed to deliver it to the local newspaper. But he was already too late. The white mob jeered and clapped as the black man cowering in fear was caught, stripped, tortured and, in the end, hung and burnt alive. On his way to the newspaper office, Du Bois learned about the lynching and that the victim’s knuckles were being exhibited as a souvenir at a nearby grocery store. This lynching changed the course of Du Bois’ life and he went on to become a leading African-American civil rights activist. He is known for an evocative collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folks (1903). Described as "fireworks going off in a cemetery", the book eventually became the Bible of the civil rights movement.
For long the word "lynch" was used as part of the system of frontier justice in America where absence of legally-sanctioned trials and punishments justified its use. The verb "lynch" could include whipping and capital punishment. However, it was only after the American Civil War (1861-65) and following the emancipation of slaves (1863) that it came to be firmly associated with "to put to death" and became synonymous with acts of retribution reserved for the free African-Americans. Post-emancipation era saw the rise in racial discrimination and segregation – prejudiced treatment of the Blacks based on race and restrictions on their use of institutions (schools, churches and hospitals) and facilities (parks, playgrounds, toilets, and restaurants).
This period also saw the birth and expansion of the Ku Klux Klan – a white supremacist organisation. With the Klan, lynching became a "routine response" to any form of Black self-assertion, be it to acquire education, social and political equality or cultural inclusion. Stories and episodes of lynching instilled such terror in the heart and minds of the blacks that it ensured their acquiescence to white domination. This period, known in USA’s history as Jim Crow – which was originally a song-and-dance caricature to mock black people but by the end of the 19th century came to refer to legal institutionalisation of racism – left a dark legacy of 3,811 black people lynched to death.
Historical victims
How did the majority of white people respond to these lynchings? The reactions ranged from absolute cold revulsion, hostile defensiveness to collective amnesia. One would imagine that it was the mob murder that inspired horror. But it didn’t. What struck terror in white hearts was the supposed crime of the black man – the rape of white woman. At the core of lynching was the white fear of lustful black men as rapists of white women. The "defenceless white woman" was the centrepiece of pro-lynching propaganda. No amount of consensual sex between the two races could remove the paranoia of the majority community. Seen from the perspective of the white people, the victim was not the lynched black man but the white supremacist whose woman had been supposedly violated. The black man was assumed to be guilty in every story. Lynching thus entrenched the white supremacist’s sense of being historical victims and in turn criminalised the black men.
Lynching was not just any other murder. Lynching, where a mob captured, dragged and maimed another human was very much like gang rape in its symbolism. In many cases, the genitalia of the black men were mutilated. Gang rape and lynching both are about the male power and privilege over the victim’s body. Lynching, a majoritarian act carried out against the defenceless minority, instead of being seen as such, was presented as an act of self-reclamation guaranteeing the power and privilege of the white male. It restored the white honour by righting a perceived wrong – the black aggressor had been punished and the patriarchal duty was fulfilled. It was thus a public demonstration of the supposed moral superiority of the white community.
Conspiracy of silence
In Jim Crow, the acts of witnessing the lynching as bystanders or through the medium of newspapers (or pamphlets, ballads, popular stories, photographs and cinema) lent the white people a sense of security. In this way lynching bound the white community together beyond class, generational and geographical differences. This also helped generate a national tolerance for supremacist violence as something that was a normal aspect of peoples’ lives. Torture and mutilation of the blacks was passed off as a legitimate customary practice. What one saw was the growing perversion of the white community which abetted, sanctified and at times celebrated the lynchings primarily through its deafening silence. A case in point is Mark Twain, a contemporary of Du Bois, whom we know as the writer of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Twain wrote a blistering essay in 1901, "The United states of Lyncherdom" as a reaction to a newspaper account of a lynching. However, he never published the essay. Twain preferred to remain silent because he believed that he would not have even "half a friend" left once it was published. The Jim Crow era is past in the USA, however, many of the attitudes that perpetuated it remain – and so does the conspiracy of silence.
Might we read the repugnant history of lynching of black people as a parable of our times? The majoritarian community in India deploys lynching time and again as a weapon against the Dalits and minorities in the name of restoring its honour. Lynching has almost acquired the form of a legitimate customary practice with the "beef" vigilante groups roaming through city streets. The nation is gradually becoming indifferent to, or tolerant of, the violence because of its excess and because it is perpetrated in the name of righting an imagined historical wrong. One was mistaken in mourning Akhlaq or Noman or Zahid Ahmad Bhatt, the "beef criminals". Nor should we mourn the two Dalit children who were killed in Faridabad or several others before them.
What one should mourn is the perversion of the souls of the "witnesses" of lynching. The cousins, family friends, and fellow Indians who treat these killings as retribution – payback time for communities who, according to them, had enjoyed free rein under earlier political regimes. People who capitalise on these killings to strengthen and bind the majoritarian community across class, generational and regional divisions. Those who righteously ask why a death of a Hindu did not create such a furore. Those who decry the selective outrage of litterateurs and public intellectuals. Above all, the Indians who abet and sanctify these lynching with their silence.
