“American Barbarism”: Lynching

The third post in our series on Black New York, 1921, for Black History Month

One hundred years ago today … Madeline Allison reported on the lynchings of 1920 and James Weldon Johnson fulminated against a recent case, that of Henry Lowry in Nodena, Arkansas on January 26, 1921.

In an editorial for the Age titled “American Barbarism,” Johnson decried a “revolting chapter” in the history of US lynchings. He describes how an anonymous mob of whites had announced their plans in advance, in the press, to attack Lowry, a Black man accused of murder as he was being transported from Texas to Arkansas to stand trial, and how law enforcement had taken no steps to stop the lynching. The event, Johnson writes, will instill in Black people either “the quakings of fear or the desires for vengeance.” Johnson exhorts the US to “arise and stamp out this sort of thing.” However, as we noted the last time we reported on a Johnson’s anti-lynching manifesto, lynching is to this day not a federal US crime, having been held up by the Republican Party in 1920 and 2020.

(Read Johnson’s entire piece at the bottom of this page.)

As the Age was printing Johnson’s screed, the newest issue of the Crisis carried its annual report about the “Lynching Industry.”  Written by “M.G. Allison”–Madeline Allison, secretary of the monthly journal, the article announces that 69 lynchings were known to have occurred in the US in 1920, of which 59 victims were Black men, one a Black woman. The only image from a lynching the Crisis would print was that of three white men hung in Santa Rosa, California, on December 10, 1920.

Note: NY1920s has featured The Crisis, the N.A.A.C.P. journal–edited by W.E.B. Du Bois, headquartered at 70 5th Avenue at 11th Street–in numerous posts, starting with one for February 1, 1920. We specifically highlighted its annual lynching report one year and one day ago. We also remind readers that we reported about Claude McKay's 1920 poem "The Lynching," in a post by our team member Micah Rimondo.

In a graphic, the journal crowns Georgia the “Empire State of Lynching,” noting that 460 cases since the Civil War had been reported there, more than for any other state.

Here is the Johnson editorial:

Note: James Weldon Johnson, New York Age editor and Executive Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), has frequently appeared on this site, starting with the post for January 3rd, 1920.

Also see: our Black History Month posts for February 1920

– Jonathan Goldman, February 5, 2021

TAGS: lynching, racism, white supremacy, terrorism, mobs, African American history, Black history, violence, journalism, Black Press, Black Lives Matter