Lynching Data

  

We combed through 2,850 records of lynching victims, ultimately confirming 1,319 victims and finding 15 lynching victims not recorded in any data set, for a total of 1,334 victims of lynching. Lynching spanned 33 states over this period, with only Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont totally untouched. While searching, we also found three lynchings within the Tolnay-Beck states, one of which was previously unrecorded and two of which were incorrectly recorded by the NAACP and Chicago Tribune as having occurred outside the South. There were also many cases for which our improved data allowed us to identify and name a victim who was lynched at a similar time and place as a victim listed by the NAACP or Chicago Tribune inventories as “unknown.”

When combined with the new Tolnay-Beck data, we record 4,467 total victims of lynching from 1883 to 1941. Of these victims, 4,027 were men, 99 were women, and 341 were unknown gender (although likely male); 3,265 were black, 1,082 were white, 71 were Mexican or of Mexican descent, 38 were American Indian, 10 were Chinese, and 1 was Japanese.

 

  Seguin, Charles, and David Rigby. “National Crimes: A New National Data Set of Lynchings in the United States, 1883 to 1941.” Socius, Jan. 2019

Civil Rights was for the blacks.

 

"They was all white."

Creoles understood the benefits of exploiting whiteness for material gain. Sometimes, even having a person of color who looked white with his hand on one's shoulder was enough to reap benefits. Earl A. Barthé recalled that, when traveling through the South as a young man while looking for work,

there were these little highway diners. But if you were black, you might be able to stop and get gas but you couldn't go in to eat. You couldn't use the rest room. Not unless you were white. So, me and Harold [Earl A. Barthé's brother], we were travelling with a dark-skinned fella, we would sit in the back seat of the car and pretend he was the driver when we pulled in. We would get out and say "boy, fill up the tank while we get some sandwiches," and we would walk right in and order the food "to go."... They thought we was white. They didn't know... A white man might look at you twice but he wouldn't ask you if you was white if you carried yourself like you were white...we could be Mexican or we could be Indians or Italians and they was all white...we just wanted to get our food and get on to the next job, man! We were looking for work! We weren't on vacation!

Barthé, Darryl. Becoming American in Creole New Orleans, 1896–1949. United States, LSU Press, 2021.

Slavery is essential

I agree with you that the great development of your colony, and of the other colonies of Texas, depends among other things, upon permitting their inhabitants to introduce slaves; that by such action many men of property will come; and that without it only the wretched will come who cannot advance the province. But, my friend, in my Congress such arguments were not listened to. On the contrary, when slavery was discussed the whole Congress become electrified in considering the wretchedness of that portion of humanity; and it was resolved that commerce and traffic in slaves should be forever extinguished in our republic and that the introduction of slaves into our territory should not be permitted under any pretext.

...

I beg your excellency to interpose your influence so that the Supreme Government of the Union may grant to this department exemption from the decree which abolishes slavery; or communicate to me as quickly as possible your decision concerning the action that I should take. I assure you that on my part your order shall be complied with immediately. I have only sought to point out the evils that would follow the execution of the decree in this department. I estimate that the number of slaves in the new settlements is approximately one thousand of both sexes. Their owners value them at around 300,000 pesos.

Juan Nepomuceno Seguin to Stephen Austin, July 24, 1825

Learning about segregation in Texas

Mendez case "was NOT based on racial equality"

School desegregation brings to mind famous photos of African-American children integrating classrooms after the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. But over seven years earlier, five Latino families fought and won a case that helped integrate schools in California. On its 70th anniversary we look back at the mostly forgotten Mendez v. Westminster case.

When attorney David Marcus filed the lawsuit in 1945, his case was not based on racial equality. At that time, the Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson ruling allowed for the separation of races as long as there were equal facilities, so the courts were rejecting the argument that segregation based on race was unconstitutional. For Marcus, the key would be to prove not that segregation was wrong, but that Latino students were white and being discriminated against.

...

On Feb. 18, 1946, U.S. District Judge Paul McCormick of Los Angeles ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. “A paramount requisite in the American system of public education is social equality. It must be open to all children by unified school association regardless of lineage,” he wrote. This rejection of the idea that schools could be “separate but equal” stirred excitement among civil rights groups, who thought Mendez v. Westminster might be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where a victory could be used to integrate schools across the country.

In the end, an appellate court narrowed Judge McCormick’s decision to apply solely to Latino students in the specific districts listed in the lawsuit. The case fell into obscurity and the civil rights spotlight focused on racial integration.

 

Kelly, Brigid. (2016, Feb. 22). 70 years ago, California ended a type of segregation. KCRW. 

"The niggers always get what they want - Chicanos never do!"

