hear what......... let's start with lynching and justice for these families since slavery is too far back right now, right?
how about bring these people and the states that failed to provide security, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to justice, I'm sure some of them are alive:
Postcard depicting the lynching of Lige Daniels, Center, Texas, USA, August 3, 1920.
The back reads, "This was made in the court yard in Center, Texas. He is a 16 year old Black boy. He killed Earl's grandma. She was Florence's mother. Give this to Bud. From Aunt Myrtle." As discussed in the article, lynchings were often motivated by economics, or were retaliations for violations of Jim Crow etiquette, with false accusations of murder made in order to justify them.
A postcard showing the burned body of Jesse Washington, Waco, Texas, 1916. Washington was a
17-year-old retarded farmhand who had confessed to raping and killing a white woman. He was castrated, mutilated, and burned alive by a cheering mob that included the mayor and the chief of police. An observer wrote that "Washington was beaten with shovels and bricks. . .[he] was castrated, and his ears were cut off. A tree supported the iron chain that lifted him above the fire. . . Wailing, the boy attempted to climb up the skillet hot chain. For this, the men cut off his fingers."
This image is from a postcard, which said on the back, "This is the barbeque we had last night. My picture is to the left with a cross over it. Your son, Joe."
Lynching 1930
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. Although this was Marion, Ind., most of the nearly 5,000 lynchings documented between Reconstruction and the late 1960s were perpetrated in the South. (Hangings, beatings and mutilations were called the sentence of “Judge Lynch.”)
Some lynching photos were made into postcards designed to boost white supremacy, but the tortured bodies and grotesquely happy crowds ended up revolting as many as they scared. Today the images remind us that we have not come as far from barbarity as we’d like to think.
September of 1919, Will Brown, an African American man, was arrested and held in the Douglas County Courthouse. Largely due to the newspaper story, a mob gathered. Omaha Mayor Edward P. Smith was nearly lynched himself when he unsuccessfully attempted to disperse the crowd. Then the mob broke into the recently constructed building, tearing off Brown’s clothing as he was being dragged out.
He was hanged on a nearby lamppost and then his body was riddled with bullets. Finally the body was burned. Members of the mob tied what remained of his charred body to an automobile, and dragged it around the streets of downtown Omaha.
Pieces of the rope used to lynch Brown were sold as souvenirs for 10 cents apiece.
Although some of the leaders of the lynching were placed on trial, most received suspended sentences, or were convicted of minor offenses such as destruction of public property.
http://www.nathanielturner.com/lynchingindex.htm
Laws
For most of the history of the United States, lynching was rarely prosecuted, and when it was, it was under state murder statutes. In one extraordinary example in 1907-1909, the Supreme Court tried its only criminal case in history, 203 U.S. 563 (U.S. v. Sheriff Shipp). Shipp was found guilty of criminal contempt for lynching Ed Johnson in Chattanooga.
Starting in 1909, over 200 bills were introduced to make lynching a federal crime, but they failed to pass. During the Roosevelt administration, the Civil Rights Section of the Justice Department tried, but failed, to prosecute lynchers under Reconstruction-era civil rights laws. The first successful federal prosecution of a lyncher for a civil rights violation was in 1946, and by that time, the era of lynchings as a common occurrence was over.
http://www.ngbiwm.com/Exhibits/lynching.htm
It is the role of students to force this issue and back the middle class into a corner..."fight by our side or confess that you side with the enemies of Black people."
Nah we aint havin it brah....
