I started transcribing your post 'Creating the Perfect Eyewitness - Part Two' dated June 16th 2012, and at the end of Page 1, in the middle of a sentence, a new heading appeared, 'Creating the Perfect Eyewitness - Part Three.' I think there may have been a slight mix up when your handwritten pages were scanned into the website, so next week, before I start transcribing the next one that needs doing, I'll do a search on the existing transcripts and see if someone else has already transcribed Page 2 of Creating the Perfect Eyewitness - Part Two.' I can then insert a link into my transcription, so that people know where to read the rest of your original piece. If I can't find it, because I know what you want people to know is very precise information, I will print off what is currently available from that particular series, and send them to you.
As you know, we will not be entering into a penpal dialogue, but I think it is important that what appears on this website is exactly what you want to say and if that is the only way we can ensure that, so be it.
The seeds you planted are taking hold. With kind regards Lavender
PS Thanks for the Messages. It's good to know you're receiving them.
Early America was incredibly violent in general - stemming in part from the endemic violence in British society and partly from the violence that tends to be associated with frontier societies. For most of its history, lynching was a non-racial phenomenon - in fact, it most often directed at white people. The term "Lynch law" was derived from the mob violence directed at Tories, or British loyalists, just after the American Revolution. While there is disagreement about the precise origins of the term - some associate it with Charles Lynch, a Revolution-era Justice-of-the-Peace who imprisoned Tories, others see it as the legacy of an armed militia founded near the Lynche River or the militia captain named Lynch who created judicial tribunals in Virginia in 1776 - there is no reference to the term earlier than 1768, more than half a century after the date given for the speech.
Given the sparse judicial resources (judges were forced to travel from town-to-town hearing cases, which is where we get the term "judicial circuit") and the frequency of property crimes in the early republic, lynching was often seen as a form of community justice. Not until the 1880s, after the end of Reconstruction, did "lynching" become associated with African Americans; gradually the number of blacks lynched each year surpassed the number of whites until it became almost exclusively directed at black people late in the century. (Nevertheless, between 1882 and 1944, Tuskegee University recorded 3,417 lynchings with black victims -- and 1,291 lynchings with white ones.)
The Willie Lynch speech would seem to give a quick-and-easy explanation of the roots of our much-lamented "black disunity." You could make similar arguments about the lingering effects of a real historical document like the 1845 tract, "Religious Instruction of Negroes" - written by a proslavery Presbyterian minister - or the British practice of mixing different African ethnicities on slave ships in order to make communication - and therefore rebellion - more difficult. But this too is questionable - it presumes that whites, or any other diverse group, do not face divisive gender issues, generation gaps and class distinctions. Willie Lynch offers no explanation for the white pro-lifer who guns down a white abortion-provider or white-on-white domestic violence. He does not explain political conflicts among different Latino groups or crime in Asian communities. Unity is not the same as unanimity and in the end, black people are no more disunited than any other group of people - and a lot more united than we give ourselves credit for.
RSS
I started transcribing your post 'Creating the Perfect Eyewitness - Part Two' dated June 16th 2012, and at the end of Page 1, in the middle of a sentence, a new heading appeared, 'Creating the Perfect Eyewitness - Part Three.' I think there may have been a slight mix up when your handwritten pages were scanned into the website, so next week, before I start transcribing the next one that needs doing, I'll do a search on the existing transcripts and see if someone else has already transcribed Page 2 of Creating the Perfect Eyewitness - Part Two.' I can then insert a link into my transcription, so that people know where to read the rest of your original piece. If I can't find it, because I know what you want people to know is very precise information, I will print off what is currently available from that particular series, and send them to you.
As you know, we will not be entering into a penpal dialogue, but I think it is important that what appears on this website is exactly what you want to say and if that is the only way we can ensure that, so be it.
The seeds you planted are taking hold.
With kind regards
Lavender
PS Thanks for the Messages. It's good to know you're receiving them.
Given the sparse judicial resources (judges were forced to travel from town-to-town hearing cases, which is where we get the term "judicial circuit") and the frequency of property crimes in the early republic, lynching was often seen as a form of community justice. Not until the 1880s, after the end of Reconstruction, did "lynching" become associated with African Americans; gradually the number of blacks lynched each year surpassed the number of whites until it became almost exclusively directed at black people late in the century. (Nevertheless, between 1882 and 1944, Tuskegee University recorded 3,417 lynchings with black victims -- and 1,291 lynchings with white ones.)
The Willie Lynch speech would seem to give a quick-and-easy explanation of the roots of our much-lamented "black disunity." You could make similar arguments about the lingering effects of a real historical document like the 1845 tract, "Religious Instruction of Negroes" - written by a proslavery Presbyterian minister - or the British practice of mixing different African ethnicities on slave ships in order to make communication - and therefore rebellion - more difficult. But this too is questionable - it presumes that whites, or any other diverse group, do not face divisive gender issues, generation gaps and class distinctions. Willie Lynch offers no explanation for the white pro-lifer who guns down a white abortion-provider or white-on-white domestic violence. He does not explain political conflicts among different Latino groups or crime in Asian communities. Unity is not the same as unanimity and in the end, black people are no more disunited than any other group of people - and a lot more united than we give ourselves credit for.
May 2004 response by William Jelani Cobb