The biggest problem facing the Houston Independent School District in implementing its court-ordered desegregation plan is a city-wide boycott of public schools by an estimated 3,500 Mexican-American students. 

The strike was called by the Mexican-American Education Council (MAEC) following a meeting with the school board on August 27 concerning HISD's proposed pairing plan. The plan has zoned neighborhoods so that Chicano students, considered "white" by the federal court, are integrated with black students, leaving anglo schools largely unaffected and still lily white.  

...

The underlying racism in many students' decision to boycott, however, was obvious again at the Enrichment school. One ninth grader told me he was boycotting because "the niggers always get what they want - Chicanos never do!" A common feeling was that the students were afraid of going to schools that were predominantly black because "black kids are always bossing us around, picking fights."

 

Duncan, Cam. "La Raza vs. School Board." Space City News, September 19, 1970 , p. 3

"No question of race discrimination"

  "Mendez et al. v. Westminster School District of Orange County, 64 F. Supp. 544 (1946), Conclusions of the Court"

"I don't see myself as a great victim of discrimination"

SHE IS BRIGHT, smart, tough. "I'm a very controlled person," says Linda Chavez, 36, the new U.S. Civil Rights Commission staff director who sent out shock waves by denouncing hiring quotas. In her Thomas Circle office, she sits with hands folded on her desk, business suit and blouse flawlessly neat, not a hair out of place. She is smiling. Her voice is warm and low, her speech energetic.

She talks about how it feels to be treated differently because your skin is brown.

"I have had more difficulty with what I consider discriminatory and prejudiced behavior from liberals who thought they were doing me a favor than I have ever experienced from bigots," she says. "Maybe it shaped some of my attitudes on the whole affirmative action and quota business." 

...

She was denigrated by Anglos, called a Mexican. "I don't see myself as a great victim of discrimination . . . Blacks have experienced the most severe discrimination in our society."

 

McCombs, Phil. "The Civil Struggles Of Linda Chavez." The Washington Post, January 30, 1984

"White Persons of Spanish Surname"

 

 

Chicano, Boricua. Mexican American. Latino. Puerto Rican. Spanish American. Raza. Latin American. Hispanic. Spanish Origin. White Person of Spanish Surname. The list of names seems endless and confusing. Which term is correct? 

...

This leads to a legal complication: with confusion in methodology, eligibility for civil rights and affirmative action benefits can be capriciously applied, favoring persons who do not meet the spirit of the law but fall within its literal interpretation due to methodological inconsistency. This capriciousness is beginning to generate a potentially devastating legal backlash.

...

Continued use of the term "Hispanic" or "Spanish Origin" denies the very basis upon which discrimination has been based, and confuses the basis for civil rights and affirmative action efforts. Because of this terminological and methodological confusion, not only is health research hampered, but legal efforts are placed in jeopardy. In 1979 in Maryland an Anglo named Robert E. Lee had his name legally changed to Roberto E. Leon in the hope he would qualify for affirmative action benefits because he would then have a Spanish surname. This transparent ploy served to mock affirmative action. Yet, in reality, he was mocking an imprecise methodology. Judge Weber in Pittsburgh ruled that Hispanics are not a race, and denied affirmative action benefits to a person who had submitted proof that his father was a Mexican. Judge Renfrew, a proposed Carter appointee, has stated that Hispanics are no more than "lazy Caucasians", and not eligible for affirmative action efforts. One can understand such confusion as long as such terms as "white person of Spanish surname," "Hispanic," or "Spanish descent" are used for identification purposes.

 

Hayes - Bautista, D. E. Identifying "Hispanic" populations: The influence of research methodology upon public policy. American Journal of Public Health, 1980, 671-687

Passing for an oppressed minority

 

In 1985 I found out that the affirmative action office of the university where I work was counting me as a “minority faculty,” member of the so-called “Hispanic ethnic group.” It was then that I became interested in the label and its implications for the people it identifies. I found its political construction and usage particularly worthy of examination because it abolishes, for all practical purposes, the qualitative historical differences between the experiences and life chances of U.S. minority groups of Mexican and Puerto Rican origin, and those of Latin American and Spanish peoples. The label imputes to Latin Americans a contrived “Hispanic ethnicity” while minoritizing them in the process (i.e., defining them as members of a minority group even though they have never been historically oppressed as such in the United States.)’ Because the label is used in the context of affirmative action, it places professional and skilled immigrants in objective competition with members of the U.S. minority groups and forces them to pass, statistically, as members of an oppressed group.

 

Martha E. Gimenez, "Latino/'Hispanic': Who Needs a Name? The Case Against a Standardized Terminology," International Journal of Health Services 19:3 (1989), pp. 557-571.