Rope & Faggot/Chapter 7

What have lynchings cost the states which most frequently have practised them and what has been the price which they have exacted from the country as a whole? The disesteem in which the United States is held because of lynch-law is world-wide. Newspapers in Europe, South America, Canada, China, and Japan, and even in Africa report with astonishing regularity burnings, ordinary lynchings, and race riots in the United States. Such news items create in other countries emotions towards the United States which run the gamut from ironical laughter at American pronouncements of decency and fair play in world affairs to amazement and indignation that a so-called civilized country permits such unrestrained barbarity.

Throughout America as a whole lynchings by their very drama and news value have coloured, distorted, and poisoned thought upon the race question. They have helped to feed the flames of mobbism, which have found expression in terrible race riots in both North and South within recent years.

The effect of lynch-law is naturally most clearly seen upon those states where both the greatest number of ​lynchings have taken place and where lynching as an institution has been continued with little variation over a long period—which is to say, the South. Some of the deleterious effects have already been noted in preceding chapters—the irremediable harm done to the minds of children, the dominance of a narrow-minded and ignorant clergy, the distorting and magnifying of the sex factor. No claim is made, of course, that all these and the things about to be mentioned are due entirely to lynching or even to the race question as a whole. It cannot be denied, however, that a major share of the South's backwardness is due to the amount of effort it has put forth to keep the Negro down, and of all these efforts lynching, both in itself and as a symbol, takes first rank. Corrupt politics, a venal press, a bigoted clergy, impoverished minds, and a multitude of other evils could have been to a great extent averted had the energy which the South has devoted to keeping the Negro "in his place" been devoted to efforts towards enlightenment.

In 1925, when the newspapers of the entire world were filled with news of the tragi-comedy then being enacted at Dayton, Tennessee, in the trial of an obscure school-teacher for mentioning the facts of evolution to his pupils, even Americans were amazed that such a scene was possible in a supposedly enlightened age. To those who knew the South, and particularly the rural South, not only was there no surprise at such a spec​tacle, but Dayton fitted very snugly into its frame. Of all the factors which went into the making of the ignorance from which the scene sprang, none was so important as the South's attitude on the Negro.

For more than three hundred years those who sought to maintain slavery and those who in more recent times have defended lynching and other measures aimed against the Negro found it necessary to suppress ruthlessly all opinion at variance with their own. The more the pressure, first against slavery and then against lynching, the more necessary was deemed the crushing of objections, North and South, to the mass determination to suppress the Negro. This intolerance and bigotry, with measles-like propensity, inevitably spread to other controversial subjects. Little by little over a period of three centuries grew the demand, backed by the rope and the faggot, for rigid conformity on all controversial matters. Religion, politics, science, economic systems, education, moral codes—one by one the thinkers of the South on these and other aspects of life concerning which there always have been and always will be varying opinions found themselves beaten into submission and uniformity. Those who nurtured opinions or ideas contrary to the mass opinions and ideas of the South found it expedient either to remain silent or to get out of the South.

Health-giving dissent, without which neither a society or an individual can live and progress, died below the ​Potomac. A vast and arid region, in whose ranks until very recent years there was no hint of revolt, spread itself before the eye of the observer. From this deadening regimentation there sprang quite naturally and luxuriantly such movements as the Klan, intolerant fundamentalism, blatant and ignorant politicians, a sterile artistic life and other logical fruits of too binding orthodoxy.

Against such a background Dayton, J. Thomas Heflin, Cole Blease, the Rev. J. Frank Norris, the Ku Klux Klan, the Bible Crusaders, astounding illiteracy, impoverished farms, and a host of other evils are easily accounted for. In The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man James Weldon Johnson speaks of "the tremendous struggle which is going on between the races in the South" and makes this wise observation: "Though the white man of the South may be too proud to admit it, he is, nevertheless, using in the contest his best energies; he is devoting to it the greater part of his thought and much of his endeavour. The South today stands panting and almost breathless from its exertions." Elsewhere one of his characters remarks that "if the Negro is so distinctly inferior, it is a strange thing to me that it takes such tremendous effort on the part of the white man to make him realize it, and to keep him in the same place into which inferior men naturally fall."

