Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that arise in communities, such as ''charivari,'' riding the rail, and tarring and feathering. Lynchings have been more frequent in times of social and economic tension, and have often been means used by the politically dominant population to oppress social challengers.

Violence in the United States against African Americans, especially in the South, rose in the aftermath of the Civil War, after slavery had been abolished and recently freed black men were given the right to vote. Violence rose even more at the end of the century, after southern white Democrats regained their political power in the South in the 1870s. States passed new constitutions or legislation which effectively disfranchised most blacks and many poor whites, established segregation of public facilities by race, and separated blacks from common public life and facilities. Nearly 3,500 African Americans were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968.

Lynching during the 19th century in the United States, Britain and colonies, coincided with a period of violence which denied people participation in white-dominated society on the basis of race or gender after the Emancipation Act of 1833.

Today lynching is a felony in all states of the United States, defined by some codes of law as "Any act of violence inflicted by a mob upon the body of another person which results in the death of the person," with a 'mob' being defined as "the assemblage of two or more persons, without color or authority of law, for the premeditated purpose and with the premeditated intent of committing an act of violence upon the person of another." Lynching in the second degree is defined as "Any act of violence inflicted by a mob upon the body of another person and from which death does not result." To sustain a conviction for lynching, at least some evidence of premeditation must be produced, but "The common intent to do violence" may be formed before or during the assemblage."

Etymology

In the United States, the origin of the terms ''lynching'' and ''lynch law'' is traditionally attributed to a Virginia Quaker named Charles Lynch. Charles Lynch (1736–1796), a Virginia planter and American Revolutionary who headed a county court in Virginia which punished Loyalist supporters of the British.

The following are several improbable suggested sources of the word's origin:

William Lynch (1742–1820) from Virginia claimed that the phrase was first used for a 1780 compact signed by him and his neighbors in Pittsylvania County.

James Lynch Fitzstephen from Galway, Ireland, who was the Mayor of Galway when he hanged his own son from the balcony of his house after convicting him of the murder of a Spanish visitor in 1493. Lingchi, a Chinese form of execution used from roughly AD 900 to 1905. Archaic verb linch; to beat severely with a pliable instrument, to chastise or to maltreat.

Not all lynchings in the United States were targeted against African Americans. Between 1882 and 1968, the Tuskegee Institute recorded 1,297 lynchings of whites as well as the 3,446 lynchings of African Americans during that period. By the 1890s and after the turn of the century, the vast majority of those lynched were Black people, including at least 159 women. Lynchings of other minority members, such as Mexicans and Chinese, have been shown to have been undercounted in the Tuskegee Institute's records.

Mob violence arose as a means of enforcing white supremacy and verged on systematic political terrorism. "The Ku Klux Klan, paramilitary groups, and other whites united by frustration and anger ruthlessly defended the interests of white supremacy. The magnitude of extralegal violence during election campaigns reached epidemic proportions, leading the historian William Gillette to label it guerrilla warfare."

During Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan and others used lynching as a means to control African Americans, forcing them to work for planters and preventing them from exercising their right to vote. Federal troops and courts enforcing the Civil Rights Act of 1871 largely broke up the Reconstruction-era Klan.

By the end of Reconstruction in 1877, with fraud, intimidation and violence at the polls, white Democrats regained nearly total control of the state legislatures across the South. They passed laws to make voter registration more complicated, reducing black voters on the rolls. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, from 1890 to 1908, ten of eleven Southern legislatures ratified new constitutions and amendments to effectively disfranchise most African Americans and many poor whites through devices such as poll taxes, property and residency requirements, and literacy tests. Although required of all voters, some provisions were selectively applied against African Americans. In addition, many states passed grandfather clauses to exempt white illiterates from literacy tests for a limited period. The result was that black voters were stripped from registration rolls and without political recourse. Since they could not vote, they could not serve on juries. They were without official political voice. The ideology behind lynching, directly connected with denial of political and social equality, was stated forthrightly by Benjamin Tillman, governor of South Carolina and later a United States Senator:

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Lynchings declined briefly after the takeover in the 1870s. By the end of the 19th century, with struggles over labor and disfranchisement, and continuing agricultural depression, lynchings rose again. The number of lynchings peaked at the end of the 19th century, but these kinds of murders continued into the 20th century. Tuskegee Institute records of lynchings between the years 1880 and 1951 show 3,437 African-American victims, as well as 1,293 white victims. Lynchings were concentrated in the Cotton Belt: (Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Texas and Louisiana).

