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Effects Of Lynching On African Americans

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Alex Viamari
Professor: Marcus Nicolas
ENC1102 T/R
9 October 2014
Issue Analysis Paper Following our nation’s reconstruction, racist sentiments continued to occur and White on Black violence was prevalent throughout American society. Racism was still alive with the oppression of African Americans through the Jim Crowe laws. Deprived of their civil and human rights, Blacks were reduced to a status of second-class citizenship. A tense atmosphere of racial hatred, ignorance and fear bred lawless mass violence, murder and lynching. The horrid act of lynching African Americans was thoroughly widespread in the United States, particularly in the South. Blacks were lynched for a range of things including rape, breaking a black code, and simply just …show more content…

Lynching became widespread through the south quite quickly in order to restrain the blacks socially and it is said that approximately 4,742 individuals were lynched between 1882 and 1968; of the victims, 3,445 or seventy-three percent were African American (Perloff 315). That number is devastatingly large and shows you that lynching had quickly become writer into the fabric of post- reconstruction life. Lynching in the deep south became a community affair Lynching became a widely controversial topic in the United States and was opposed by many. Billie Holiday being one, makes a direct reference to lynching in her song Strange Fruit by saying “Black bodies swingin' in the Southern breeze” (3.) Billie Holiday brings the issue to the surface by including it in her lyrics. The act of lynching was usually carried out with a hanging or shooting but was often seen carried out with mutilation, castration, dismemberment and many other sadistic acts of violence. Billie Holiday indirectly shows the horror of lynching in her song using her lyrics “The bulgin' eyes and the twisted mouth Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh Then the sudden smell of burnin' flesh” (6-9). Billie Holiday spreads the awareness of lynching through her gruesome

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