August 1930, Marion, IN two young African Americans were broken out of a jail, beaten, and hung outside the downtown courthouse. Author of the book A Lynching in the Heartland claims that this is "an ordinary place in time".
How accurate is his claim and how do we account for the fact that a crowd of Marion citizens, consisting of both men and women, committed these crimes?
Thank you guys so much! :)
Between 1882 and 1968 Lynching took place in 45 out of 50 states. Only Alaska, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire did not have a recorded Lynching. The fact that 90% of all states had at least one lynching strongly indicates that it could happen anywhere. There is very little connection between the places that had a lynching. Some were large cities others were medium cities and some were little more than a rural crossroad. Lynching was most popular in the south where 80% of lynching occurred but it could happen practically anywhere.
As for the crowd demographics it was usually mostly men but not uncommon for women and children to be present. Some of the mobs made a party out of the lynching complete with a barbeque and games for the kids before the main event of torturing and killing a person. Take a look at this site with postcards of lynching If that doesn't speak to the normalcy of the event I suppose nothing will.
I can't find the exact text now but on the back of one of those postcards was written something like. Hi mom I'm doing good went to hang a couple of negroes the other day here's a picture. Wonder what they did?
We'd all like to pretend that we are above it but history seems to show that in another place at another time any of us could commit awful inhumane acts.
Here are some statistics for you from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Lynching Homepage, by state.