Friday, December 7, 2018

Flashback Friday

This week's edition of Flashback Friday will take a different approach from the usual glimpses into past.  The Flashback Friday posts usually show stories, ads, and videos, and other items of nostalgia from Jackson's past.  The Senate race took a rather nasty turn down memory lane due to the "public hanging" controversy.  JJ dug into the Clarion-Ledger archives and posted below all of the articles about lynchings in Mississippi from the 1890's.

 Needless to say, this stuff is not for the faint of heart.  It is one thing to read about lynchings described in today's language. Statistics are often cited but they tend to numb the brain and all too often remain in the abstract.  It is altogether different to read about lynchings as they were reported at the time. Lynchings were reported with nary an editorial comment made against such savagery.   However, lynching did not draw universal support as a Bishop and the Mississippi College leadership spoke out against lynching. Unfortunately, they were in the minority.   This post doesn't do justice to the subject and apologies are made to those who have made a life's work out of fighting such injustice.  It is just a humble attempt to show the average reader how things were a long time ago.



December 26, 1899







February 6, 1891
September 29, 1891
December 29, 1897
June 29, 1897
December 17, 1897


To say the newspaper encouraged the lynchings is an understatement.  Check out this disgusting headline.

March 15, 1895
The newspaper published lynching jokes as well.




Notice this story. The "wrong" men were lynched yet not a peep out of anyone.

September 18, 1899
However, it is not fair to say all of white society in Mississippi supported lynchings.  The leadership of Mississippi College spoke out against a double lynching a week after it took place in Clinton.



A local Bishop spoke out against lynchings as well in 1893.  The newspaper printed some of his remarks on the front page.


However, such outrage was rarely published in the 1890's as the newspaper preferred to print this $*%&#.  The opening sentence speaks volumes about the so-called elite of society.  


35 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://americanlynching.com/index-text.html

Anonymous said...

This sickens me. I'm a middle-aged white woman now, and I thank God that my parents, who came from New Jersey and Tennessee, raised us here in Mississippi with kindness and compassion toward everyone. I never even heard the "N" word until I was in the 4th grade and witnessed two African American teenager brothers fist fighting and calling each other that name. I asked my mother about it and she explained the vulgarity of the word and the fact that all of us, black and white, are products of our environment. Those young black men were raised with that slur and knew how it could hurt and demean to call someone by that name. White kids raised in that environment are STILL here, supporting retention of the racist state flag and the "shrine" to the president of the Confederacy on the coast, among other things.

As hard as it is to read these old news stories, it is a good thing for you to publish them, KF. People need to acknowledge and own their past, and use that to improve the childhood environment of blacks and whites today and tomorrow in Mississippi.

Fan Them Flames, Boys.. said...

On a related note, hangings, beatings and being run the hell out of town in the early 1900s was by no means restricted to folk of color. You people may not know this, but the Klan during that time, in some venues in this state, focused their 'talents' on white men who abused their wives, were drunkards, would not care for their own children, upset the community balance and were generally worthless. If the behavior of those worthless residents was bad enough, they were hung or burned. But, typically they were just whipped under cover of darkness and run off. And the men who ran them off, then took care of the families.

But, leave it to Kingfish to keep this perpetual fire burning. A lump of coal in his Christmas stocking from me.

Anonymous said...

It will surprise some of 'you people' to learn that the KKK prior to and after the turn of the century often lynched, beat, ran off and otherwise severely punished white men who abused their wives and children or who did not provide for their families or were drunkards or all of the above. I learned this on very good authority.

Here's an excerpt from the link that follows and research will validate:

“Out of the 4,743 people lynched only 1,297 white people were lynched. That is only 27.3%. Many of the whites lynched were lynched for helping the black or being anti-lynching and even for domestic crimes.”

ONLY? What the hell does he mean ONLY? All this time we’ve been led to believe only black folk were lynched. Now we read that just shy of 30% were WHITE! Even white prostitutes who were ‘only plying their trade’.

