Golly: lynching shoulda been outlawed!

[Chaz Longue]

GOSH ...we fillibustered all those darned lynching bills!

But seriously folks: Can YOU name one of the states that nobody al all was lynched in?



June 13, 2005
Senate to Atone for Lynching Ban Delays
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:00 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate seldom says it's sorry, although it is now ready to officially express its remorse over the failure to outlaw lynching in the United States.

A resolution that the chamber was likely to take up Monday voices regret for the Senate's unwillingness for years to pass a law stopping a crime that cost the lives of over 4,700 people, mostly blacks, between 1882 and 1968.

Doria Dee Johnson, the great-great granddaughter of a black South Carolina farmer who was killed by a white mob nearly a century ago, was to be on hand for the floor vote.

The Evanston, Ill., woman has said that her family ''lost property and family solidarity that still affects us today'' when Anthony Crawford, a wealthy cotton farmer, was killed in 1916 by several hundred residents of Abbeville, S.C. Ms. Johnson today is an author and frequent lecturer on the subject of lynchings.

In the past, efforts to pass such legislation fell victim to Senate filibusters despite pleas for its passage by seven presidents, among others, between 1890 and 1952.

The Senate resolution is sponsored by Sens. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and George Allen, R-Va. The bill, likely to be subject to a voice vote, states that nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in the first half of the 20th century but that nothing got through.

The nonbinding measure apologizes for this failure and expresses ''most solemn regrets of the Senate to the descendants of victims of lynching.''

Landrieu's spokesman, Adam Sharp, said that Johnson was expected to be joined in the Senate by other descendants of victims, including a cousin of Emmett Till, the black teenager killed in Mississippi 50 years ago, reportedly for whistling at a white woman. The FBI earlier this month exhumed Till's body to search for clues to his slaying.

Landrieu called lynching and mob violence were ''an American form of terrorism'' documented in at least 46 states.

[Dr Dave]

I don't know which states didn't have lynchings, but I did learn that Mississippi and Georgia were the top states for lynchings, at the History Of Lynching In America website.

[lynn]

It was also noted that the reason the Senate refused to act on this legislation was our old friend Strom. They didn't want to hurt his feelings by addressing the obvious I guess.

[Monte Smith]

If ever there was an accurate, universal testament to political courage, this is probably it. Solemn; heartfelt; about fifty, a hundred, a hundred and fifty years too late.

[crawjo]

Lynching was quite the thing to do about 125 years ago...to both black people and white people. In fact, the majority of lynching victims in this country's history have been white (although blacks are, of course, disproportionately represented compared to their percentage of the population).

[Dr Dave]

If ever there was an accurate, universal testament to political courage, this is probably it. Solemn; heartfelt; about fifty, a hundred, a hundred and fifty years too late.

You hit the nail on the head, Monte. This is a way for legislators to look like they're really agonizing over something, when in fact they aren't doing shit.

[Dr Dave]

Lynching was quite the thing to do about 125 years ago...to both black people and white people. In fact, the majority of lynching victims in this country's history have been white (although blacks are, of course, disproportionately represented compared to their percentage of the population).

Sources, please?

[patricia]

You hit the nail on the head, Monte. This is a way for legislators to look like they're really agonizing over something, when in fact they aren't doing shit.

Isn't murder which is the obvious result of lynching illegal and wasn't it illegal from the beginning of legal history in the U.S.? If this is an attempt to make an apology to those who were lynched and otherwise murdered, while slavery existed, then wouldn't a simple apology serve the same purpose?
What exactly is it that's being proposed?? Will there be similar debates about other methods of mob murder??
I'm not being unsypathetic to this form of murder. I'm simply saying that murder, no matter the method is the most heinous crime.

[crawjo]

Sources, please?

My bad. What I said was not correct. More blacks were lynched than whites. What I have read many times is that the KKK, prior to its reincarnation in the 1950s and 1960s, targeted more whites than blacks for punishment, be it whipping, lynching, tar-and-feathering, or other form of mob punishment. But the KKK itself was not responsible for most lynchings. Blacks were outlynched by approximately a 3-to-1 ratio overall. The only period in American history when whites were lynched at a greater frequency than blacks, according to the Tuskegee Institute, was in the early to mid 1880s.

