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chapter seven Lynchings: A Grim Fact of Life there is no doubt that the safety of buchanan was in grave peril. Lynchings, mainly—but not exclusively—of black men, were a grim fact of life in the postbellum South, and the last decade of the nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth century saw a marked increase in their number. The Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, founded by Booker T. Washington in 1881, began keeping records of lynchings the next year, though those records are, necessarily, incomplete. Suffice it to say the totals recorded by Tuskegee represent the minimum number of people executed extralegally. These lynching statistics are not confined to those who were hanged. Lynchings also included those who were burned alive, shot hundreds of times while tied to a post, eviscerated, castrated, or otherwise tortured until death was a relief. By the 1880s, when it seemed as if former slaves might exercise some real political power, the violence meted out to blacks began to subside. In fact, from 1882 through 1889, 669 whites were lynched in the United States, as compared with 534 blacks.1 That ratio, which seems unsurprising given that whites far outnumbered blacks in the general population, would change radically. From 1890 to 1899, lynching victims nationally totaled 429 whites and 1,111 blacks. And in the South, black lynching victims had always outnumbered white.2 The increased violence against blacks coincided with the nearly complete loss of all political rights, including, in many southern counties— though not yet in Nacogdoches—the right to vote. From 1870 to 1900 in Texas, the white population increased at twice the rate of the black, further diluting blacks’ chances of having a voice.3 One historian, documenting racial violence in Kentucky from the end of the Civil War until the eve of World War II, concluded that the rise of 56 } A Murder, a Manhunt, a Trial, and an Execution what was called the “lynching bee” arose because of the end of slavery and the loss of blacks’ loyalty to their white masters: During the 1880s and 1890s, many white observers lamented the passing of the loyal Negroes that slavery had produced. In their place were the “New Negroes,” who, without the civilizing influence of whites, were actually regarded by whites as retrogressing to their “barbaric” African condition.4 Blacks, of course, had quite a different viewpoint. In July 1883, a group of black men met for three days in Austin to draft a daring document, especially given the time and place. The “Report of the Committee on Grievances at the State Convention of Colored Men of Texas, 1883” is a searing—indeed damning—indictment of the failed promise of emancipation and Reconstruction. The Texas delegates drafted their document prior to a national convention to be held later that year in Kentucky. The authors accurately pointed out that whites only pretended to accept blacks’ change in status from slaves to freed people, noting that “they have never fully accepted said changes, though they have offered to accept them, because their acceptance was made the only condition upon which they could regain their former position in the Union.”5 And as authors Mack Henson, A. R. Norris, J. N. Johnson, and J. Q. A. Potts noted in the report, “the degree to which any right is enjoyed as a citizen is measured by the willingness of the whole body of citizens to protect such a right; if there is a lack of regard there is, therefore, the lack of will to protect.” They then listed five areas in which blacks were being denied their legal rights: Miscegenation laws: Texas, like most Southern states, had made it a felony for blacks and whites to marry, though cohabiting without marrying warranted only a minor fine at most. In effect, the authors argued, the laws permitted white men to have black mistresses, but vigorously prosecuted black men who married white women. The authors did not call for an end to laws banning miscegenation, but rather urged state authorities to vigorously prosecute all engaged in “carnal intercourse between the two races.”6 Free schools: The black authors accurately pointed out that though the Texas constitution of 1876 guaranteed a public education to all Texas children , regardless of race, the reality was that black schools were vastly inferior “as to character of buildings, furniture, number and grade of teachers as required by law.”7 [18.223.196.211] Project MUSE (2024...

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