Du Bois rightly wrote in his autobiography, A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century (1961): “One could not be a calm, cool, and detached scientist, while Negroes were lynched, murdered, and starved.” Lynching did not leave any possibility of a neutral stance – or for silence.
Aparna Vaidik is Associate Professor of History, Ashoka University
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For long the word "lynch" was used as part of the system of frontier justice in America where absence of legally-sanctioned trials and punishments justified its use. The verb "lynch" could include whipping and capital punishment. However, it was only after the American Civil War (1861-65) and following the emancipation of slaves (1863) that it came to be firmly associated with "to put to death" and became synonymous with acts of retribution reserved for the free African-Americans. Post-emancipation era saw the rise in racial discrimination and segregation – prejudiced treatment of the Blacks based on race and restrictions on their use of institutions (schools, churches and hospitals) and facilities (parks, playgrounds, toilets, and restaurants).
This period also saw the birth and expansion of the Ku Klux Klan – a white supremacist organisation. With the Klan, lynching became a "routine response" to any form of Black self-assertion, be it to acquire education, social and political equality or cultural inclusion. Stories and episodes of lynching instilled such terror in the heart and minds of the blacks that it ensured their acquiescence to white domination. This period, known in USA’s history as Jim Crow – which was originally a song-and-dance caricature to mock black people but by the end of the 19th century came to refer to legal institutionalisation of racism – left a dark legacy of 3,811 black people lynched to death.
Historical victims
How did the majority of white people respond to these lynchings? The reactions ranged from absolute cold revulsion, hostile defensiveness to collective amnesia. One would imagine that it was the mob murder that inspired horror. But it didn’t. What struck terror in white hearts was the supposed crime of the black man – the rape of white woman. At the core of lynching was the white fear of lustful black men as rapists of white women. The "defenceless white woman" was the centrepiece of pro-lynching propaganda. No amount of consensual sex between the two races could remove the paranoia of the majority community. Seen from the perspective of the white people, the victim was not the lynched black man but the white supremacist whose woman had been supposedly violated. The black man was assumed to be guilty in every story. Lynching thus entrenched the white supremacist’s sense of being historical victims and in turn criminalised the black men.
Lynching was not just any other murder. Lynching, where a mob captured, dragged and maimed another human was very much like gang rape in its symbolism. In many cases, the genitalia of the black men were mutilated. Gang rape and lynching both are about the male power and privilege over the victim’s body. Lynching, a majoritarian act carried out against the defenceless minority, instead of being seen as such, was presented as an act of self-reclamation guaranteeing the power and privilege of the white male. It restored the white honour by righting a perceived wrong – the black aggressor had been punished and the patriarchal duty was fulfilled. It was thus a public demonstration of the supposed moral superiority of the white community.
Conspiracy of silence
In Jim Crow, the acts of witnessing the lynching as bystanders or through the medium of newspapers (or pamphlets, ballads, popular stories, photographs and cinema) lent the white people a sense of security. In this way lynching bound the white community together beyond class, generational and geographical differences. This also helped generate a national tolerance for supremacist violence as something that was a normal aspect of peoples’ lives. Torture and mutilation of the blacks was passed off as a legitimate customary practice. What one saw was the growing perversion of the white community which abetted, sanctified and at times celebrated the lynchings primarily through its deafening silence. A case in point is Mark Twain, a contemporary of Du Bois, whom we know as the writer of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Twain wrote a blistering essay in 1901, "The United states of Lyncherdom" as a reaction to a newspaper account of a lynching. However, he never published the essay. Twain preferred to remain silent because he believed that he would not have even "half a friend" left once it was published. The Jim Crow era is past in the USA, however, many of the attitudes that perpetuated it remain – and so does the conspiracy of silence.
Might we read the repugnant history of lynching of black people as a parable of our times? The majoritarian community in India deploys lynching time and again as a weapon against the Dalits and minorities in the name of restoring its honour. Lynching has almost acquired the form of a legitimate customary practice with the "beef" vigilante groups roaming through city streets. The nation is gradually becoming indifferent to, or tolerant of, the violence because of its excess and because it is perpetrated in the name of righting an imagined historical wrong. One was mistaken in mourning Akhlaq or Noman or Zahid Ahmad Bhatt, the "beef criminals". Nor should we mourn the two Dalit children who were killed in Faridabad or several others before them.
What one should mourn is the perversion of the souls of the "witnesses" of lynching. The cousins, family friends, and fellow Indians who treat these killings as retribution – payback time for communities who, according to them, had enjoyed free rein under earlier political regimes. People who capitalise on these killings to strengthen and bind the majoritarian community across class, generational and regional divisions. Those who righteously ask why a death of a Hindu did not create such a furore. Those who decry the selective outrage of litterateurs and public intellectuals. Above all, the Indians who abet and sanctify these lynching with their silence.
Du Bois rightly wrote in his autobiography, A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century (1961): “One could not be a calm, cool, and detached scientist, while Negroes were lynched, murdered, and starved.” Lynching did not leave any possibility of a neutral stance – or for silence.
Aparna Vaidik is Associate Professor of History, Ashoka University
