Civil War reprisals: lynching
Execution of a Colored Soldier (1864) Pohl p.210
Often used as “revenge” for black threats to white women, or as reprisal for successful black businesses
Post-bellum rise of resistant white supremacist, black-terrorizing groups such as the Klu Klux Klan (later celebrated in Griffith’s epic film Birth of a Nation)
Lynching continued as a cultural phenomenon into the 20th Century:
- Gwendolyn Brooks’ and Abel Meeropol’s poetry
- Joe Jones, American Justice (White Justice) (1933) Pohl p.410
- Boris Gorelick, Strange Fruit (1939) Pohl p.411
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Paul Cadmus, To the Lynching! (1935) Pohl p.411