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Violence Against African Americans

5 articles on Violence Against African Americans

  • Lynching and Mob Violence

    Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century

    Word Count: 11441      Includes:  Lynching and Mob Violence in the Age of Booker T. Washington. | Black Protest and Federal Intervention. | Race Riots. | Lynching and Mob Violence in the Age of W. E. B. Du Bois. | Lynching and Mob Violence in the Age of Martin Luther King. | Lynching and Mob Violence in the Contemporary World. | Bibliography

    In 1885 the Chicago Tribune reported that ninety-seven whites and only seventy-eight “colored” persons had perished at the hands of lynchers. The next year “colored” victims outnumbered whites, seventy-one to sixty-two, according to the Tribune. The following year, 1887, black victims outnumbered white victims nearly two to one. In 1890 the newspaper headlined its annual lynching tally “How the Colored Man Has Suffered.” Lynching had become a word for white racial violence directed at African Americans. Although it is not at all clear whether the nature of mob violence actually changed, it is undeniable that white newspapers’ understanding of mob violence shifted dramatically.

    The sensational lynching of Henry Smith, reported onNew ...
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  • Violence Against African Americansimage available

    Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass

    Word Count: 7327      Includes:  In the South | In the North | During the Civil War | After the War | Ku Klux Klan Activity | Lynching | Bibliography | Bibliography

    [This entry contains two subentries dealing with acts of violence committed against African Americans, including legal justifications of such violence, famous incidents and their effects, and the laws and movements against such violence. The first article provides a discussion of violence from the colonial period to 1830, while the second article continues the discussion from 1830 through the rest of the nineteenth century.]

    In the late twentieth century, a discussion of violence against African Americans prior to 1830would have started with the presumption that brutality was universally directed against the rapidly increasing number of slaves in the thirteen colonies and the early United States. Later studies have amply demonstrated, however, that while the slave population was a major target ...
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  • Violence Against African Americans

    Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century

    Word Count: 13002      Includes:  A Turning Point: Creation of the NAACP. | The 1920s. | The Depression and New Fears of Racism. | Changes, and Lack of Change, during World War II. | After the War: Martin Luther King Jr. | Contemporary America. | Bibliography

    Following Frederick Douglass's death in 1895, Booker T. Washington became a dominant figure in African American leadership. Hopes for short-term implementation of citizenship rights receded and racial violence intensified. In this context Washington's accommodationist perspective, encouraged by the South's white elite and the nation's corporate institutions, took hold. Washington would defer demand for political rights in exchange for an emphasis on black economic advancement. As symbolized by the Tuskegee Institute, which he led as principal, education for blacks would concentrate on agricultural and mechanical skills. At the 1895Cotton States Exhibition in Atlanta, Washington set forth his view that “In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in ...
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  • Violence

    Source: Black Women in America, Second Edition

    Word Count: 5048      Includes:  Roots in Slavery | Types of Violence | Victims | Mental and Physical Health Consequences | Barriers to Escaping Violence | Suggestions for Intervention | Bibliography

    Violence against women can occur across the lines of race, age, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic class. Usually owing to limited economic resources, black women are more vulnerable than others to domestic violence, community violence, and sexual harassment in the workplace. Institutional barriers, such as lack of police protection and limited medical care, and stereotypes about their ethnic group make it difficult for black women to escape the violence in their lives. As a result, some victims experience long-term mental and physical health problems. Victims may cope by medicating themselves with alcohol and drugs, or even by committing suicide. Despite these challenges, most black women are resilient and use a variety of strategies to survive the violence in their lives. ...
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  • Mob Violence and Vigilantism

    Source: The Oxford Companion to American Law

    Word Count: 1383     

    Mob violence and vigilantism share a common trait: the use of violence to impose social control or to achieve popular justice. These forms of violence involve an appeal to shared notions of higher law when the law enacted by the state is seen as morally wrong, inadequate to the task, or nonexistent. Mobs are social groups having no decision-making structure and coming together for political or economic reasons. They often form spontaneously, generally last only a brief time, and are united by a sense of shared interests and purposes. Mobs can involve dominant groups subordinating less privileged groups, the less privileged protesting against their oppressors, or both groups united against a common perceived enemy. Vigilante groups generally last longer than mobs and take the law into their own hands in situations where the official legal institutions are seen as failing. ...
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