Compelling Policy Question: Whose responsibility is it to control the lynch mob?

Policy Case Study: H.R. 13, "A bill to assure to persons within the jurisdiction of every State the equal protection of the laws, and to punish the crime of lynching.” (modified/link to original)

That the phrase "mob or riotous assemblage," when used in this act, shall mean a group of three or more people acting to deprive any person of his life without authority of law as a punishment for or to prevent the some actual or supposed crime.

SEC. 2. That if any State Government fails to protect the life of any person within its jurisdiction against a mob, the State shall be ruled to have denied the person the equal protection of the laws of the State, which is guaranteed by the Constitution.

SEC. 3. Any government officer in charge of protecting the life of any person who fails to make all reasonable efforts to protect the person, or any government officer in charge of arresting or prosecuting any person participating in a mob who fails to make all reasonable efforts to to do so, shall be guilty of a felony. If convicted they shall be imprisoned for less than five years, or fined less than $5,000, or by both.

Any Government officer who has in his custody a prisoner, who conspires with any person to put the prisoner to death without authority of law, or who allows their prisoner to be taken from his custody to be put to death without authority of law, shall be guilty of a felony. Those who conspire with the officer shall also be guilty of a felony. They shall be imprisoned not less than five years, but not more than twenty-five years.

Sec. 4. The District Court of the United States judicial district where the person is injured or put to death by a mob shall have jurisdiction to try and to punish all persons who participate in the mob if; (1) that the officers of the State charged with the duty of arresting, prosecuting, and punishing such offenders have failed to do so, or (2) that the jurors in the State are so strongly opposed to such punishment that there is no chance the guilty will be punished. A failure for more than thirty days after the lynching, to arrest the persons guilty shall be sufficient evidence of the failure.

SEC. 5. That any county in which a person is put to death by a mob shall, if it is proven that the officers of the State have failed to try to to apprehend and prosecute the participants in the mob, must pay $10,000 to the family of the person killed.

SEC. 6. If any person put to death was taken by a mob from one county to another county to be put to death, both counties must pay the fine.

Historical Context:

In 1865 both the 13th, and 14th Amendments were ratified. The 13th Amendment outlawed “involuntary servitude”. The 14th Amendment declared “All persons born or naturalized in the United States... are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside, and… no State shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. While in the years before the Civil War people from many different racial groups were lynched for different reasons, in the 1880’s lynchings were increasingly used against African Americans. While groups, such as the KKK, often organized the lynchings, other citizens would participate in the mob violence. Many were lynched after having been accused of a crime (they were not given the opportunity to prove their innocence in court). Others were lynched as punishment for behaviors some in the white community feared, such as interacting with white women.

Lynchings were frequently public events. Plans for lynchings were often announced in newspapers and drew large crowds of white families. Local newspapers reported on many of the lynchings, explaining not just the reason for the lynching, but including graphic details of the event. Photos of victims, with exultant white observers posed next to them, were taken for distribution in newspapers or on postcards. Body parts, including genitalia, were sometimes distributed to spectators or put on public display

In the 1890’s a black journalist and newspaper editor named Ida B. Wells begins an anti-lynching campaign. She not only reported on the statistics of lynchings across the nation, but also explains the racist causes of lynchings, and advocated for laws to put an end to lynchings.

In New York City, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People forms in 1909. The NAACP was formed by a group of white liberals, and leaders from the African American Community, such as W.E.B. DuBois and Ida B. Wells. NAACP’s goal was to secure for all people the rights guaranteed in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution. They wanted to work for the political, educational, social and economic equality for African Americans and eliminate race prejudice.

In 1916 the NAACP formed a special committee to push for anti-lynching legislation and to enlighten the public about lynching.

In April of 1918- Representative Dyer, (R)Missouri, is convinced by the NAACP to introduce H.R. 11279 “to protect citizens of the United States against lynching in default of protection by the States.”. The bill became known as the “Dyer bill”. The Dyer Bill never makes it out of the House Judiciary Committee to be voted on by Congress. Four years later in January of 1922 , thanks to another push by the NAACP and other anti-lynching groups, Representative Dyer reintroduces the bill for debate in the House of Representatives.

Section One supporting question:

Why do some people believe the Federal Government has the responsibility to control the lynch mob?

In 1909, Ida B. Wells gave a speech known as “Lynching Our National Crime" during the National Negro Conference. Her speech said...

(excerpts/link to original)

Wells-Barnett was as leader of the anti-lynching crusade. She gave this speech to the National Negro Conference, the forerunner to the NAACP. She was a founding member of both the National Afro-American Council, and the NAACP. Her full biography.

The lynching record ... presents three (obvious) facts: First, lynching is color-line murder. Second, crimes against women is the excuse, not the cause. Third, it is a national crime and requires a national remedy.

