President Trump recently drew the anger of many Americans after comparing the impeachment inquiry he’s now facing to “lynching” – a term associated with the mob and heinous killings of African Americans during the Jim Crow era.
“So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights. All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here – a lynching. But we will WIN!” Trump tweeted on October 22.
Researchers documented 4,075 lynchings of African Americans that were carried out in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia between 1877 and 1950 in a recent Lynching in America report.
According to the report, by the end of the nineteenth century, Southern lynching had become a tool of racial control that terrorized and targeted African Americans.
“The ratio of black lynching victims to white lynching victims was 4 to 1 from 1882 to 1889; increased to more than 6 to 1 between 1890 and 1900; and soared to more than 17 to 1 after 1900,” the report said.
Close to 200 women were killed by lynching during that era, according to historian Crystal Feimster. Inspired by the fact that U.S. history books and documentaries that tell the story of lynching in the U.S. have focused on black male victims, to the exclusion of women, Face2Face Africa in this article looks at the stories of five black women lynched during the Jim Crow era.