[tristano's ghost]

Pitiful. They had to pass this one by voice vote because some senators--primarily GOP, primarily Southern--did not want to co-sponsor or be on record supporting it.

Who didn't sign the anti-lynching bill?

More.

Still bad politics to oppose lynching in certain, ah, red states?

[Gentle Giant]

cf. the "Government means never having to say you're sorry" thread. Looks like the boys in Washington are on a roll. Who knows what they'll apologize for next?

Strange fruit, baby.

[Brian Olewnick]

My bad. What I said was not correct. More blacks were lynched than whites. What I have read many times is that the KKK, prior to its reincarnation in the 1950s and 1960s, targeted more whites than blacks for punishment, be it whipping, lynching, tar-and-feathering, or other form of mob punishment. But the KKK itself was not responsible for most lynchings. Blacks were outlynched by approximately a 3-to-1 ratio overall. The only period in American history when whites were lynched at a greater frequency than blacks, according to the Tuskegee Institute, was in the early to mid 1880s.

I recall reading that more Chinese were lynched in the US than any other ethnic group (the "coolies"). Not sure if this is true, but I do have the impression that, when recounting America's history with slavery, the Chinese variety gets severely short-shrifted.

[Doc Martin]

Pitiful. They had to pass this one by voice vote because some senators--primarily GOP, primarily Southern--did not want to co-sponsor or be on record supporting it.

Who didn't sign the anti-lynching bill?

More.

Still bad politics to oppose lynching in certain, ah, red states?

The other 15 senators who did not co-sponsor the legislation are: Robert Bennett (R-Ut.), Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M), Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Michael Crapo (R-Id.), Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.), Chuck Grassley (R-Ia.), Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), Orrin Hatch (R-Ut.), John Kyl (R-Ariz.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Ak.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), John Sununu (R-N.H.), Craig Thomas (R-Wyo.), and George Voinovich (R-Oh.).

Maybe they were out buying sheets

[RainyDay]

Pitiful. They had to pass this one by voice vote because some senators--primarily GOP, primarily Southern--did not want to co-sponsor or be on record supporting it.

Who didn't sign the anti-lynching bill?

More.

Still bad politics to oppose lynching in certain, ah, red states?

But don't call those GOP mofo's a bunch of white Christians because them's fightin' words. Racist, okay, but none of that white Christian stuff. Jesus must be so proud.

Too bad they limited it only to lynchings and didn't include all the blacks that were pulled out of their homes by night riders and beaten and shot to death. Like Emmett Till. That was a lynching without the rope.

[Gentle Giant]

Does this include Clarence Thomas' "high-tech lynching"?

[Monte Smith]

I don't know the story behind yesterday's legislation, but normally a bill in the Senate has a sponsor. Or co-sponsors and there are two. This bill had north of 80 co-sponsors? That's ridiculous. That isn't leadership, that's show-boating.

[Sergio Zamora]

I don't know the story behind yesterday's legislation, but normally a bill in the Senate has a sponsor. Or co-sponsors and there are two. This bill had north of 80 co-sponsors? That's ridiculous. That isn't leadership, that's show-boating.

I can't believe I'm agreeing with you on a political matter

Though it's actually less politics and more showbiz.

[frankiepop]

Does this include Clarence Thomas' "high-tech lynching"?

in massachusetts, arrogant new england liberals, who sniff on so many, couldn't stomach repealing their 1675 Indian Imprisonment Act even after 8 years of lobbying...

this year they finally did, the 1675 Indian Imprisonment Act was repealed only after minority journalists threatened to strike Boston from the list of cities competing to host its 2008 convention.

[RainyDay]

Sounds like show-biz grandstanding to me.

[HLJ]

Forget an apology.Where my 40 acres and my Damn Mule.Peace and all that.

[Slurpy]

Forget an apology.Where my 40 acres and my Damn Mule.Peace and all that.

"Where's my mule?
where's my 40 acres?
If the mule don't weigh,
might as well meet my maker" - Warren Haynes, Govt Mule

[Paul B]

Surprised to see Monte going against the conservative Republican line on this issue....What would that greatest of all great Republicans--the man who embodies what the party is all about--Strom Thurmond think?