The thought of meeting argument and reason always with force, which finds its seeds in lynch-law, permeates ​all phases of Southern thought. This was seen clearly in the anti-evolution fight, where such phrases were common, to take a typical utterance, as was used by a correspondent of the liberal Greensboro, North Carolina, Daily News: "Take the evolutionists, infidels, and no-hell teachers out somewhere and crucify them, head downward, and we will have a better country to live in"—though one would imagine that many Southerners, considering the lynchings and other enormities for which the South is responsible, would welcome a "no-hell teacher" with a sigh of relief. It is in such an atmosphere that a minister thrives who is of the type of the Rev. J. Frank Norris of Texas, indicted at various times for such pecadillos as arson and murder, and that an enthusiastic audience is given to statements such as "So help me God, I will not be a party to wink at, support, or even remain silent when any group, clique, crowd or machine undertakes to ram down the throats of Southern Baptists that hell-born, Bible-destroying, deity-of-Christ-denying, German rationalism known as evolution."^[1]

Such idiotic appeals to mob psychology are typical of a certain type of Southerner and bear evidence of the state of mental decay with which the South is cursed. Fortunately for that section of the country the very violence and exaggeration of the Norris type create an​tagonism and help spur interest in and sympathy with the very objects of their denunciation—precisely as the anti-Negro tirades of Blease and Vardaman and their class create in the minds of genuinely intelligent persons a serious doubt of the soundness of the assertions of the Negrophobes. The Messianic delusions of Southern churchmen such as Bishop Candler of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, that "the churches of the South will be lost"; the paradox of the Klan fighting, so it claims, for "separation of church and state," while its blood brothers, the Fundamentalists, are struggling for Church domination of the State through such measures as dictation of legislation banning the teaching of the doctrine of evolution, compulsory reading of the Bible in State-supported schools, and, in brief, putting "God into the Constitution"; interference with and crippling of universities and colleges which are struggling to bring some light into Southern darkness; persecution of individuals who are too intelligent to bow to the ideas and phobias and superstitions of the mob—all these handicaps that afflict the South, which at first seem far removed from the race problem and lynching, are found upon examination to be sprung from the same intolerance and mob domination that has characterized the South's treatment of the Negro for three centuries. This is one item of the bill which the lynching states are paying and must pay for unrestrained mobbism and intolerance.

​Another striking paradox of the Southern situation, and a significant item in the price of lynching, is the attitude towards women. No boast is more frequently or vehemently made below the Mason and Dixon line than that women are nowhere more worshipped, enshrined, respected, or protected than in the South. So frequently have such statements been reiterated that even in the North many people hold the notion that Southern women belong to a peculiar class, different from and superior to women in any other part of the world. The truth lies between this pleasant myth and the sweeping indictment of white women of the South of the Rev. Mr. Owens of North Carolina to the effect that "there is the greatest possible danger . . . that in the future it may come to pass that you will send your daughter to the North for culture and she will come back with a little Negro." There are many persons, including some who are Northerners and some who are not white, who do not agree with the Rev. Mr. Owens and who believe that there are many Southern women who can be trusted away from the South. And as for the conception of Southern women as of a peculiar mould, another Southerner, William J. Robertson, in The Changing South strikes a powerful blow at the notion of any peculiar difference between the women of the South and any other part of the country or the world. He writes: "The automobile has brought unfavorable developments to the South just as it has to other sec​tions of America. Joy rides are not infrequent, and have disastrous effects. Girls from the best families participate in these adventures, the principal features of which are petting, using the contents of hip flasks and patronizing roadhouses. . . ." And, in writing of "The 'Bible Belt,'" Robertson says: "'Them damn Northerners think they are smart,' a Southerner in nearly any rural section in the South will say as he goes about making his moonshine, seducing his neighbor's daughter, going off with his neighbor's wife or committing murder, arson or assault and battery as the case may be."

