Black Women anti-lynching crusade

One hundred years ago today … The Crusaders, an all-women anti-lynching organization, held a fundraiser at Happy Rhone’s Unique Orchestra Club at 654 Lenox Avenue, between 143rd and 144th Streets, a venue later, or sometimes, called Happy Rhone’s Radium Club– the owner of which donated the space. Among the performers were future jazz/blues legend Alberta Hunter.

The Crusaders s were advocating for the US government to pass the Dyer Bill, first proposed in 1918, that would make lynching a federal crime. The group had formed in the summer of 1922, with a slogan of: "A Million Women United to Stop Lynching." Their mission statement, available online at Alexander Street.com, was likely written by New York City representative Grace Nail Johnson, a Black activist and entrepreneur. It explains:

They are trying to raise at least one dollar from every woman united with them and to finish this work on or before January 1st 1923. The reason that they believe this work to be of pressing importance is because of the facts as to lynching which confront every American. First of all, how many people realize that since 1889 eighty-three women are known to have been lynched? 

("Plan Organization of 1,000,000 Women to Stop Lynching in United States”)

NY1920s previously posted about the Dyer Bill, specifically James Weldon Johnson’s editorial about it for the New York Age of June 19, 1920. In October, 1922, Johnson (who was married to Grace Nail Johnson) was writing about the act again, decrying the Senate’s  continued inability to push through the“first fundamental issue of national import to the colored people of the United States that has been put squarely before the Republican Party since the Civil Rights Bill” (Johnson, James Weldon, “Views and Reviews.” New York Age, 7 October, 1922, p. 4). Despite this status, Johnson ends his column with optimism: “The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill is not dead. Indeed, it is very much alive.” 

It would be 100 years before the federal government passed an anti-lynching bill, the “Emmet Till Antilynching Law,” of 2022.

Note: NY1920s also reported on lynching in posts about Claude McKay’s poem, “The Lynching” and Madeline Allison’s survey of lynchings across the US.

References/ Further Reading:

Document 8: "Plan Organization of 1,000,000 Women to Stop Lynching in United States," [1922], NAACP Papers, Part 7: The Anti-Lynching Campaign, 1912-1955, Series B: Anti-Lynching Legislative and Publicity Files, 1916-1955, Library of Congress (Microfilm, Reel 3, Frame 559), by National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Baltimore, MD.

– Jonathan Goldman, Oct. 24, 2022

TAGS: women’s history, Black history, African American activism, racial violence, N.A.A.C.P., civil rights, government, politics, white supremacy