The number of violent acts against African Americans accelerated during the first quarter of the twentieth century. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) began compiling lynching statistics in 1912, thirty years after the Chicago Tribune and twenty years after the Tuskegee Institute started tracking such crimes. In November 1922, the NAACP ran full page ads in newspapers pressing for the passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill. Entitled “The Shame of America,” the ad laid out the shocking statistics of lynching from 1899 through 1922. The bill was passed by a two-to-one majority in the House of Representatives but was defeated in the Senate. A few years later, the NAACP issued the statistics as a broadside. Entitled “For the Good of America,” it encouraged citizens to “aid the organization which has been fighting for ten years to wipe out our shame.” Despite the NAACP’s vigorous efforts through the 1930s and the introduction of several subsequent bills, the US Congress never outlawed lynching.
Why was it impossible to pass a law in Congress outlawing lynching?
Which of the arguments in the NAACP broadsheet are most effective? Explain your response.
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
I`m just wondering, could this be a pride issue? That acknowledging such a horrendous practice in the most powerful country in the world could leave an non reputable stain of its ethical appearance? Or did they just not care enough about the blacks to do anything about it.
I believe it goes deeper than that. On the one hand, you have the issue of acknowledging that terrible things are happening in America and that perhaps passing a law to end lynching is to recognize a weakness or flaw. Then again, the US is a country that once allowed slavery to exist, and it did acknowledge that slavery was wrong in a way through the Emancipation Proclamation. On the other hand, perhaps a simpler explanation is that by passing a law, members of the US Congress would run the risk of losing support from the South,and that avoiding conflict with them would be beneficial.
The topmost argument of the broadsheet insinuating that the US is the only country that permits lynching seems particularly effective, though considering our country still does not use the metric system primarily, it may not have mattered to lynchers that they were different from the rest of the world; they may actually have seen lynching as a method to assert dominance and control. Appealing to morality, justice, and responsibility also seems like it would effective. Perhaps highlighting the atrocities of lynching more vividly and calling attention to the dangers of mob mentality, in addition to listing the consequences of allowing lynching to persist (besides just saying that lynching would weaken civilization in America) would have helped broadcast a supplementary powerful message.
Pride issue for who?
It was impossible to pass a law in Congress outlawing lynching because not only did many Congressmen (if I had to guess) not care, but they weren’t affected by it either. Why pass a law if not passing it doesn’t mean you’ll lose your seat or voter support? Also, this goes back to what we discussed in Mrs. Turner’s class. What I took from it was, if you want to get a change in America done, a major one at least, there has to be a major tragedy. The only ones demanding for a law to be passed were (in the eyes of the Congressmen) a group of Negroes whose vote (which was being subdued) wouldn’t affect them in any way and had nothing to rally behind save for their pretty numbers.
The argument in the broadsheet I find most effective is the horrific stat: “3436 People Lynched, 1899 to 1922.” The stat makes the crimes comparable to that of a genocide which some may aptly argue it was. Such evil, in the eyes of a good, if not at least normal, person cannot go unpunished or unstopped.
Anthony is implying that change most likely comes from those who have a political voice. Meaning, if you have the power to vote and use the power to vote, you are more likely to have laws that protect you. What do you all think about that assertion? Do you think that’s the reason there wasn’t any anti-lynching laws passed in the early twentieth century?