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]

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?

[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.

[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.