It is not what the romanticists or John Powell or the Rev. Mr. Owens or William J. Robertson say concerning women which concerns us here, but the use to which the partly true, partly mythical exaltation of women—white women—in the South has been put. Being deposited upon a pedestal may be temporarily pleasant and even thrilling, but it loses much of its glamour for intelligent women when the elevation means denial of all rights save those of housework and child-bearing. Economic dependence, contacts with none save "polite, refined, womanly" pursuits, mental activities in no other field than home life—all these man-imposed restrictions have borne more heavily upon women in the South, and have been maintained more rigidly, than in any other part of the country. Nowhere else has the "unwritten law" been invoked so frequently or suc​cessfully—upon the theory that once a woman through marriage has been "bought and paid for," she is a chattel of her husband and owner precisely as a Negro slave was before the Civil War. In protection of tangible possessions the right is reserved to the owner—so the theory in effect runs—to use physical force to resist encroachment upon his property, regardless of the wishes of the woman involved.

Stories of Negro propensities towards rape were utilized even further to restrict human desires of women of brain and ability to break away from "respect and chivalry," which, they learned, were not sufficient reward for denial of rights they possessed as individuals. In striking contrast with the showing of states where women were not blocked so much in efforts towards achievement is the record of women of the South listed in Who's Who in America. Her mind and activities bound for three hundred years, much as were the feet of Chinese women, it is only to be expected that in Who's Who so large a percentage of women from the South who have remained in the South are able to point only to literary efforts unknown beyond their own communities or to activities as prohibition workers or club presidents. As was seen in the letter quoted in the chapter on religion, a most promising revolt has begun to make its appearance among the more intelligent and progressive white women of the South against this system. Industrialization of the South will bring, un​doubtedly, certain changes which are not for the best. But there are to be seen other changes which, causing women of the South to demand less cotton-wool "chivalry" and more recognition as individuals, will help not only themselves, but the South, to emancipation from the bungling of the past.

William H. Skaggs of Alabama in The Southern Oligarchy shows a phase of this attitude towards women: "Eight of the States that refused to ratify the amendment for equal suffrage are among the eleven that make up the Solid South. Arkansas, Texas and Tennessee are the three States in the South that ratified the amendment. The eight Southern States which refused to ratify the suffrage amendment are those which have the highest criminal record and the highest percentage of illiteracy. . . . Opposition in the South to prohibiting discrimination on account of sex . . . was based on the old political claptrap of the Southern Oligarchy—the alleged fear of Negro domination. 'It is for the protection of our mothers, sisters, wives and daughters that we oppose this measure,' said some of the political leaders of the South. This is the absurd propaganda that is always started in the South when the Oligarchy becomes alarmed about some measure providing for better educational opportunities, social or civic advancement, or other wholesome measures which would improve the condition of the people. . . ."

As poor whites were enslaved in reality along with ​Negroes, so have white women been oppressed with Negroes. Realization of this obvious fact lends great significance to the statement of the Southerner quoted in the chapter on religion to the effect that "the most hopeful element in the church situation is the fact that women are coming into a larger . . . place in the life of the church," which applies to other phases than church life. White women of the South have been made to pay a tremendous price for lynching, but, to quote the same man again, "having recently come through their struggle for representation and self-expression, are very sensitive to any situation that denies this to others. . . ." Though white Southern women, and, even more, coloured women of the South, have been forced to bear a staggering part of the burden of mob bestiality and proscription which lynching and the race problem in general have exacted, there is little doubt that they in turn offer one of the most hopeful signs of a more enlightened and a more humane South.