African Americans resisted through protests, marches, lobbying Congress, writing of articles, rebuttals of so-called justifications of lynching, organizing women's groups against lynching, and organizing integrated groups against lynching. African-American playwrights produced 14 anti-lynching plays between 1916 and 1935, ten of them by women.

After the 1915 release of the movie ''The Birth of a Nation,'' which glorified lynching and the Reconstruction-era Klan, the Klan re-formed. Unlike in its earlier form, it was heavily represented among urban populations, especially in the Midwest. In response to massive immigration of people from southern and eastern Europe, the Klan had an anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish stance, in addition to exercising oppression of blacks.

Members of mobs that participated in lynchings often took photographs of what they had done to spread awareness and fear of their power. Some of those photographs were published and sold as postcards. In 2000, James Allen published a collection of 145 lynching photos in book form and online, with written words and video to accompany the images.

Dyer Bill

The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill was first introduced to United States Congress in 1918 by Republican Congressman Leonidas C. Dyer of Missouri. The bill was passed by the United States House of Representatives in 1922 and in the same year given a favorable report by the United States Senate Committee. Passage was blocked by white Democratic senators from the Solid South, the only representatives elected since southern states disfranchised African Americans at the turn of the century. The Dyer Bill influenced later anti-lynching legislation, including the Costigan-Wagner Bill.

The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill as it appeared in 1922 stated: "To assure to persons within the jurisdiction of every State the equal protection of the laws, and to punish the crime of lynching.... Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the phrase 'mob or riotous assemblage,' when used in this act, shall mean an assemblage composed of three or more persons acting in concert for the purpose of depriving any person of his life without authority of law as a punishment for or to prevent the commission of some actual or supposed public offense."

Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith

Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, both African Americans, were lynched on August 7, 1930 in Marion, Indiana. They had been arrested the night before on charges of robbing and murdering a white factory worker and raping his girlfriend. A large crowd broke into the jail with sledgehammers, beat the men, and hanged them. Police officers in the crowd cooperated in the lynching. A third person, 16-year-old James Cameron, escaped lynching due to the intervention of an unidentified member of the crowd who announced that he had nothing to do with the rape or murder. A studio photographer, Lawrence Beitler, took a photograph of the dead bodies hanging from a tree surrounded by a large crowd; thousands of copies of the photograph were sold. The event is notable as the last confirmed lynching of blacks in the Northern United States.

America's Black Holocaust Museum

The museum's founding date is given in the AP interview/article by Sharon Cohen, which appeared in the ''Standard-Times'' on February 17, 2003, and is quoted in the IDS interview, see above. Cameron's position as Founder and Director is also mentioned in the Little review cited earlier and in other sources.

"Strange Fruit"

In 1937 Abel Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher from New York, saw a copy of the photograph of the Marion lynching. Meeropol later said that the photograph "haunted me for days" and inspired his writing the poem "Strange Fruit". It was published in the ''New York Teacher'' and later in the magazine ''New Masses'', in both cases under the pseudonym Lewis Allan. This poem became the lyrics for the song of the same name, also written by Meeropol, performed and popularized by Billie Holiday. The song reached 16th place on the charts in July 1939.

Decline

The frequency of lynching dropped in the 1930s. Lynch law declined sharply by the 1950s. Most but not all lynchings ceased during the 1960s.

Civil rights law

The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees persons the right against unreasonable searches or seizures. Under the "color of law", a law enforcement official—under certain circumstances—is allowed to stop people and search them and retain their property if necessary. Abuse of this discretionary power is a violation of a person's civil rights. Unlawful detention or illegal confiscation of property are examples of such abuse. In deprivation of property, the color of law statute is violated by unlawfully obtaining or maintaining the property of another person. Fabricating evidence or conducting false arrest is a violation of a person's rights of unreasonable seizure and due process. The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution secures the right to due process. The Eighth Amendment prohibits the use of cruel and unusual punishment. These rights prohibit the use of force in an arrest or detention context which would amount to punishment or summary judgment and provide that a person accused of a crime is not subject to punishment without legal process and a trial.

