Rope & Faggot

Twenty-three years ago the late William Graham Sumner of Yale University wrote of lynching: "It would be a disgrace to us if amongst us men should burn a rattlesnake or a mad dog. The badness of the victim is not an element in the case at all. Torture and burning are forbidden, not because the victim is not bad enough, but because we are too good. . . . It is evident, however, that public opinion is not educated up to this level."

More than two decades after Sumner wrote these words, public opinion on burnings and lynchings is not yet educated up to the level where such barbarities are impossible. The number of victims each year has sharply decreased, but the savagery with which the smaller number of victims are tortured by American mobs is proportionately greater than at the turn of the century. From the days when one John Malcolm was "genteely Tarr'd and Feather'd" at Pownalborough, Massachu​setts, in 1773, mobbism has inevitably degenerated to the point where an uncomfortably large percentage of American citizens can read in their newspapers of the slow roasting alive of a human being in Mississippi and turn, promptly and with little thought, to the comic strip or sporting page. Thus has lynching become an almost integral part of our national folkways.

The present inquiry was begun with the intention of treating lynching as an isolated phenomenon, but that idea was of necessity abandoned before the inquiry had proceeded very far. The reason for this change is that the deeper one inquires into the subject, the more one must regard lynching as being of only minor importance in itself; it is as a symptom of a malodorous economic and social condition that it is chiefly significant. Only such facts are included in the present study regarding the number, place, and method of lynchings as were deemed necessary for the enlightenment of those who know little of the situation. From these an effort has been made to isolate and examine the various ingredients of lynching—economic forces, race prejudice, religion, sex, politics, journalism, and theories of ​racial superiority and inferiority based upon faulty or insufficient scientific evidence.

Haste is made to disavow any pretension that the whole subject is here exhausted. I have attempted to sketch broadly what lies behind the lynching mob and to stimulate thought and discussion upon the subject. There doubtless will be disagreement with some of the conclusions. Such differences will be as valuable as they are inevitable if, out of the discussion which this volume may perhaps arouse, there comes a greater willingness to face more honestly and fully what is one of the most serious problems that faces the United States today.

One of the persons who have read the manuscript of this book has questioned the chapter on the influence of theories of racial superiority and inferiority. The point is made that the brain-weights theory has long since been repudiated by the best students and thus does not merit lengthy consideration. Such a criticism would be valid were this volume designed solely for those whose minds are scientifically trained. Unfortunately, however, the number of those who are not trained so far exceeds that of those who are, that I have thought it ​necessary to help further to destroy the myth that great or little brain-weight is of any ascertainable value. Superstitions and untruths—especially those which confirm prejudices—die hard. It has been my own experience to encounter in all parts of America a very great number of persons who believe that the Negro brain is much lighter than the white and that ergo the Negro is inferior. Being inferior, crimes against him and impositions upon him are of less moment than similar offences against a white person. "Just another nigger lynched!" all too often is the sole obituary of the latest of Judge Lynch's victims.

No study of lynching, however casual, can fail to reveal the fact that the refusal to discuss certain phases of the question has prevented, more than any other single factor, a possible solution to the problem. Most of the commentators, in fact, have expended a large part of their energy in avoiding those aspects of the subject which might arouse the ill temper or animosity of lynchers and their adherents. Such tender regard for the feelings of lynchers has been abandoned in the present inquiry. I have tried to discuss the problem ​in as temperate and unbiased a manner as possible, but to write about lynching without discussing religion and sex among its causes is to leave the root of the matter unexplained.

To many who have been of great help to me I wish here to make grateful acknowledgment. These, among many others, include James Weldon Johnson, Arthur B. Spingarn, and Charles S. Johnson for critical reading of the entire manuscript; Dr. Raymond Pearl, of Johns Hopkins University, for much valuable aid and for reading the chapter on "Science, Nordicism, and Lynching"; Sir Arthur Keith, president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, for many useful suggestions in the gathering and use of material in the same chapter; Miss Beatrice Blackwood, of the Department of Human Anatomy of Oxford University, who so patiently aided in the search for authoritative opinion upon certain questions of the relation between ability and brain-structure, brain-weight, and head-form; Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, editor of the Crisis, and Dr. Melville J. Herskovits, of Northwestern University, for advice, information, and guidance; Professor Robert ​Bennett Bean, of the University of Virginia, for supplying reprints of certain articles written by him and now out of print, which were indispensable despite the extent of my disagreement with certain of Professor Bean's conclusions; the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and its secretary, Dr. Henry Allen Moe, through whose generous grant of a fellowship I was enabled to make this study; the Board of Directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for leave of absence and other aid in accepting that fellowship; Dr. Will W. Alexander for information concerning the Interracial Commission and the movements towards liberalism in the South; and many others, as well, who have aided, including some in the South who have supplied information, but whose names it would be unwise to publish. I wish likewise to acknowledge my gratitude to many lynchers with whom I have talked and who have expressed themselves freely, unaware of my racial identity.

Finally, I wish to extend to my wife my thanks for aid in the selection and arrangement of material and ​for the clarification of ideas through discussions with her. Readers of the book will hardly need to be informed that none of these are responsible for the choice or arrangement of material, or for the conclusions drawn.