More Than 4,000 Black People Were Lynched in the South. Where Are Their Monuments?
Recent events in Charlottesville have renewed the debate around whether to take down Confederate memorials and statues, but the latest short film from the Equal Justice Initiative’s Lynching in America project shows that much more is needed to truly confront the bitter legacy of slavery and racial injustice.
Abbeville chronicles the unveiling of a historical marker dedicated to the brutal death of Anthony Crawford a century ago. Lynched in the town square of Abbeville, South Carolina, Crawford was a successful African-American farmer who argued with a white merchant for a fair price for cottonseed. For his “crime,” he was publicly stabbed, shot and hanged by a white mob, and his family was subsequently run out of town. Crawford’s murder counts as just one of the 4,084 racial terror lynchings identified by EJI in 12 Southern states between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and 1950, and yet is one of only a handful of deaths recognized today by public markers.
In fact, the Abbeville memorial is one of six lynching markers erected by EJI as part of an effort to force Americans to face our history of racial terror and reshape the national narrative about race. The other five can be found in LaGrange, Georgia, and four cities in Alabama. EJI is working with communities to install more. But it’s still a far cry from the more than 1,500 symbols of the Confederacy in public spaces that the Southern Poverty Law Center has mapped:
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Map created by Southern Poverty Law Center
In addition to the more than 700 Confederate monuments and statues on public property throughout the country, there are at least 109 public schools named after prominent Confederates, many with large African-American student populations.
Not surprisingly, the Abbeville lynching marker stands alongside a monument to South Carolina statesman and noted white supremacist John C. Calhoun, and within steps of a Confederate memorial that praises the “right cause” of the Southern forces.
As researchers at EJI said in the organization’s latest report on lynching, “Many of the communities where lynchings took place have gone to great lengths to erect markers and monuments that memorialize the Civil War, the Confederacy and historical events during which local power was violently reclaimed by white Southerners….. There are very few monuments or memorials that address the history and legacy of lynching in particular or the struggle for racial equality more generally…. Only when we concretize the experience through discourse, memorials, monuments and other acts of reconciliation can we overcome the shadows cast by these grievous events.”
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by JESSICA WANG
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Southern Heritage...
Liberal bigotry...
You always manage to outdo yourself.
I wouldn't have imagined that even you would be dismissive of 4000 murders.
yeah, he actually seems to be claiming that decrying the lynchings is liberal bigotry.
He is starting the slippery slope at THE END of it, lol.
I'm surprised you aren't dismissing this as insignificant whining.
Anytime the number of murders in Chicago get brought up, you immediately dismiss it as insignificant because it only effects a very tiny percentage of Chicagoans. I recall you calculating the percentage chance of a Chicagoan being murdered and claiming how small it is..
So 3,500 blacks were lynched out of the tens of millions of blacks who lived in the USA over a hundred year period?
Why aren't you making the same argument about the relative rarity of lynchings?
Do you have anything to say about the 4000 White-terrorist murders, Sean?
Why blame it all on the south? The last official lynching took place in Marion, Indiana, 1930 .
Allow me to add that it makes me ill.
Racism in this country is everywhere and always has been.
No one said there have been no lynchings elsewhere, but...
It's old data... but I doubt an updated map would be much different.
It's old data... but I doubt an updated map would be much different.
Only as to larger numbers, I strongly suspect. The starting date of 1882 indicates that would have to be the case. We've also seen the resurgence of nooses (empty, for now) being hung up as "decorations" over the past few years. Of course, we're told that has nothing to do with lynching. With this country's history how stupid they must be to think we're stupid enough to believe that?
Probably not... I don't know about the lynchings in KY, not that they didn't take place-- it's just not a part of what we learned in school, and even I, the hysterical marker fiend, haven't seen any that discuss lynching. The last official hanging in the US took place in my hometown. A very dubious distinction, and I want to say it happened about 1955, in August, so I wasn't here yet.
... it's just not a part of what we learned in school...
That is a problem.
Germany looks hard at its past. French tv regularly carries shows, fiction and non-fiction, about the Vichy period.
America has some serious problems in its past, and needs to face them honestly.
The actual number of lynchings was probably higher as many of them were never documented and a lot occurred in other parts of the country especially where a lot of southern whites went for economic reasons as during the "great migration" during the Great Depression. It was common to torture the victim before the lynching and set the body on fire on the hanging. This is the "culture" that nazis and white supremacists are fighting to preserve just as their cultural antecedents wished to preserve and extend slavery across the entire country. But we're not supposed to get angry and stand up to them when they put their disgusting selves and ideas in the public space.
Bob,
Not that I am saying that there shouldn't be recognition of what happened to blacks here.. but...
Where is a monument to all those Indians who died on "The Trail of Tears"? About 6,00 thousands Indians died in a force relocation done by a government action. Why are indians the only group of people whose lives don't seem to matter?
Gee, Perrie...
I'm very sorry that the article I happened on is about White-on-Black terrorist murder, rather than White-on-Red terrorist murder... or genocide... but I seed what I read...
Gee, Perrie...
I'm very sorry that the article I happened on is about White-on-Black terrorist murder, rather than White-on-Red terrorist murder... or genocide... but I seed what I read...
Yes, seeding what you are reading is the very point of my post. See, no one talks about or writes about what the government did to Indians. It's swept under the rug. It would be nice of you to be open minded enough to include them.
Yet, there is a huge hysterical marker not far from my house that tells of the Chenoweth Massacre-- where the Shawnee counterattacked. So they had to have been attacked first.
Yet, there is a huge hysterical marker
Please, oh, please let that have been an auto-correct mistake.
See, no one talks about or writes about what the government did to Indians.
Oh, Jesus, those atrocities pre-date the arrival of the first slaves and is still laden with shame today. Just look at how their land and rights are still being trampled all over in ND over the pipeline. I guess there's only so much ugliness about our past that one can handle at one time. As a side note, by now everyone must have heard about "Michael the Black Man," (the name he goes by, a.k.a. Michael Symonette, Maurice Woodside and Mikael Israel). Here's what he's put up at his one of his several websites:
“Real KKK Slave Masters” are “CHEROKEE Indians (Hidden Babylonians).”
My only response to that is W.T.F.H.
The only memorial in the US about the Trail of Tears is in Hopkinsville, KY. It is a very sad place to go.
Why do we keep going on with all of this? Do you think we forgot or something? It is just stirring crap!
This seed has been very effectively derailed.
I'll lock it now.