Title 18, U.S.C., Section 241, is the civil rights conspiracy statute, which makes it unlawful for two or more persons to conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person of any state, territory, or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him/her by the Constitution or the laws of the United States, (or because of his/her having exercised the same) and further makes it unlawful for two or more persons to go in disguise on the highway or premises of another person with intent to prevent or hinder his or her free exercise or enjoyment of such rights. Depending upon the circumstances of the crime, and any resulting injury, the offense is punishable by a range of fines and/or imprisonment for any term of years up to life, or the death penalty.

Europe

In Britain, a series of race riots broke out in several cities in 1919 between whites and black sailors. In Liverpool, after a black sailor had been stabbed by two whites in a pub, his friends attacked the pub in revenge. In response, the police raided lodging houses with black occupants, accompanied by an "enraged lynch mob". Charles Wootton, a young black seaman who had not been involved in the attacks, was chased into the river Mersey and drowned after being pelted with missiles thrown by the mob, who chanted "Let him drown!" The Charles Wootton College in Liverpool was named in his memory.

In 1944, Wolfgang Rosterg, a German prisoner of war known to be unsympathetic to the Nazi regime, was lynched by Nazis in POW Camp 21 in Comrie, Scotland. After the end of the war five of the perpetrators were hanged at Pentonville Prison – the largest multiple execution in 20th century Britain. There are also approximately 150 confirmed cases of surviving crew members of crashed allied aircraft (esp. bombers) being lynched by German civilians, soldiers, policemen or paramilitaries in revenge for what Nazi propagandists termed "Allied terror bombing" (''Alliierter Bombenterror''). This was further promoted by Nazi officials through secret orders that prohibited policemen and soldiers from interfering in favor of the enemy in conflicts between civilians and allies forces, or prosecuting civilians who engaged in such acts.

Mexico

On November 23, 2004, in the Tlahuac lynching, three Mexican undercover federal agents doing a narcotics investigation were lynched in the town of San Juan Ixtayopan (Mexico City) by an angry crowd who saw them taking photographs and suspected they were trying to abduct children from a primary school. The agents identified themselves immediately but were held and beaten for several hours before two of them were killed and set on fire. The incident was covered by the media almost from the beginning, including their pleas for help and their murder.

By the time police rescue units arrived, two of the agents were reduced to charred corpses and the third was seriously injured. Authorities suspect the lynching was provoked by the persons being investigated.

Both local and federal authorities abandoned them to their fate, saying the town was too far away to even try to arrive in time and some officials stating they would provoke a massacre if they tried to rescue them from the mob.

Guatemala

A young Guatemalan woman, Alejandra Maria Torres, was lynched by a mob in Guatemala City on December 15, 2009. The mob alleged that Torres had attempted to rob passengers on a bus. Torres was beaten, doused with gasoline, and set on fire, but was able to put the fire out before sustaining life-threatening burns. Police intervened and arrested Torres. Torres was forced to go topless throughout the ordeal and subsequent arrest, and many photographs were taken and published. Approximately 219 people were lynched in Guatemala in 2009, of whom 45 died.

Dominican Republic

According to an Amnesty International report, lynchings of Haitians and Dominicans accused of various crimes, ranging from theft to murder, have continued to occur as late as 2006.

Haiti

After the 2010 earthquake slow distribution of relief supplies and the large number of affected people created concerns of civil unrest, marked by looting and mob justice against suspected looters.

South Africa

The practice of whipping and necklacing offenders and political opponents evolved in the 1980s during the apartheid era in South Africa. Residents of black townships formed "people's courts" to terrorize fellow blacks who were seen as collaborators of the government using whip lashings and deaths by necklacing. Necklacing is the torture and execution of victims by igniting a kerosene-filled rubber tire that has been forced around the victim's chest and arms. Necklacing was used to punish victims, including children, who were alleged to be traitors to the black liberation movement and relatives and associates of the offenders. Sometimes the "people's courts" made mistakes, or used the system to punish those to whom leaders were opposed. There was tremendous controversy when the practice was endorsed by Winnie Mandela, then the wife of the imprisoned Nelson Mandela and a senior member of the African National Congress. More recently, drug dealers and other gang members have been lynched by People Against Gangsterism and Drugs, a Muslim vigilante organization.

India

In India, lynchings generally reflect tensions between numerous ethnic groups and castes in the country. Typically, lynchings involve upper-caste members attacking lower caste members. However, recent examples include the Kherlanji massacre, where low castes were lynched by other low castes. India has a large scale affirmative action programme for the emancipation of the lower castes. Sociologists and social scientists reject the identification of caste with racial discrimination and attribute it to intra-racial ethno-cultural conflict. Also see Bhutter Tragedy in Punjab.