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Thousands of assassins banded together under the name of Ku Klux Klans, “Midnight Raiders,” (etc.) ... spread a reign of terror, by beating, shooting and killing colored (people)…

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[S]tatistics show that 3,284 men, women and children have been put to death in this quarter of a century. .... No other nation, civilized or savage, burns its criminals; only under that Stars and Stripes is the human holocaust possible. Twenty-eight human beings burned at the stake, one of them a woman and two of them children, is the awful indictment against American civilization...

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As a final and complete refutation of the charge that lynching is (caused) by crimes against women, a partial record of lynchings is cited; 285 persons were lynched for causes as follows: Unknown cause, 92; no cause, 10; race prejudice, 49; miscegenation, 7; informing, 12; making threats, 11; keeping saloon, 3; practicing fraud, 5; practicing voodooism, 1; refusing evidence, 2; political causes, 5; disputing, 1; disobeying quarantine regulations, 2; slapping a child, 1; turning state’s evidence, 3; protecting a Negro, 1; to prevent giving evidence, 1; knowledge of larceny, 1; writing letter to white woman, 1; asking white woman to marry; 1; jilting girl, 1; having smallpox, 1; concealing criminal, 2; threatening political exposure, 1; self- defense, 6; cruelty; 1; insulting language to woman, 5; quarreling with white man, 2; colonizing Negroes, 1; throwing stones, 1; quarreling, 1; gambling, 1.

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The only certain remedy is an appeal to law. Lawbreakers must be made to know that human life is sacred .... The strong arm of the (Federal) government must reach across state lines …. and must give to the individual under the Stars and Stripes ... protection ...

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IDA B. WELLS-BARNETT, The Red Record , 1895. (modified/link to original)

Wells-Barnett was as leader of the anti-lynching crusade.The Red Record was a statistical report on lynching. She was a founding member of both the National Afro-American Council, and the NAACP. Her full biography.

What can you do to prevent lynching and promote law and order throughout our land?

1st. Spread the information in this book to everyone, and help change the public beliefs.

2nd. Help your religious and social groups condemn and protest every lynching.

3d. Convince businesses to not do business where lawlessness and mob violence rule. Many labor organizations have stated that they would avoid doing business in lynch infested cities as they would avoid buying a house near people with the plague.

If the South wishes to build up its waste places quickly, there is no better way than to uphold the majesty of the law by enforcing obedience to the same, white as well as black.

"Equality before the law," must become a fact as well as a theory before America is truly the "land of the free and the home of the brave."

4th. this is the white man's civilization and the white man's government which are on trial.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, THIRTY YEARS OF LYNCHING 1889-1918, 1919 (modified/link to original)

The N.A.A.C.P is a Civil Rights organization formed in 1909. The bi-racial group who started the organization included W. E. B. Dubois, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. The group worked to fight against segregation, jim crow laws, voter disenfranchisement, as well as violence against African Americans, including lynchings.

The United States has been the only advanced nation whose government has tolerated lynching. The facts are well known to

students of public affairs. It is high time the facts became the

common knowledge of all Americans, since they are the common shame of all Americans.

The N.A.A.C.P. has been working to make the American people realize their responsibility for this monstrous blot upon America’s honor.

Lynching has apologists who give many excuses for why lynchings happen. But, none of the excuses are reasonable, or justifiable, in a nation governed by law. America always finds ways to deal with lawlessness when authorities take their oaths seriously.

In 1918, when the nation was at war, President Wilson asked all Americans who respect America, and wish to defend her name, to cooperate to end this disgraceful evil. Despite Wilson’s request, lynchings continued during the rest of the war with unchecked fury. Sixty-three Negroes, five of them women, and four white men fell victims to mob ruthlessness during 1918 and in no case was any member of the mobs convicted in any court.

House Report No. 452, Committee on the Judiciary report on H.R.13- The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, 1921 (modified/link to original)

The fact that lynching is tolerated in many states, and the inability or unwillingness of those states to punish the persons who are guilty of this crime, threaten the future peace of the Nation.

Lynching denies a person their right to a fair trial. Lynching hurts the communities where it occurs. It breeds a spirit of lawlessness and cruelty in the young who see barbarities unpunished and uncondemned. Lynching terrorizes our citizens.

It hurts our name as a Nation. We cannot claim to be civilized until our laws are respected and enforced and our citizens secured against the hideous cruelties of these lynchings. The people of the United States suffer because they continue to tolerate mob murder. Both the innocent and the guilty suffer from mob violence.

Rarely are the members of a mob prosecuted even when, undisguised and in full daylight, they have participated in murder. Only a few lynchers have been punished. Patriotic citizens feel the shame which lynchings cast upon the Nation. The United States can no longer allow the breaking of its laws. We can no longer allow the burning of humans in public in front of women and children. We can no longer allow the menace to civilization that is the mob spirit.

