Hangings And Lynchings

“Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it?  The first one is at least disposed of.

H.L. Mencken, 1880

I always wondered why when black people see a noose hanging from a tree they always picture a black person in it. Just between us, white folks can get hung too. The days of slavery and Jim Crow are long gone. Hell, this ain’t the 1930’s and there is a Walmart in every city and they sell rope at 5 cents a foot. I am not espousing violence. I am just saying, if you don’t know, you better ask somebody. It was a time when people saw a rope it meant the bad guys were getting ready to get their necks stretched and more than likely the bad guys were almost always white. Don’t take my word for it. Turn on any old western and you ain’t gonna see that many dangling dashiki’s. Matter of fact you ain’t gonna see that many dashiki’s at all unless they was helping the white man hang another white man and his native American friend. Yep racism is offensive, but I’m just the messenger, I hope you “hang” around to hear my message.

Hanging people has been the preferred method of execution in the United States since the pilgrims came here. But it didn’t originate with the pilgrims. The earliest records indicate they started stringing people up around 2500 years ago. Those records come from Persia, which is in modern Iran… cough… really. It was the preferred method because it produced a highly visible deterrent by a simple method. It also made a good public spectacle, considered important during those times, as viewers looked above them to the gallows or tree to watch the punishment. It was a social affair. Many people brought their families and enjoyed hair of dog and pig testicles before the main event. The pre-event usually consisted of some type of other torture, like castrating a few folks for stealing a few slices of moldy bread. But you couldn’t beat a head popping off once they pulled the floor out from under the unlucky person on the gallows, that was their bread and butter. The first recorded hanging in the New World happened at Plymouth Rock. The unfortunate hangee was was named John Billington. Usually most hangings are carried out by a sheriff or other legal authority. However, this being the New World and all, the settlers strung him up. He was accused of killing another settler by the name of John Newcomen.  He wasn’t very well liked by the other settlers because of his foul language according to the records and although I wasn’t there, I think he was hitting on the captain’s wife. I don’t like to spread rumors but….

The earliest recorded female hanged in America was that of Jane Champion in 1632 in Virginia for an unknown offense. I know many of you think I’m gonna make a wise crack, but I’m going to leave that right there. Guilty of “flapping his hands and arms” and “behaving in a peculiar manner,” Thomas Hellier, a 14-year-old white boy, became a suspect in a rash of thefts and was sentenced to a life of bondage on a Virginia plantation. Never agreeable to his servile status, Hellier was sold several years later to a harsh taskmaster named Cutbeard Williamson. After Williamson, Williamson’s wife, and a maid were murdered with an ax while they slept one night, Hellier was assumed to be the murderer and hanged by a mob on August 5, 1678. His body was lashed with chains to a tall tree overlooking the James River where it remained for several years until it rotted away. Yes they had white slaves back then. If he had been a black man, then the records would have read, ” A colored man named Thomas was sold to a harsh taskmaster named Cutbeard Williamson who killed him because….  “unreadable“…… and his body was lashed with chains to a tall tree overlooking the James River where it remained for several years until it rotted away. ” Later historians would say, “Looks like that’s all they got in the records about Thomas.”

It was during the American Revolution that the term lynch law originated with Colonel Charles Lynch, a Virginia planter and his associates, who began to make their own vigilante rules for confronting the British Tories, loyalists to England, and other criminal elements. Other criminal elements huh… I just can’t…  Anywho, this type of rough justice was also used regularly by whites against their African American slaves. Those white men who protested were often in danger of being lynched  themselves. One such man was Elijah Lovejoy, editor of the Alton Illinois Observer, who was shot by a white mob after publishing articles criticizing lynching and advocating the abolition of slavery. So now you know, lynch is actually the name of the person who started it in America. After the revolution, the most common hangings of white men were due to war-related crimes such as spying espionage, treason or desertion. Blacks were summarily hanged, at the will of their owners, most often for the “official” reason of revolt. However, it could have been for any cause whatsoever and merely “labeled” as such. Whites who sympathized with the slaves were also often hanged. That rope was equal opportunity, you got a neck, we will hang you.

In the first part of the 19th century, opponents of slavery, cattle rustlers, horse thieves, gamblers and other “deplorables” in the South and the Old West and who were not of African American descent were the most common targets of hanging. The state of Montana holds the record for the bloodiest vigilante movement from 1863 to 1865 when hundreds of suspected horse thieves were rounded up and killed by hanging. You don’t mess with a fella’s horse back in those days. You rather go to a Klan meeting playing Biggie Smalls “Juicy Fruit” rather than “fucc” with “dat.” By the turn of the century, the Old West had instituted official legal entities throughout the states and most of the vigilante groups had disappeared. From there on out, almost all of the lynchings that occurred in the 20th century were either racially or politically motivated. Most of us know the story from here forward. IN 2018 although there were no acted on reported lynchings, the specter of blacks being killed by hanging ” just because” in a not so long ago era still haunts us… haunts you.  Anyway, I have only touched on a little bit of the history of hanging and lynching. You can find a great article on it here. Until then my people, don’t be worried about every racist that puts a rope in a tree. Go to Walmart, buy you some rope, and go on and hang a couple nooses off the tree in your own backyard.  Happy Holidays !!!

 

 

 

 

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