Racism sells, always has and always will! It's much more productive, if your selling your manuscript, to fabricate, exaggerate and twist.

https://www.quora.com/Has-there-been-a-record-of-white-people-lynched-by-their-fellow-whites-or-by-blacks

Anonymous said...

And we just elected a Senator who jokes about public hangings?

While others were lynched, people who deny that lynchings were systemically used as a tool against African Americans are denying history.

Anonymous said...

There is only one race - The human race. We all descended from two ancestors, Adam and Eve. We may live in different locations and have different characteristics but we are connected by the same blood.

Acts 17:26 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;

Love your neighbor as yourself and we will be a better nation, one nation under God. That still applies today as it did 400 years ago. These acts were wrong then, they are wrong now and today we can acknowledge the wrongs of the past, heal, forgive and show love and kindness to all our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Anonymous said...

I'm a middle-aged white woman now ...

What were you previously?

Anonymous said...

And the odds of 12:47 and 1:09 being different people are?

Anonymous said...

The Bolton and Raymond articles don't surprise me at all, nor does the objection by MS College leadership to these actions. It was vigilantes from Raymond that caused the famous Clinton Riot in the somewhat moderate and peaceful town of Clinton and that riot ushered in the end of reconstruction. Try to find a black person in Learned, MS.

Anonymous said...

It was rare that a lynching was unprovoked. It nearly always happened in response to a violent crime so heinous that the citizens in the area simply couldn't contain their outrage.

In modern times we are taught lynching was always used against blacks and it was always unprovoked. That simply isn't true. Black males were not commonly lynched and whem it hapoened it wad not simply for shoplifting some fatback for their supper.

We can look around the news in modern times for examples of what got a man lynched back then. We havr become desensitized to the crime and violence. These days wr havr become so accustomed that the monsters are just release on bond with an ankle bracelet.

Anonymous said...

Thank you Kingfish for publishing this. It's hard to read, but thank you.

Anonymous said...

12:47 and 1:09, y'all are pathetic. Actually, I'm guessing it's the same person posting two different (yet fairly similar) comments to try and perpetuate their racist opinions. So since 25% of lynching victims were white, that completely discounts the other 75% that were black? I just don't understand how someone can have that much hate in their hearts, but then again this is Mississippi.

Anonymous said...

It is interesting to read how many of these "murderers" confessed to the crime, especially knowing that they were going to be lynched.

Anonymous said...

@ 3:08, I wish people like you were as outspoken about the black on black crime in the 21st century as you are about the lynching's in the 19th century.

Anonymous said...

All of the people talking about lynching was only done in response to a crime or white people were lynched too. Here is the thing we have a constitution. It says people are entitled to a trail by a jury of their peers. So tell me if we lynched people how is that being tried by a jury of your peers. We basically denied a whole bunch of people whether black or white, but mostly black their constitutional rights.

Anonymous said...

12:47, 1:09, 2:43 and whatever. You do understand that in these small communities everybody knew everybody. The "unknown mob" was well known as there was no real need to conceal their identities form each other. The writers were also known and if there was one thing besides concealing the identities of the mob they had to do, it was attempt to justify the murder. They may have done this out of fear or kinship with the perpetrators, I think you do it out of stupidity.

Anonymous said...

I am both 12:47 and 1:09. I posted at 1:09 when I thought 12:47 went astray and did not post. Nothing sinister about that. The point is that lynchings were not confined to folks with dark skin. If you can't accept that reality, you have a problem.

And for you knuckle-heads who actually believe Miz Smith was referring to lynchings when she said public hangings, read the link provided above - There is a distinct and real difference between the two.

Meanwhile, wallow in your damned victim-hood if that keeps you satiated.

PS: 4:46; Your post makes absolutely no damned sense. But you knew that.

Anonymous said...