Nor are these the only paradoxes the Southern scene presents. There is the boast of superiority of the lynching states—and the constant apologizing for the ills of the South. Preserver of Anglo-Saxonism, defender of the faith, and sole surviving champion of "real" religion, self (but eternally) -appointed guardian of the "purity of the white race," apogee of perfection! One would imagine that a section so abundantly gifted could ​and would conquer any obstacle, no matter how insurmountable. Instead, speak of Southern shortcomings, and what does one hear in reply?—that backwardness is due to the Negro, the boll-weevil, poverty, carpet-baggers, Northern viciousness and decadence, too much rain, too little rain, the Civil War, evolutionists, no-hell religionists—the list is endless. Burdens enough the South has had, there can be no denying. But the self-pitying, defensive attitude, which has so long sat somewhat strangely upon a self-admittedly superior race, has done more to keep the South in its low position than all its problems combined. Howard Odum, the brilliant and courageous professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, summed up this fault in an address at Emory University in 1924:

This Southern contradictory attitude of boasting and whining springs, obviously, from the circumstance mentioned in the chapter of "The Mind of the Lyncher." Three hundred years of defence of the indefensible, first of slavery and then of lynching and proscription, ​could hardly have produced any other result. Boasting to convince themselves and others of their superiority; apologizing and shifting the blame for the failure of accomplishments to coincide with the virtues claimed.

Another heritage of slavery and lynching is the idea of labour's being discreditable, even dishonourable. From this notion spring many of the ills especially of the poor white, who in his ignorance furnishes a fertile field for Ku Klux organizers, venders of worthless patent medicines, Fundamentalist evangelists of the Frank Norris type, politicians of the Vardaman and Cole Blease variety, and mob leaders. It leads to the lack of success in organizing workers in the Southern states and uniting the two groups, poor whites and Negroes, whose interests are most closely interwoven. Race hostility, cleverly worked upon by means of stories of rape and other tales of the sort, are used to perpetuate long hours, low wages, and highly unsatisfactory conditions for white and black labour alike. DuBois, in The Negro, tells of the beginnings of this cleavage of interests shortly after the Civil War through the passage of labour laws "making the exploitation of Negro labor more secure. All this legislation had to be accomplished in the face of the labor movement throughout the world, and particularly in the South, where it was beginning to enter among the white workers. This was accomplished easily, however, by an appeal to race prejudice. No method of inflaming the darkest passions ​of men was unused. The lynching mob was given its glut of blood and egged on by purposely exaggerated and often wholly invented tales of crime on the part of perhaps the most peaceful and sweet-tempered race the world has ever known. Under the flame of this outward noise went the more subtle and dangerous work. . . . Labor laws were so arranged that imprisonment for debt was possible and leaving an employer could be made a penitentiary offense. . . . The acquiescence of the white labor vote of the South was further insured by throwing white and black laborers, so far as possible, into rival competing groups and making each feel that the one was the cause of the other's troubles."^[2] In the forging of chains for the hands of black workers, white workers bound their own limbs and it will be many years before those shackles are finally broken. Again, the rope and faggot, premier emblems of prejudice, served to entrench profits behind an almost impregnable wall, while those who helped construct the fortifications did not even suspect, prejudice being so potent an anodyne, the nature of the building they were erecting.

In two other fields the lyncher served to increase ignorance and prejudice—politics and the press. There are many who think of these two fields as major ones in the problem of race. In reality they are symptoms ​more than causes and, like the Church, follow instead of leading.