Israel, West Bank and Gaza Strip

Palestinian lynch mobs have murdered Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel. According to a Human Rights Watch report from 2001:

In the 2000 Ramallah lynching, a Palestinian mob beat to death two Israeli reservists who had entered the city.

See also

Sources and external links

Mark Auslander "Holding on to Those Who Can't be Held": Reenacting a Lynching at Moore's Ford, Georgia" ''Southern Spaces'', November 8, 2010.

"The Real Judge Lynch" (December 1901) ''The Atlantic Monthly''

Quinones, Sam, ''True Tales From Another Mexico: the Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino and the Bronx'' (Univ. of New Mexico Press): recounts a lynching in a small Mexican town in 1998.

John Lewis and historian Leon F. Litwack. (Twin Palm Publishers: 2000) ISBN 9780944092699. Republication of many of the photographs on Wikipedia would violate copyright.">''Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America'' by James Allen, Hilton Als, United States Rep. John Lewis and historian Leon F. Litwack. (Twin Palm Publishers: 2000) ISBN 9780944092699. Republication of many of the photographs on Wikipedia would violate copyright.

Etymology OnLine

Gonzales-Day, Ken, ''Lynching in the West: 1850-1935''. Duke University Press, 2006.

Markovitz, Jonathan, ''Legacies of Lynching: Racial Violence and Memory''. University of Minnesota Press, 2004.

''Before the Needles, Executions (and Lynchings) in America Before Lethal Injection'', Details of thousands of lynchings

Houghton Mifflin: The Reader's Companion to American History - Lynching

Origin of the word Lynch

Lynchings in the State of Iowa

Lynchings in America

Lyrics to "Strange Fruit" a protest song about lynching, written by Abel Meeropol and recorded by Billie Holiday

The Lynching of Big Steve Long

Ida B. Wells, Lynch Law, 1893

NAACP, Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889-1918. New York City: Arno Press, 1919

Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture entry: Lynching in Arkansas

Smith, Tom. The Crescent City Lynchings: The Murder of Chief Hennessy, the New Orleans "Mafia" Trials, and the Parish Prison Mob, crescentcitylynchings.com

Notes and references

Books and articles

Allen, James (editor), Hilton Als, John Lewis, and Leon F. Litwack. ''Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America'' (Twin Palms Pub: 2000) ISBN 0-944092-69-1 accompanied by an online photographic survey of the history of lynchings in the United States

Bancroft, H. H., ''Popular Tribunals'' (2 vols., San Francisco, 1887)

Bernstein, Patricia, ''The First Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse Washington and the Rise of the NAACP'', Texas A&M; University Press (March, 2005), hardcover, ISBN 1-58544-416-2

Brundage, W. Fitzhugh, ''Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930'', Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, (1993), ISBN 0-252-06345-7

Barry A. Crouch, "A Spirit of Lawlessness: White violence, Texas Blacks, 1865-1868," Journal of Social History 18 (Winter 1984): 217–26

Cutler, James E., ''Lynch-Law: An Investigation Into the History of Lynching in the United States'' (New York, 1905)

Dray, Philip, ''At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America,'' New York: Random House (2002). Hardcover ISBN 0-375-50324-2, softcover ISBN 0-375-75445-8

Eric Foner, ''Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. 119–23.

Finley, Keith M. ''Delaying the Dream: Southern Senators and the Fight Against Civil Rights, 1938-1965'' (Baton Rouge, LSU Press, 2008).

Ginzburg, Ralph ''100 Years Of Lynchings'', Black Classic Press (1962, 1988) softcover, ISBN 0-933121-18-0

Ifill, Sherrilyn A., ''On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st century'' Beacon Press (2007) ISBN 978-0807009871 Law professor at University of Maryland reports on the lynchings of George Armwood and Matthew Williams in coastal Maryland in the 1930s; investigates how the lynchings implicated average white citizens, some of whom actively participated in the violence, while many others witnessed the lynchings but did nothing to stop them; provides concrete ideas to help communities heal.