4:46, all that small town everybody-knows-everybody cuts both ways. This means in cases where the lynching was a punishment for a crime, like the Bolton murder for the sole purpose of robbery told in the first article, the mob was just as sure of who committed the crime as the reporter was certain who was in the mob. Funny how you only care about that fact slanting one direction. Once again, even when discussing 120 year old events, the responsibilities which come with being a nation of laws only apply to the reactors and not the original infractors.

Anonymous said...

Way to go Kingfish. Take newspaper articles that are well over 100 years old and stir up hate in the black community. Yes, we all know that those things happened and that they were wrong, but in light of the comment made by Senator Hyde-Smith they are nothing like the same thing. Public hanging was the legal manner of execution by the State ( in fact most of the states) for many years and had nothing to do with lynching. I believe the sentence pronounced by the judge was, “Mr. (insert name) you have been found guilty of the crime of,( crime ). It is therefore the sentence of this court that on the (date of execution) you will be hanged by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead. May God have mercy on your soul”. This was NOT lynching. This was JUSTICE.

Anonymous said...

This is exactly what 7:42 and Cindy failed to acknowledge. Their so called “justice” was state-sponsored terrorism to African Americans. You want to selectively pick and choose what you call fake news and pretend as if these articles accurately represent that the victims were tried by a jury of their peers. Just stop with the bs Wild West mentality to justify outright lynchings and murders. Acknowledge Mississippi’s dark history and strive to make it a better place. Continuing to make make excuses and condoning it as the norm of the day is exactly what sets us back and stirs distrust. The hate is well documented. Kingfish didn’t create these articles to stir it up. He just reposted facts.

Anonymous said...

"I must add, as the distinguished scholar and historian James I. Robertson of Virginia Tech did here last year, I am no apologist for the South, and I have never bought into what Penn Warren and his colleagues called the 'moonlight and magnolia school,' where the decorative past replaces the useable past."

"The South has many warts," he continued. "Chattel slavery and its aftermath is a stain on our story as it is a stain on every civilization in history. But slavery was a collective American tragedy. (President Abraham) Lincoln understood that there was enough guilt to be spread from Maine to Key West. To view our history and the ferocity of the Confederate soldier solely through the lens of slavery and by the slovenly standards of the present is dishonest and a disservice to our ancestors. We can't surrender American history to an enforced political orthodoxy dictated to our children by attention-starved politicians, street corner demagogues, and tenured campus radicals."

Anonymous said...

Anything to make you howl and scream racism. Get over your self and welcome to the 21st century. You will ever assimilate into modern society until you quit listening to the NAACP and start thinking for yourself. Times have changed and you have an equal opportunity to succeed. Keep listening to the radical idiots and you are doomed to fail. That is how they want to continue to keep you in poverty and enrich themselves. Wake up! They are using you.

Anonymous said...

After reading some of the stories, it seems as if nothing has changed in a hunnet years.

Anonymous said...

7:42 It is interesting, not funny, to see how the racist reacts when the truth about his history is presented without spin, interpretation, or opinion. KF simply posted contemporaneous accounts of murder which show the callous and truly murderous attitude of local white society at that time. Sure enough some neo-confederate has to find a way to justify the illegal actions of these "unknown" perpetrators rather than to use the opportunity to understand their place in Mississippi's development. Yes, there is a reason why black people are a little paranoid about nooses and lynchings. It's not part of their imagination or some NAACP plot. And no matter how you spin it, it was not legal even then. The people who did it were not identified and did not want to be officially identified because they knew they were wrong, even if the "law" looked the other way. It was a sick time but it was very real and had real effect. History is like that.

Anonymous said...

Just for information sake 7:42 you might want to take a visit to that civil rights museum and note how many actual legal hangings were carried ought in Mississippi vs ILLEGAL lynchings. Maybe waiting for all that legal mumbo jumbo wasn't as much fun. Oh yeah...tell Senator Smith to go with you.

