lynching
TRANSCRIPT
Lynching in the US 1880-1950
http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/search/dspResults.cfm?keyword=klan&type=&theme=&timePeriod=®ion=
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Strange Fruit – Bessie Smith, performed by Billie Holliday
Southern trees bear strange fruit,Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant south,The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,Here is a strange and bitter crop.
Respond to these questions in your notebook:
1. Why were people lynched?2. Why was it hard to get justice for the victims?3. What were the police doing when lynching occurred?
Lynching • Based on beliefs of self-defense of white women, hierarchy. • Combined racism and sadism with the goal of terrorizing black population• Occurred in all but four states (MA, RI, NH, VT)• 50% of lynching occurred in MS, GA, TX, LA, AL• Often mobs were mistaken in the identity of their victims.• At least half of the lynchings are carried out with police officers participating,
and that in nine-tenths of the others the officers either condone or wink at the mob action.
http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1979/2/79.02.04.x.html
Birth of a Nation (1915)Birth of a Nation was the most popular film of the silent era. Its innovative technique made it the most important silent film ever produced. But the film also provided historical justification for segregation and discrimination. The message embedded in the film was that Reconstruction was a disaster, that African Americans could never be integrated into white society as equals, and that the violent actions of the Ku Klux Klan were justified because they were necessary to reestablish legitimate and honest government.
To convey an impression of historical accuracy, Griffith incorporated cinematic replicas of famous historical scenes, such as the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He also filled the film with anti-black incidents; arrogant freedmen pushing whites off sidewalks, preaching marriage between the races, and killing blacks who remained loyal to their masters. The film's characters are stereotypes: loyal house servants; deluded and ignorant field hands; arrogant mulattoes lusting after Southern white women; and the Ku Klux Klan made up of gallant ex-Confederate officers.
The motion picture demonstrates the disturbing power of film propaganda: Its racist elements provoked protests, riots, and other violence, and eventually a move toward film censorship laws.
Clips1:58:15, 2:06:27, 2:47:50, 2:58:00
Hooded Klansmen catch Gus, a black man whom the filmmaker described as “a renegade, a product of the vicious doctrines spread by the carpetbaggers.” Gus was played in black face by white actor Walter Long.
Woodrow Wilson's History of the American People is quoted in The Birth of a Nation.
However, in 1923, Wilson noted of the reborn Klan, “...no more obnoxious or harmful organization has ever shown itself in our affairs.”
This image shows a photograph from the early 1920s, probably in Portland, in which robed and hooded Ku Klux Klan members share a stage with members of the Royal Riders of the Red Robe, Klan auxiliary for foreign-born white Protestants.
This photograph was published by the Portland Telegram on August 2, 1921
http://www.census.gov/dataviz/visualizations/020/res/graphics/020_blackpop_northern_cities_horiz-01.png