For the next unit, my blog titles will probably be less humorous. We’ve started learning about the Civil Rights Movement, and making jokes about that just seems….wrong. So yeah, ix nay on the jokes at the moment.

For my first reflection, I decided to do it on lynching. I was interested in the topic because a couple years ago I saw the movie 12 Years a Slave and one of the scenes that really stuck with me was the hanging scene. It made me so uncomfortable, because it was supposed to.

I didn’t really know the significance of that scene at the time, just that it was really freaking uncomfortable it was to watch and how awful it was. When we learned about lynching, my mind went back to that scene in the movie, and just how awful it was to watch on screen. I can barely imagine how depressing it would be to see that in real life.

Along with the fact that people would go out and watch it. They would purposefully go out and watch the killing of other people.

So I tried to do a video on where lynching came from and how it continued to happen into the 60’s. It was kind of hard, because that’s something that’s hard to pinpoint. Luckily, there were quite a few sources I found from the time period that explored the topic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT4cBdZTKrk

If you’re interested, here are some of the primary sources I pulled from to make the video.

“Why is the Negro Lynched?” by Fredrick Douglass (1895)

“The Truth About Lynching and The Negro in the South: In Which the Author Pleads That the South be Made Safe for the White Race” by Winfield H. Collins (1918)

Eleanor Roosevelt to Walter White detailing the First Lady’s lobbying efforts for federal action against lynchings letter, (19 March 1936)

A terrible blot on American civilization (1922)