Without Fear or Shame: Lynching, Capital Punishment and the Subculture of Violence in the American South

Abstract

Recent studies of lynching have focused on structural theories that have been tested with demographic, economic and electoral data without much explanatory success. This article suggests that lynching was largely a reflection of a facilitating subculture of violence within which these atrocities were situationally determined by cultural factors not reported in census and economic tabulations, or election returns. Lynching declined in the twentieth century, in part, as a result of segregation and disfranchisement policies, but mainly because state executioners replaced lynch mobs in carrying out the will of the white majority.On Sunday afternoon, 23 April 1899, Sam Hose was lynched after church services in Palmetto, Georgia. Hose had admitted killing his employer in self-defence when the latter tried to shoot him during a dispute over wages. To that undisputed fact was added the totally fictitious rumour that Hose had also sexually assaulted the slain man's wife. The Atlanta Constitution offered a five-hundred dollar reward for Hose's capture, announcing that he would be burned alive. Bulletins were subsequently tacked up everywhere people gathered, announcing the place and date of the scheduled burning. Public interest was so aroused that special excursion trains were scheduled to carry curious spectators from Atlanta. Ladies clothed in their Sunday finery watched from carriages, gazing excitedly over the heads of men carrying small children on their shoulders as the ritual began.Hose was led to a stake placed in the middle of a dirt road. There he was bound with chains. Yelps and cheers rose from the throng of some two thousand people as Hose's ears were sliced off and thrown to anxious onlookers. As he writhed in agony, fingers and toes were amputated before the screaming man's tongue was removed with a pair of pliers. Only then was the coal oil poured ceremoniously over his prostrate body. There was a loud cheer as he was set aflame. When the flames receded, the charred corpse was eviscerated, an enterprising Georgian removing internal organs to sell as souvenirs. Bones went for a quarter; slices of his heart and liver were cheaper at ten cents each. And

Retracted: A Legacy of Lynchings: Perceived Black Criminal Threat Among Whites

“…Research points to a complex array of forces that led to lynchings. As King et al (: 294) have emphasized, the literature on lynchings “include psychological and psychoanalytic accounts, arguments about the reliance on popular or vigilante justice to compensate for the perceived ineffectiveness of legal institutions, cultural interpretations highlighting southern notions of chivalry and honor, and ‘social threat’ accounts emphasizing the political and economic competition between blacks and whites” (see, e.g., Clarke ; King et al ; Wells ; Messner et al ). Regardless, one consistent theme that surfaces across these accounts is that lynchings emanated from and reflected extreme racial hatred.…”

“…As Markovitz (: xvii) has argued, “lynchings were never entirely confined to the physical realm and were instead always intended to be seen as a metaphor for race relations,” and this metaphor “has resurfaced, changed, and been deployed over time.” In this view, lynchings provided a reflection of a broader racial tension that governed whites' views of blacks. The penetration of this tension in communities in turn created the foundation for a legacy and culture of racial hatred that could resurface in subsequent decades (Carrigan ; Clarke ; Durso and Jacobs ; Frazier ; Gabriel and Tolnay ). King et al (: 292) have, for example, argued that the “racial antagonism” embodied by lynchings “tends to be deeply ingrained in culture (i.e., it dies hard),” and thus continue to influence modern racial dynamics.…”

Violent Societies

“…Gang violence, even when it is a subculture of violence, is still symptomatic of broader societal violence -a 'common sense' in broader society, as Hume calls it. 3 Much of the research on subcultures of violence have analysed patterns of violence in the American South (Ball-Rokaech, 1973;Clarke, 1998;Cohen, 1998;Ellison, 1991;Gleaser and Glendon, 1998;Nisbett and Cohen, 1996). In this regard, Clarke (1998, p. 276) makes two very relevant points: firstly, that even within a subculture of violence, not all members will use violence all the time.…”

Lynching as Psychological Turmoil in Selected African American Plays

“…De trubble wid you is, you's too skeered ter 'sert yer rights ez a man. (4)(5) Even before lynching begins to drive the actions of the family, one can perceive how deep the psychological scars are suppressing the black psyche. In this dialogue the characters are deeply concerned in questioning some basic concepts in the family life such as manhood and womanhood.…”