Nevels, Cynthia Skove, ''Lynching to Belong: claiming Whiteness though racial violence'', Texas A&M; Press, 2007, ISBN 978-1-58544-589-9

Stagg, J.C.A. "The Problem of Klan Violence: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1868-1871," Journal of American Studies 8 (December 1974): 303–18

Tolnay, Stewart E. and E.M. Beck, ''A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930'', Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, (1995), ISBN 0-252-06413-5

Trelease, Allen W., ''White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction'' Harper & Row, 1979

Wells-Barnett, Ida B., 1900 ''Mob Rule in New Orleans Robert Charles and His Fight to Death, the Story of His Life, Burning Human Beings Alive, Other Lynching Statistics'' Gutenberg eBook

Wells-Barnett, Ida B., 1895 ''Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases'' Gutenberg eBook

Wood, Amy Louise, "They Never Witnessed Such a Melodrama", ''Southern Spaces'', 27 April 2009.

Wood, Joe, ''Ugly Water,'' St. Louis: Lulu (2006). Softcover ISBN 978-1-4116-2218-0

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Coordinates	9°1′48″N38°44′24″N
name	Yu Dafu
birth date	December 07, 1896
birth place	Fuyang, Zhejiang, China
death date	September 17, 1945
occupation	Short Story writer and Poet
website	}}

Yu Dafu () (December 7, 1896—September 17, 1945). Born in Fuyang, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, was a modern Chinese short story writer and poet.

Early years

Yu Dafu's father died at when he was only three, leaving the family poverty-stricken and destitute. He received a number of scholarships through the Chinese government and went on to receive a traditional Chinese education in Hangzhou. Chronologically he studied in Jiangxing-Fu Middle School (before he came to Hangzhou), Hangzhou-Fu Middle School, Yuying Academy (育英学堂, formerly of Zhejiang University).

In 1912, he entered Hangchow University (later its major part merged into Zhejiang University) preparatory through examination. He was there only for a short period before he was expelled for participation in a student strike.

He then moved to Japan, where he studied economics at the Tokyo Imperial University between 1913 and 1922, where he met other Chinese intellectuals (namely, Guo Moruo, Zhang Ziping and Tian Han). Together, in 1921 they founded the ''Chuangzao she'' 創造社 ("Creation Society"), which promoted vernacular and modern literature. One of his earlier works ''Chenlun'' 沉淪, also his most famous, published in Japan in 1921. The work had gained immense popularity in China, shocking the world of Chinese literature with its frank dealing with sex, as well as grievances directed at the incompetence of Chinese government at the time.

In 1922, he returned to China as a literary celebrity and worked as the editor of ''Creation Quarterly'', editing journals and writing short stories. In 1923, after an attack of tuberculosis, Yu Dafu directed his attention to the welfare of the masses.

In 1927, he worked as an editor of the ''Hongshui'' literary magazine. He later came in conflict with the Communist Party of China and fled back to Japan.

Second Sino-Japanese war

After the start of the Second Sino-Japanese war, he returned to China and worked as a writer of anti-Japanese propaganda in Hangzhou, and later in Zhejiang. From 1938 to 1942, he worked as a literary editor for the newspaper Sin Chew Jit Poh in Singapore.

In 1942 when the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Singapore, he was forced to flee to Sumatra. Known under a different identity, he settled there among other overseas Chinese and began a brewery business with the help of the locals. Later he was forced to help the Japanese military police as an interpreter when it was discovered that he was one of the few "locals" in the area who could speak Japanese.

In 1945, he was arrested by the Kempeitai when his true identity was finally discovered. It is believed that he was executed by the Japanese shortly after the surrender of Japan.

Works

''Chenlun'' 沉淪 "''Sinking''" (1921)

''Riji jiuzhong'' 日記九種 “''Nine Diaries''” (1927)

''Guoqu'' 過去 “''The Past''" (1927)

his first novel?? (1928) (moderately successful)

his second novel?? (1932)

''Chuben'' 出奔 "''Flight''" (1935)

His most popular work, breaking all Chinese sales records, was ''Jih-chi chiu-chung'' "''Nine Diaries''", which detailed his affair with the writer Wang Ying-hsin. The most critically acclaimed work is ''Kuo-ch'u'' or "''The Past''", written in 1927.

References

Encyclopædia Britannica 2005 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, article- "Yü Ta-fu"

External links

Category:1896 births Category:1945 deaths Category:Chinese expatriates in Japan Category:Hangzhou High School alumni Category:People from Hangzhou Category:Republic of China poets Category:University of Tokyo alumni Category:Zhejiang University alumni

de:Yu Dafu es:Yu Dafu fr:Yu Dafu it:Yu Dafu no:Yu Dafu zh:郁達夫