While I was reading this article, I didn’t agree with my article. I find lynching just wrong and stupid. I don’t understand why they even came up with the idea. I also don’t believe that the whites should have gotten lynched because they were helping the blacks. But they did because I guess nobody liked the idea of that. But overall I don’t think this was a great article, but it was interesting to understand how lynching happened and why it did.

I think that what white people did to black people was very messed up. The whites had no right to do that do black people; they just did it for entertainment. In the video that we watch of all the black people being hung the whites were smiling in the backgrounds of the pictures and that is not ok. Just because white people associated with black people they were also killed by being hung or burned to death. Some states did this and others not at all. There are no recorded lynchings in Arizona, Idaho, Maine, Nevada, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Whites would hang people that were black or associated with blacks because they wanted power over the blacks. Lynchings were often public spectacles attended by the white community in celebration of white supremacy. I think that what whites did to the blacks and people that associated with the black was not ok and we can’t just put it in the past when it has a huge impact on our lives. It will never fully be gone. What they did was horribly wrong 

Lynching, by definition, is the practice of publicly executing someone for a crime without due process. Though they were often carried out by angry mobs, police occasionally participated. Most often, Black Americans were lynched by white mobs. These events were often advertised in newspapers, and drew large crowds. Commonly associated with just hangings, lynchings would often include torture before the person was hanged. Often times victims were whipped, lost appendages (fingers, ears, etc.), sexually assaulted, burned, and even shot. Others, instead of being hung, were burned at the stake. After the victim was declared dead, members of the mob would dismember the victim and sell their body parts as keepsakes. Pictures of large crowds smiling and laughing were often published in newspapers and sold as postcards. An estimated 4,742 lynchings took place between the years of 1882 and 1968.

I was shocked by the torture people would go through before being hanged, because the torture is not often talked about. Something that disturbed me thoroughly was that body parts of the victims were sold as keepsakes. Because of this article, I would like to continue to read about lynchings because I feel as though it would do good for me to educate myself more about this topic. With education comes knowledge, and with that knowledge I can at least try to prevent atrocities like this from happening again.

Jenkins, Alan. Interview by Maria Daniels, WGBH Boston, July 2006.

From this article I learned that black communities are still discriminated against to this day. Black communities were purposefully made to be farther away from good jobs, schools, hospitals, and the hardest to get out in case of emergency. Hurricane Katrina ruined these communities the most. I think this is extremely unfair. I think that these communities should be as good as the white communities that get access to all of these. 

Civil rights is not history just yet people. Currently in this day and age, everyday peoples’ civil rights are being threatened. In 2018 Donld Trump was threatening these rights. President Trump has spent much of his first term in office attempting to prohibit Muslims from entering the United States; separating children of color from their parents and placing them in cages along the southern border; and trying to undermine the asylum process for women of color fleeing domestic violence. While such a threat is racist, xenophobic, and constitutionally dubious, it stokes fear in millions of Americans of color. A new generation of civil rights leaders now focuses its work on eliminating social and economic disparities, particularly for the indigent. Using some of the sixties strategies for community organizing around advocacy and service delivery, these leaders are bringing technical proficiency to such complex problems as economic development, improvement of schools, and the organization of community development corporations whose missions range from building housing to creating mini-industries.

I think that civil rights issues will never stop. Our democracy is failing and I think our country is too arrogant to see the problems it has. This is only my opinion and what I believe. I believe everyone has a right and that our country needs to face facts and change to address this situation.

https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-kkk-today/2/ 

Ty Thomas

Human rights are rights that one has just by being alive, such as the right to life, education, protection from torture, freedom of expression, and the right to a free trial.  Civil rights include protection from discrimination, the right to free speech, the right to due process, the right to equal protection, and the right against self-incrimination.

“Civil Rights Movement: Timeline, Key Events & Leaders - HISTORY” from history.com editors, original written on October 27, 2009, updated on May 17, 2021 

In 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution gave Black people equal protection under the law. In 1870, the 15th Amendment granted Black American men the right to vote. Still, many white Americans, especially those in the South, were unhappy that people they’d once enslaved were now more-or-less equal in that way.

Black men and women served heroically in World War II, despite suffering segregation and discrimination during their deployment.  As the Cold War began, President Harry Truman initiated a civil rights agenda, and in 1948 issued Executive Order 9981 to end discrimination in the military.  All of these events helped set the stage for the civil rights movement.

