"Not all or nearly all of the murders done by white men, during the past thirty years in the South, have come to light, but the statistics as gathered and preserved by white men, and which have not been questioned, show that during these years more than ten thousand Negroes have been killed in cold blood, without the formality of judicial trial and legal execution. As yet, as evidence of the absolute impunity with which the white man dares to kill a Negro, the same record shows that during all these years, and for all these murders only three white men have been tried, convicted, and executed."
-Ida B. Wells
Death. Violence. Force. Injustice. Violation. Assault. Iniquity. Immorality. Mutilation. Malicious Intent. All of these words describe the dehumanizing act of lynching. Kim Mayhorn, the presenter of today's slide show addressed lynching. She is an artist from Brooklyn, New York who exhibitions her artwork and poetry in order to educate her audience about the cruel treatment that black women endured during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Ida B. Wells Barnett
English: Photo of public lynching of Henry Smith i...
These buildings on West 135 Street were among the ...Lynching was a form of violence that whites used to oppress the black race after slavery. When blacks were able to gain their freedom, whites did whatever they could do to continue slavery in the free world. Lynching hit home for Kim Mayhorn after hearing a poem in Harlem, New York read by a blind teenager. The lines of the poem told of Mary Turner's story, which I will detail later.
Lynching was routinely a form of punishment against black men. Black men charged with rape, arson, and other miscellaneous crimes suffered lynching performed by racist whites. The men were more often than not innocent of their charges but because of the lack of a system of justice, and rights in the south (small...