The Congress must end this cowardly crime by punishing those who take part in it or who permit it. Congress has the power to enact H.R.13 into law under the Fourteenth Amendment,which says no State shall deny any person equal protection of the laws.

Mark Twain, The United States of Lyncherdom, 1901 (modified/Link to Original)

Twain wrote this essay in the summer of 1901, after reading a newspaper story of a lynching in Missouri. He chose not to publish it, explaining to his his publisher that if did publish it, "I shouldn't have even half a friend left down there [in the South], after it issued from the press." Thirteen years after Twain died Albert Bigelow published the essay.

It is said, that the people enjoy watching lynchings. It cannot be true. The people in the South are like the people in the North, the majority have good hearts. They would attend it, and pretend to be pleased with for public approval.

Why does a crowd of people stand by, and pretend to enjoy a lynching? Why does it not lift a hand or voice in protest? Only because it would be unpopular to do it. When there is to be a lynching the people come miles to see it, bringing their wives and children. Really to see it? No- they come only because they are afraid to stay at home. We would all act like that under pressure. We are not any better nor any braver than anybody else.

Perhaps the remedy for lynchings is to place a brave man in each affected community to spread disapproval of lynching. No, that scheme will not work. There are not enough brave men.

Here is another plan. Bring back American missionaries from China, and send them into the lynching field. The Chinese are excellent people--leave them alone, they are good just as they are.

We beg the Missionaries to come back and help us in our need. Patriotism imposes this duty on them. Our country is worse off than China. O kind missionary, O compassionate missionary, leave China! come home and convert these Christians!

I believe that if anything can stop this epidemic of bloody insanities it is the missionaries.

Anti-Lynching Petition from a group of citizens of New Jersey to Congress, 1900 (source)

N.A.A.C.P., The Shame of America, New York Times, 1922

N.A.A.C.P., Map of Lynchings from 1889-1918, Thirty years of Lynching, 1919 (source)

N.A.A.C.P., Analysis of Number of Persons Lynched, Table no. 1, Number of White and Colored Persons Lynched in United States, 1889-1918, Thirty years of Lynching, 1919 (source)

N.A.A.C.P., Analysis of Number of Persons Lynched, Table no. 2, Number of Persons Lynched, by Five Year's Periods and by Color and Sex, 1889-1918, Thirty years of Lynching, 1919 (source)

In 1919, the Des Moines Register published Jay N. Darling's cartoon "At the other end of the lyncher's rope".

(source)

Lady Justice lays dead with a rope around her neck. A piece of paper reading "The Goddess of American Rights" is next to her head.

Louis Dalrymple drew a cartoon titled "The Lynching Problem" for Puck Magazine in 1899.

Library of Congress Summary of "The Lynching Problem"

"In Georgia", Puck Magazine, 1900

Caption reads:

Pete- Am dis much bettah dan de ole slav'ry days, Uncle Tom?

Uncle Tom- I dunno, xac'ly. In dem times we wuz too valy'ble to be lynched!

In 1922 Judge Magazine published a cartoon titled "Their Christmas tree".

District of Columbia Anti-Lynching Committee North Eastern Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, A Terrible Blot on American Civilization, 1922

District of Columbia Anti-Lynching Committee North Eastern Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, "Vote Against Those Who Voted to Protect the Lynching Industry," 1922

Supporting Question #2: Why do some people believe the Federal Government does not have the right to control the lynch mob?

In 1922, Hatton W. Sumners, a Democrat from Texas, said during his speech to Congress on H.R.13...

(excerpts/link to original)

Before being elected to Congress Sumners was a Lawyer in Texas. His biography

I do not want to be offensive, but I say to you that you cannot pass this bill unless you pass it under the influence of the same spirit which this bill denounces, viz., the mob spirit. (Both) you ... and the folks in the South ... get ropes and they go after the criminal and you go after the Constitution.

Mr. Chairman, in brief, this bill proposes the prosecution in Federal courts of citizens of the States... (for) mob violence inflicted within a State... Mr. Chairman, it does not lie within the constitutional power of this Congress to enact such legislation...

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This bill can not pass this house unless it is put through by that same spirit which inspires the mob when, backed by the courage of numbers, it crushes through the legal barriers which deny the right to proceed and does an unlawful thing.

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To-day the Constitution of the United States stands at the door, guarding the governmental integrity of the States ... our system of Government, and the gentleman from Missouri, rope in hand, is appealing to you to help him lynch the Constitution

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This bill... (makes) the Federal Government… dictator ... over the States, their officers, and their citizens in matters of local police control...

John Temple Graves, The Mob Spirit in the South, 1903 (modified/link to original)

Graves was a Newspaper Editor. He gave this speech at a Chautauqua in New York. Chautauqua's were organized educational events, where people delivered speeches. They began in Chautauqua New York

The nationalization of the mob spirit has brought the people together from across the country to discuss remedies openly.

