The Southern defiance was determined to repel any civil rights the African Americans might attain after the Civil War. During this reconstruction period, Southerners increasingly persecuted former slaves. They used many forms of maltreatment including something known as lynching which was a brutal form of rogue governing in the Southern states. If a former slave attempted to do anything outside his rights as a second-class citizen, he would be convicted immediately of a heinous crime, usually rape, and would be burned, hung, or mutilated. It is frustrating to contemplate the African American’s predicament, and I definitely agree with the sentiments of certain journalists who wrote on such circumstances. No matter the justification, what Southerners did toward their fellow man was nothing less than criminal and illogical.
The excuses Southerners used to rationalize their behavior were astounding and
discouraging. According to Mary Church Terrell in her article on lynching, Southerners supposedly lynched African Americans to punish them for such ghastly crimes as rape. The statistics on rape in the United States during that time, however, did not come close to supporting the amount of lynching against former slaves.
Southerners also believed that those black people striving for equality were the very same rapists and murderers afflicting the American land. Mary went on to dispel that theory as well. According to her research, the educated, Northern, former slaves who strove for equality were not criminals. They were good members of society upholding the morals and laws of American society. It was the uneducated, oppressed black people in the south who primarily committed the crimes.
Southerners thirdly mistakenly stereotyped the whole African American race. They attributed the few horrific crimes committed by a very small fraction of the black population to all former slaves in the United States. According to Southerners, even the most moral, intelligent African American was not capable of hating rape or rejecting it as something acceptable.
Mary Church Terrell was right when she accused the Southerners of lying and murder. They were committing crimes in the name of justice. Instead of sharing power with African Americans, they attempted to put the former slaves in a second class position. By their acts of passionate hate, the Southerners destroyed moral and ethical boundaries and became, in essence, the kind of people they hated.
As I read an account of Samuel Petty’s lynching I grimaced at the general acceptance of the crowd. Even the young twelve-year-old children chased after the African American and participated in the gruesome lynching process. The whole town was involved. No one cared whether they were seen. According to a reporter from the Crisis, “no one attempted to hide their identity”. Everyone shamelessly beat, mutated, and burned Samuel Petty. Even the jury on the case was involved in the lynching.
This awful reality was a normal occurrence and acceptable practice during that time. It was a result of years of rationalization and indoctrination. One white male approved of it and passed that approval to his son who then passed it to his son. Because of this process, whole towns, like the one that lynched Samuel Petty, participated in what was essentially murder. No one was blamed or accused, and white families continued their lives.
These atrocious acts were immoral and rightfully frowned upon by such activists as Mary Church Terrell. In so many words, Mary made a great point. It would have been so much better if such indoctrination could have been stopped before it infected another generation. So many lives could have been saved and former slaves could have gained the freedom they rightfully deserved.
