• 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    A lot were hung from the neck to their death, many (maybe most?) victims of lynchings were only “strung up” for display after they were already slowly tortured to death, such as cutting off the victims’ fingers and ears, genitals, stabbing them with corkscrews to pull out twitching entrails and chunks of muscle, beaten nearly to death, and thrown on a fire, still writhing, or all of the above, such Luther Holbert in 1904. I don’t think I’ve seen photos of one lynching were the bodies weren’t bloodied and battered, if not utterly mutilated.

    The association of nooses, of gallows executions, with lynching understates the inhumanity and depravity of it. The public display of such senseless brutality, based solely on race, was the point: it was to keep everyone, white and black, in line, as you put it. White kids took home fingers and teeth as souvenirs; it seems to me that it usually had nothing to do with whatever pretext. The pretexts used to justify the lynchings, such as one US Army private who refused to empty his pockets before shopping, or one free man who addressed a sheriff by the name on his shirt without saying Mister first, are things that were not crimes.

    The reasons didn’t actually matter to the perpetrators, victims didn’t actually have to commit a crime to be singled and murdered. Even when there was a criminal charge, it was usually bogus and the trial was always a sham. I’m not trying to pick on you Maggoty but I like you so I want you to appreciate what you’re saying.

    https://eji.org/wp-content/uploads/2005/11/lynching-in-america-3d-ed-110121.pdf

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      You don’t like me, I’m Pro Palestinian. You’re also talking to someone that grew up in a border state reading all the history books the state told us not to read because they’re “embarrassing.” I’m keeping it simple for the foreigners. And hanging them, even if it was just the body made the noose an effective icon. So much so the the KKK took to leaving a noose in a nearby tree as a warning, and they still do it. Anyone who wants to be super literal can go look at Emmett Till’s face.