Lynching and the Ku Klux Klan

what did some whites feel?

that segregation wasn't enough, that black people needed terrorising into obedience.

how many lynchings were there between 1915 and 1930?

65 white men and 579 black men, mostly in the South.

did those lynched commit a crime?

They did not need to have committed a crime; sometimes those doing the lynching didn't even feel the need to produce a specific accusation. Southern lynchings were often advertised beforehand. There are photographs of crowds of men and women grinning happily beside the corpses.

Emmett Till

In 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till, visiting relations in the South from Chicago, was lynched for talking with a white woman, allegedly asking her for a date. He hadn't understood the Southern rules. The lynching attracted a lot of publicity and caused shock, even in the South. Pro-war oriented Klan groups either folded or began to coalesce around a focus on racial and religious prejudice.

Ku Klux Klan

a white supremacist organisation revived in 1915, was against any non-WASP group, but especially black people. Members lived all over the USA.

KKK membership in the 1920s

Contributing to criminal chaos of the 1920s was the sudden rise of the Ku Klux Klan, or KKK. In the early 1920s, membership in the KKK quickly escalated to six figures under the leadership of “Colonel” William Simmons and advertising guru Edward Young Clarke. by 1925, estimates of membership ranged from three to eight million. In the South, it was more likely to include people with real political power (even state governors) and social power (state policemen and the army).

why did klan members wear white hoods?

hoods allowed them to claim that they couldn't identify individual Klansmen.

what role did women play in the KKK?

Women Klan members seldom took part in the more violent Klan activities, such as lynchings. They brought their children up as white supremacists and, especially in rural communities, created an anti-black environment that even non-Klan people felt too intimidated to reject. photographs of the hanging clearly show the presence of young children in the crowd. These had obviously been taken along by their parents to enjoy the spectacle.

did lynchings continue?

Crimes such as these continued and increased. Even by the end of the 1930s, lynching was still not regarded as a crime and its perpetrators went unpunished.

how did black people resist persecution?

Suffering, however, increased the determination among African-Americans to resist persecution and to bring about change. Anti-lynching measures were high on the agenda of the NAACP and the UNIA. Now, black women became active in the campaign to stop lynching.

how did black women campaign to stop lynching?

They formed the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching and received support from Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady who demonstrated her strong opposition to racism very publicly on several occasions. Other similar women's groups were set up to oppose lynching, rape and racism.

did congress help to stop lynching?

attempts to make lynching a federal crime failed to be passed by Congress in 1935 and again in 1938.

why did congress fail to make lynching a federal crime?

because it would have punished sheriffs who failed to protect their prisoners from lynch mobs.

how did Roosevelt react?

he did nothing to intervene in this process, even though he had the power to do so - an indication, perhaps, of the extent to which issues of race were crucial in determining political fortunes. When the government did have the opportunity to advance the cause of equality and civil rights, it failed to do so. Roosevelt was unmoved by the case of Rubin Stacy, or by the fact that, in 1935 alone, twenty other people were lynched in the south. Two of these were women.

the case of Rubin Stacy

Rubin Stacy was a homeless tenant farmer in Florida, who had gone to the house of a white woman, Marion Jones, to ask for food. When she saw his face, she was frightened and screamed, He was arrested, but while being escorted by six deputies he was taken by a white mob and hanged at the side of his alleged victim's house.

the reemergence of the KKK

The outlawed Klan had re-formed in 1915 in Georgia. By the mid-1920s, it claimed a membership (which included women of between two and five million.

did members display their membership?

Its hooded figures paraded openly in the streets of Washington, DC, and other cities. Burning crosses reappeared in the night to terrify potential victims.

what became the norm in some communities?

Beatings, mutilation, murder and intimidation

who were the victims?

immigrants who were Catholics and Jews, trade union members and anyone suspected of subversion.

what did the klan uphold?

the superiority of white, Protestant America. It enjoyed widespread support and, in states such as Oklahoma and Oregon, it exercised enormous political influence. Its activities were curtailed in the second half of the decade when allegations of corruption led to inquiries and a subsequent depletion in membership.