On September 9, 1957, President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 into law, the first major civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. It allowed federal prosecution of anyone who tried to prevent someone from voting.

One of the most famous events of the civil rights movement took place on August 28, 1963: the March on Washington. It was organized and attended by civil rights leaders. The highlight of the march was King’s speech in which he continually stated, “I have a dream…”

 When President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965, he took the Civil Rights Act of 1964 several steps further. The new law banned all voter literacy tests and provided federal examiners in certain voting jurisdictions.

I’ve learned a lot from these two articles about many events that helped to shape how civil rights became available to all.  Many people fought for civil rights for their whole lives.  I’m glad that we’ve become better in protecting and respecting everybody’s civil rights.  I feel like we have come so much closer to equality for all and that it is an amazing accomplishment.

-Emmarae Ellis

According to 7 WAYS AMERICAN RACISM IS ‘ALIVE AND WELL’ TODAY by Sandra Feder-Stanford on June 12, 2020, there are 7 factors that racism is still alive. Some of them are categories, which organize people into distinct groups, factions, which trigger ingroup loyalty and intergroup competition, and segregation, which hardens racist perceptions, preferences and beliefs. She also states that studies demonstrating how exposed a child is to racial groups will have an effect later on in life. Media is another way which minimises people of color.  

I agree with this article because all of these ways are still around today. We shouldn’t need these categories or factions in life. I do think that growing up with racial groups would help you in the future but that’s not to say that people who don’t are bad people. I also think media plays a big role in racism and other factors as well. 

I agree that we still have a long way to go before racism is completely fixed, but that idea is almost impossible. I also agree that the police brutality rates towards unarmed black people is way too high, and needs to be fixed somehow. I also think that human trafficking is completely unacceptable, and should be a main focus for the U.S. to try to prevent.

I was shocked that they would lynch somebody for no proven reason. The fact that there was 3,446 blacks lynched, shows the severity of racism back then.

When I read this article today, I already knew most of this information to be honest. But this article was also published during last year when covid was a very broad topic and the George Floyd incident was as well. I don’t have an opinion really, I feel that racially inclined things happen all the time and nothing really changes. This is an interesting topic though.

I was shocked to find all the protection the Trump administration got rid of for LGBT+ people. I believed that the no transgender soldiers was the only “law” they instated against queer people. The amount of discrimination present for queer people I found astounding, I thought it wasn’t as prevalent. I now feel that we haven’t made much progress in the way of LGBT+ rights. I also do feel that this information may just be surface level compared to what else there might be.

The fact that it was ok is absurd. it was never ok and now people are trying to bring it back. (kkk) the KKK is not ok and should be stopped.

I think that lynchings were a horrible thing that happened to people. I think that blacks were just trying to live a normal life and white people just could not accept that they were the same. White people who did see that were also killed because there were so many people who didn’t.

The history of lynching was a horrendous act of violence against people of color. Notice how I didn’t simply put black people? That’s because lynchings happened to all sorts of POC’s, especially immigrants. Sometimes even white people were lynched for being anti-lynching. I was mortified by the information I learned from my articles, they provided gruesome images so the readers really understand what happened. An inhumane fact I learned was that it was common for people to send postcards with a lynching in the background to family. As I read, I  learned there was much more to a just a hanging in a lynch, but physical torment and brutal torture. All sorts of painful experiences like being burned alive, stabbed, dismembered, and drowned; of course that isn’t all, but a good summary. I believe schools need to go into farther depths of this topic, this is something generations ahead need to learn so we do not repeat it. 

What really surprised me was that it said that those African Americans that were in jail, the officer would leave them alone after hearing rumors of the inmate being lynched, so a mob of whites would come and deal with it themselves. They did this before their trials and legal defense would take place. It's really rude of the officers that were protecting the black men to leave them alone to be killed. Two big things that also surprised me was that women would bring their youngest children and pick them up to get a closer look at those who were hanged. The other thing is that the whites would chop off their body parts and keep them as an award or souvenir. They also presented the governor with the heart and liver of a man. Lynching eventually came to an end with the civil rights movement and women also held protest for lynching. One thing that made me mad was the those white people that did all of this, weren't charged with anything . It thankfully came to an end but things like this still are happening around the world. I hope in the future there will be equal rights for everyone.