A little food for thought on this Friday. History is all about memory and perception or perspective if you will and its important to look at the facts before passing judgment or accepting what you read at gospel truth, from which no other interpretation can be made. Case in point- As many with at least a passing interest about American history knows, from the late 1800s to the mid 1900s was supposedly a horrific time for lynchings, especially for African-Americans. Ive written papers myself quoting statistics from well revered sources in the field saying that Blacks were 2-3 times more likely to be lynched than Whites in this time. So I was researching a paper now on anti-imperialism in the early this era and happened across an interesting website hosted by Prof. Linder of the UMKC Law School. One of the links on the page is all about the topic of lynching and has some enlightening statistics. Theres listings by year & race, and by state as well and the numbers do bear out the claim stated above, but those statistics also hide the fact that plenty of Whites got lynched back then too. According to my calculations from the numbers listed on Dr. Linders website, between 1882 and 1902 almost 2000 Blacks got lynched in the US, but at the same time over 1100 Whites got the same treatment. I thought that was worth sharing, as Ive just written in my paper, This is not meant to denigrate the lives of the 1941 African-Americans, but at the same time 1139 is a pretty big number of lives to simply disregard as well. Happy Friday everyone! source: law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchstats.html ,
Posted on: Fri, 07 Nov 2014 19:25:50 +0000
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