Tuscaloosa County Memorial

Title

Source Type

Visual Culture

Author

N/A

Publisher

Mark Hilton

Publication Place

N/A

Publication Date

January 19, 2020

Transcript

LYNCHING IN AMERICA
Thousands of African Americans were victims of lynching and racial violence in the United States between the Civil War and World War II. The lynching of African Americans during this era was a form of racial terrorism used to intimidate black people and enforce racial hierarchy and segregation. Lynching was most prevalent in the South. After the Civil War, violent resistance to equal rights for African Americans and an ideology of white supremacy led to fatal violence against black women, men, and children accused of violating social customs, engaging in interracial relationships, or crimes. Community leaders who spoke against this, racial terror were themselves often targeted by violent mobs. Lynching became the most public and notorious form of racial terror and subordination directed at black people and was frequently tolerated or even supported by law enforcement and elected officials. Though terror, lynching generally took place in communities with functioning criminal justice systems, lynching victims were denied due process, often based on mere accusations, and pulled from jails or delivered to mobs by law officers legally required to protect them. Millions of African Americans fled the South to escape the climate of terror and trauma created by these acts of violence. Of the more than 350 documented racial terror lynchings that took place in Alabama between 1877 and 1950, eight took place in Tuscaloosa County.
EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE
2017

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