From the framing of the Constitution to the Civil War, especially between 1830 and 1860, Southern politicians and office-holders were the puppets of the slavocracy and did their bidding when high tariffs or abolition or any other step inimical to the selfish interests of the slave-holders threatened. "Nor can it be truthfully said," Charles and Mary Beard write, "as southern writers were fond of having it, that a tender and consistent regard for the rights of states and for a strict construction of the Constitution was the prime element in the dispute [over slavery] that long divided the country. As a matter of record, from the foundation of the republic, all factions were for high nationalism or low provincialism upon occasion according to their desires at the moment. . . . Less than twenty years after South Carolina prepared to resist by arms federal officers engaged in collecting customs duties, the champions of slavery and states' rights greeted with applause a fugitive slave law which flouted the precious limitations prescribed in the first ten Amendments to the Constitution—a law which provided for the use of all the powers of the national government to assist masters in getting possession of their elusive property—which denied the alleged slave, who might perchance be a freeman in spite of his colour, the right to have a jury trial or even to testify in his own behalf. In other words, it was 'con​stitutional' to employ the engines of the federal authority in catching slaves wherever they might be found in any northern community and to ignore utterly the elementary safeguards of liberty plainly and specifically imposed on Congress by language that admitted of no double interpretation."^[3]

This attitude of selfishness has continued to characterize the positions taken by Southern "statesmen" in Congress and in national affairs to this day. It gives them the palm without question, for inconsistency and selfishness are the rule instead of the exception. Southern members of both houses of Congress engage in lusty battles for federal aid in flood relief, for prohibition, and anti-evolution laws, and do not hesitate to demand tariff protection of cotton, sugar, and other products of the South while as loudly demanding free trade on non-Southern products. The same members will orate and filibuster until blue in the face for the "preservation of states' rights," against federal interference in industries such as child-labour and lynching—uttering sonorous and windy orations against such "interference" with convenient forgetfulness of their pleas for federal action when such action happens to give aid to Southern projects.

Fear—abject fear—of "Negro domination," against which the rope and the faggot still stand as emblems, ​have led to political sterility and the election to office from the Southern states of men who, with practically no exceptions, rank little above petty village politicians. Walter Hines Page some years ago summed up in a few words the effect of this fear in an address before the North Carolina Society of New York: "The South, therefore, neither contributes to the Nation's political thought and influence nor receives stimulation from the Nation's thought and influence. Its real patriotism counts for nothing—is smothered dumb under party systems that have become crimes against the character and the intelligence of the people."

The foisting of inferior and demagogic mountebanks upon the country by the South found its counterpart in journalism in the South, though, fortunately, the press, in inspiring contrast with the politicians, is showing signs of emergence from the doldrums of ignorance and prejudice. The time is not long past when hardly a newspaper of the South dared speak even faintly against lynching and many of them openly defended the practice. There still are journals today, especially in the rural sections of the states in the far South, which will not condemn the practice and deem it sufficient answer to criticism of lynching from outside sources to point to crime in Northern communities. But only the more blatant dare openly defend mob-law and they do so on the old ground of "protecting womanhood." In the suc​ceeding chapter will be given some instances of the change that is coming over the Southern press.

In the preceding pages are given a few of the more important effects of the backwardness which mob-law and mob psychology have caused in those states where they have been most prevalent. While other factors have shared responsibility for these deplorable conditions, there can be little doubt that the lyncher's rope has both directly and indirectly played the leading role in bringing such conditions into being. When these states emancipate themselves from the rule of the mob, they will not be saving the Negro and the occasional white victim of the lyncher nearly so much as they will be saving themselves. They are like Maria Insull in The Old Wives' Tale; "superstitions and prejudices, deep and violent, served her for ideas . . . benighted and spiritually dead, she existed by habit." The South could never have become the eternally dominant section its orators extravagantly claimed it to be because of geographic and economic conditions. Handicapped further by its own phobias, extending over a period of three hundred years, it can hardly attain within a considerable number of years even the approximate progress and intelligence of other sections of the country where many minds and races have contributed their share, in contrast with the deadening Anglo-Saxonism of the South. The price it has had to pay for its unrestrained brutality has been a heavy one and the end is not yet in ​sight. One thing is evident. Whatever the South hoped to gain from its attitude towards the Negro, the price it has paid is far greater than that hoped-for gain; and, ironically, the South has failed to receive almost every one of the selfish benefits which it sought.