Lynching as racial terrorism

If you are glad we in the US are not like ISIS, and don’t do brutal, horrible killings, you might think again:

From the NY Times:

It is important to remember that the hangings, burnings and dismemberments of black American men, women and children that were relatively common in this country between the Civil War and World War II were often public events. They were sometimes advertised in newspapers and drew hundreds and even thousands of white spectators, including elected officials and leading citizens who were so swept up in the carnivals of death that they posed with their children for keepsake photographs within arm’s length of mutilated black corpses.

Kirvin, Tex., where three black men accused of killing a white woman were set on fire in 1922 before a crowd of hundreds.History of Lynchings in the South Documents Nearly 4,000 NamesFEB. 10, 2015
These episodes of horrific, communitywide violence have been erased from civic memory in lynching-belt states like Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Florida and Mississippi. But that will change if Bryan Stevenson, a civil rights attorney, succeeds in his mission to build markers and memorials at lynching sites throughout the South as a way of forcing communities and the country to confront an era of racial terror directly and recognize the role that it played in shaping the current racial landscape.

One of the important questions raised is whether the more recent treatment of African Americans by the police and the judicial system is really a substitute for lynching. Do read the article. Even the comments I have seen are better than usual. (I probably will regret saying that.)