If the spirit of lynching started in the South, it is for a easily understood reason. The South is not naturally lawless, or violent. Its temper is fair. Lynching had its origin in a monstrous outrage against the mothers, the wives and the daughters of the race.

Count it at its worst, concede its lawlessness—but you, sir—you who condemn lynching most—put yourself in the place of the victim or the victim's kin— where would you stand that day?

Lynching is a crime. No sane man will deny that. It is anarchy. It is riot. It is a blow to the Constitution. It is a stab at the law. It is deplorable. It is awful. It is appalling. But it is here to stay.

The problem of the hour is not how to prevent lynching in the South, but how shall we destroy the crime which always has and always will provoke the lynching?

The mob answers the question with the rope, the bullet and sometimes, God save us! with the torch. The mob knows its business and the mob does its work.

Criminal? Yes. Lawless? Yes. Ought to be abolished? If possible, yes. But the cold truth is, the mob is the strongest wall between the women of the South and such a carnival of crime.

John Mitchell Jr. drew a cartoon titled "Is This a Sample of States' Rights?" for the Richmond Planet newspaper.

Choices and Consequences

The House of Representatives did pass the Dyer bill in 1922, however Conservative Democrats in the Senate from the South and West, filibustered the bill and a vote was never taken on the bill in the Senate.

The anti-lynching reform push began again the in 1930’s following series of very public, and brutal lynchings. In 1935, Democratic Senators Edward P. Costigan and Robert F. Wagner created a new bill that stated “To assure to persons within the jurisdiction of every state the equal protection of the crime of lynching.” The bill, like the Dyer bill, had many sections to protect people from different lynching crimes. The Costigan-Wagner bill failed to pass for for two reasons. First, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, did not throw his support behind the bill, worrying it would hurt his reelection chances in the South. Second, Senators in the South were joined by some Senators from the West who worried about expansion of Federal Power.

In 1939 the Federal Government took action when President Roosevelt created the Civil Rights Section of the Justice Department. It started prosecutions to combat lynching, but failed to convict anyone as guilty of a lynching until 1946. In total, between 1882 and 1968, 4,743 people killed by mob violence. Of those, nearly three-fourths, 3,446, were blacks. Lynchings reached a peak of 230 in 1892, but they continued well into the 1930s. During that time, nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress, and three passed the House. Seven presidents between 1890 and 1952 petitioned Congress to pass a federal law.

In 2005 the Senate apologized for its failure to create an Anti-lynching Law by passing S. RES. 39 “Apologizing to the victims of lynching and the descendants of those victims for the failure of the Senate to enact anti-lynching legislation.” The text follows:

“RESOLUTION

Apologizing to the victims of lynching and the descendants of those victims for the failure of the Senate to enact anti-lynching legislation.

Whereas the crime of lynching succeeded slavery as the ultimate expression of racism in the United States following Reconstruction;

Whereas lynching was a widely acknowledged practice in the United States until the middle of the 20th century;

Whereas lynching was a crime that occurred throughout the United States, with documented incidents in all but 4 States;

Whereas at least 4,742 people, predominantly African-Americans, were reported lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968;

Whereas 99 percent of all perpetrators of lynching escaped from punishment by State or local officials;

Whereas lynching prompted African-Americans to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and prompted members of B'nai B'rith to found the Anti-Defamation League;

Whereas nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress during the first half of the 20th century;

Whereas, between 1890 and 1952, 7 Presidents petitioned Congress to end lynching;

Whereas, between 1920 and 1940, the House of Representatives passed 3 strong anti-lynching measures;

Whereas protection against lynching was the minimum and most basic of Federal responsibilities, and the Senate considered but failed to enact anti-lynching legislation despite repeated requests by civil rights groups, Presidents, and the House of Representatives to do so;

Whereas the recent publication of `Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America' helped bring greater awareness and proper recognition of the victims of lynching;

Whereas only by coming to terms with history can the United States effectively champion human rights abroad; and

Whereas an apology offered in the spirit of true repentance moves the United States toward reconciliation and may become central to a new understanding, on which improved racial relations can be forged: Now, therefore, be it

• Resolved, That the Senate--

  • (1) apologizes to the victims of lynching for the failure of the Senate to enact anti-lynching legislation;

  • (2) expresses the deepest sympathies and most solemn regrets of the Senate to the descendants of victims of lynching, the ancestors of whom were deprived of life, human dignity, and the constitutional protections accorded all citizens of the United States; and

  • (3) remembers the history of lynching, to ensure that these tragedies will be neither forgotten nor repeated.

This is a video of the Senate during the passing of the Resolution

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHfBkRmi8dk

**In March of 2022, President Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act.