Anonymous said...

JJ readers: “Black people need to get over the Jim Crow era of the 1950’s.”

Also JJ readers: “By God, don’t you take the stars and bars from the 1860’s off my state flag.”

Your comments are so stupid, they should have been written in crayon.

Anonymous said...

Many of us grew up watching western movies and TV shows with public hanging scenes so C H Smith was not stupid for making the comment itself; BUT, she was BOX of ROCKS STUPID for not knowing she would hand leftists something to twist into being about race; AND, that many of the electorate are sadly just too ignorant not to take the bait.

For the same reason we are still hearing about the 1955 Emmett Till murder that happened when Dwight D. Eisenhower was President of the United States, over 60 years ago, and before the vast majority (+/- 80%???) of American were born, Leftist have to make an issue of comments like C H Smith’s because the days of white rednecks killing black folk then getting away with it, including via “public hangings,” have long, long, long been gone in Mississippi.

According to an 11/12/18 NPR article, the NAACP states Mississippi had 581 lynchings from 1882 to 1968; the last being 50 YEARS AGO; again, before the vast majority of American were born.

How many years must one go back to find 581 murders by blacks in just the very small City of Jackson Mississippi alone? +/- 11 years???

So see folks, this CH Smith comment, just like talking about shit that hasn’t happened in over a half a century, is simply a distraction from the pathetic dismal failures of Leftist run cities; just like Jackson Mississippi!

Anonymous said...

Did you read the article about what the problem of the day was in 1890?

“The negro majority.”

White people in MS were scared to death blacks might revolt and kill all white people.

Lynchings were used to keep black people scared...it was effective.

The great migration saw huge swaths of Blacks move north to the point that blacks now make up almost 40% of MS population. Prison sentences have done much to void the black vote too.

MS to this day fears more than anything a black majority in MS.

Anonymous said...

I believe that there are a lot of deceased people who would still be alive if there killers knew they might face a death penalty as swift as a lynch mob. I also feel that there are a lot of deceased people who have been killed because their killers knew that Tomie Green would be the judge.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous December 8 @ 5:28 AM posts:

JJ readers: “By God, don’t you take the stars and bars from the 1860’s off my state flag. Your comments are so stupid, they should have been written in crayon."

Well; I'm not sure which is worse....a post written out of stupidity or one written out of willful ignorance. There is no image of The Stars and Bars on our state flag.

The Stars and Bars was an official Flag of The Confederacy. There's a difference between the Confederate Naval Jack and The Stars and Bars. Just like there's a difference between the ACLU and the NAACP (some say). Educate yourself, please.

Anonymous said...

Come on folks. Back in those days you could be Hung I mean Lynched as a horse thief or cattle rustler.
Don't apply today justice with the past ways they handed out justice, unless, you want to get something out of the comparison. Most of the hanging was to insure Law & Order.
I repeat don't compare past social justice with today social justice. Also, during the civil war the majority of people fighting for the south didn't own slaves.

Anonymous said...

Ok kingfish that’s a great history lesson thankyou I’m sure at least some of the lynched were innocent of their accusations- and I hope every last one of those have been in heaven for 120 years living it up. Now to be fair post all articles of blacks killing whites just in Jackson over the last 25 years. Thanks

Anonymous said...

The same people who think we need the Confederate emblem on our flag because “it’s history” are the ones spoiling themselves that KF posted these.

Kingfish said...

All right, this post is about the lynchings, not about the flag. You've had your say about the flag in this thread. I'm not approving any more comments about it no matter how many emails I get cussing me out.

Anonymous said...

I've never emailed you to cuss you out or otherwise. I usually tell you you're an asshole right here on the blog. lol.

You really do have a serious problem connecting things like lynchings, black opinions, thoughts on flags, misperceptions regarding the Confederacy and all things hateful.

NOTE: They are all inter-related.



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