Ida b Wells-race, rape, and lynching
...ret persuaded a Shelby County grand jury to indict the officials of peoples’ Grocery for maintaining a nuisance. This in itself creating a false accusation of a crime against black men and creates a terrible situation. Barret then proceeds to inform the Peoples’ Grocery that a white mob was planning to assault their store, so that when nine deputy sheriffs dressed in civilian clothing converged on the grocery after dark in order to deliver their arrest warrant, they were taken for a mob and fired upon. These three men were then arrested and later in the week were seized and were taken a mile north of the jail and shot in cold blood. Cases like this above happened all of the time in the south, further showing racism and unfair treatment of blacks. From this experience Wells started an intense study of lynching. Here she then began giving speeches at conferences for black women’s clubs. She was also given money to further investigate and publish her findings and outcomes of her research. Here is where she discovered that many black men were hung, shot, or burned because of petty crimes or misunderstandings. These included such reasons as not paying a debt, public drunkenness, fighting with neighbors, testifying in court, disrespecting whites, insulting women, and self-defense. In many cases it seemed that if these “crimes” were committed by a white man that the charges would be minor or not existent at that. What struck Wells the most was that one third of the charges against black men were for the rape of white women. When it came to rape of white women black men did not get a chance to even prove there innocence even if it was plan as day that they had nothing to do with the rape. It was thought that the violence was justified because if was protecting “white womanhood”. It was found that in many of these rape cases evidence of a consensual relationship between a black man and a white woman was present. However many black men were killed even though this evidence was there. A particular rape was that was very popular in the media was the case of the Martinsville Seven. Here a group of black men were convicted of the rape of a white woman. They were sentenced to dead and all were killed in the electric chair. Never before had a state executed so many men for the same rape incident, nor had a lynching of that magnitude for men accused or rape ever been reported. It seemed absurd that all seven men were convicted, however it was seen as fair under white law that all were convicted of rape because the evidence showed that all were present at eh scene of the crime, even though most of the men had nothing to do with the crime. At the time when African Americans were beginning to assert their civil rights vigorously, the executions provided a stark reminder of the harsh treatment reserved for black who violated southern racial codes. This was not the only case like this; in 1932 an Oklahoma jury convicted Jess Hollins of rape and sentenced him to death despite exculpatory evidence. Two years later a similar incident happened. Ed Brown and two other black men from Mississippi were charged and convicted of murder. Their confessions were only brought about after days of torture and harsh intimidation. An even more striking case took place in Scottsboro, Alabama in 1931. In this case nine black teenagers received the sentence of the death penalty for a conviction of rape. The testimony was even seen as questionable because the person who gave the testimony withdrew her original statements after the fact. Even with this known evidence of the disputed testimony, they black men were still convicted and put to death. Such incidents indicate that black defendants often fell victim to judges and juries that either ignored due process requirements or, more often, employed the trappings of procedure to mask discriminatory motives. In many alleged rape cases, white women would make up incidences of rape to saw themselves from the law or out of plain nonsense. In Alabama in 1931, a case arose that discussed the two white women who in search of work who boarded a freight train to Alabama. The train was later stopped by authorities and in fear of being arrested they made up a story in which they told police that they had been raped by nine black men who were aboard the train. Even though there was a severe lack of evidence to prove this claim of rape the men were convicted of the charges totally on the women’s false accusations and were then sentenced to death. The women were still supported as well as their claims, even still when one of the women renounced her claim of rape. Eventually as time passed and the trails moved on evidence came about that showed that these women were anything but virtuous. Both women had dabbled in prostitution a time or two to support themselves and were known to have relations with unmarried white men in the time before their rape allegations. Attempted to protect against attacks on the character of a rape victims, white southerners argued that the two women's sordid sexual past should have no bearing on the case. As one spectator told a reporter, the victim "might be a fallen woman, but by God she is a white woman”. Though the nine accused men eventually won their freedom, the Scottsboro case, as it came to be known, has become the paradigm for all black-on-white rape cases in the twentieth century. Invoked by these cases of rape Wells researched more and concluded with the publishing of A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States, 1892-1894. This book discussed and documented lynching since the Emancipation Proclamation. Miss Wells indicted lynching as the latest attempt to preserve white supremacy at any cost. The American press and pulpit were afraid to resist lynching, she contended, because they had swallowed the Southern myths about black men raping white women. This in many ways gave whites a supposed legitimate reason for what they were doing, in some ways in their minds condoning their actions. Our country’s national crime is lynching. It is not creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of controlled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob. It represents the cool, calculating deliberation of intelligent people who openly avow that there is am “unwritten law” that justifies them in putting human beings to death without compliant under oath, without trial by jury, without opportunity to make defense, and without right of appeal. Her findings documented the disturbing high rate of lynchings and that absurd charges were filed against black men at this point in history. Wells founded that close to 200 men in the Chicago area were killed by mobs, even though these men were not given any chance to defend themselves. In the early part of the twentieth century, white southerners often resorted to lynching to maintain control of the black population. It was a great fear of whites to let blacks into their communities and society as equals socially, economically, and especially concerning sexually. Relations between white women and black men were an absolute “sin” or taboo and were seen as a crime punished to the fullest and harshest extent. Another well-known rape case was that of 1931 in Virginia. This case involved a woman named Dorothy Skaggs. S...