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Wilmington, North Carolina once had a thriving Black middle class and an elected interracial government. In 1898 white supremacists used violence to overthrow that government, kill Black residents and drive many others from the city.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
There are multiple recorded instances of the lynching of Italian Americans, most notably the 1891 New Orleans lynchings, one of the largest mass lynchings in US history.[1] Between 1880 and 1921, there have been at least 50 documented cases of Italians being lynched in 9 states. While the vast majority of lynching victims during the late 1800s and early 1900s were African Americans, Italians were lynched in higher numbers compared to some other immigrant groups.
The majority of lynching victims in the United States have been African Americans. Over 4,000 African Americans have been lynched in American history.[2] Around 1,000 lynching victims have been white. Among white lynching victims, American Jews, Italian Americans, a German-American, a Finnish-American, and others have been lynched. Some Mexican-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Native Americans were also lynched. Between 1880 and 1921, there were over 50 documented cases of Italian Americans being lynched in 9 states including Florida, Louisiana, Illinois, New York, Mississippi, Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, and Washington state.[3]
In 1895, five Italians were lynched in Colorado by vigilantes after they had been convicted of the murder of a saloon keeper.[4]
Two Italian men were lynched in Tampa, Florida in 1910. The two men, Castenego Ficarrotta and Angelo Albano, were handcuffed together and hanged in a swamp. Ficarrotta was a naturalized citizen. The Italian Embassy released a statement in the wake of the lynching stating that Albano was an Italian citizen.[5]
An Italian male, Louis Laferdetta, was lynched by hanging in Boone County, Kentucky, on July 17, 1894.[6] He was lynched after being accused of murdering a farmer.[7]
In 1899, all five Italians living in Tallulah, Louisiana were lynched.[8]
In 1901, a mob chased four Italians out of Marksville, Louisiana.[9]
Two attempted or completed lynchings of Italians occurred in Mississippi in 1901. A mob attacked a group of Italians and another mob lynched an Italian in Erwin, Mississippi, and a mob chased four Italians out of Marksville, Louisiana.[9]
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
There are multiple recorded instances of the lynching of Italian Americans, most notably the 1891 New Orleans lynchings, one of the largest mass lynchings in US history. Between 1880 and 1921, there have been at least 50 documented cases of Italians being lynched in 9 states. While the vast majority of lynching victims during the late 1800s and early 1900s were African Americans, Italians were lynched in higher numbers compared to some other immigrant groups.
This is a list of lynching victims in the United States. While the definition has changed over time, lynching is often defined as the summary execution of one or more persons without due process of law by a group of people organized internally and not authorized by a legitimate government. Lynchers may claim to be issuing punishment for an alleged crime; however, they are not a judicial body nor deputized by one. Lynchings in the United States became more frequent after the American Civil War in the late 19th century, following the emancipation of slaves; they became less common in the 1920s. Nearly 3,500 African Americans and 1,300 white people were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968. Most lynchings were of African-American men in the Southern United States, but women were also lynched. More than 73 percent of lynchings in the post–Civil War period occurred in the Southern states. White lynchings of black people also occurred in the Midwestern United States and the Border States, especially during the 20th-century Great Migration of black people out of the Southern United States. According to the United Nations' Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, the purpose for many of the lynchings was to enforce white supremacy and intimidate black people through racial terrorism. According to Ida B. Wells and the Tuskegee University, most lynching victims were accused of murder or attempted murder. Rape or attempted rape was the second most common accusation; such accusations were often pretexts for lynching black people who violated Jim Crow etiquette or engaged in economic competition with white people. Sociologist Arthur F. Raper investigated one hundred lynchings during the 1930s and estimated that approximately one-third of the victims were falsely accused. On a per capita basis, lynchings were also common in California and the Old West, especially of Latinos, although they represented less than 10% of the national total. Native Americans, Asian Americans, Jewish Americans, and Italian-Americans were also lynched. Other ethnicities, including Finnish-Americans and German-Americans were also lynched occasionally. At least six law officers were killed trying to stop lynch mobs, three of whom succeeded at the cost of their own lives, including Deputy Sheriff Samuel Joseph Lewis in 1882, and two law officers in 1915 in South Carolina. Three law officers were themselves hanged by lynch mobs (Henry Plummer in 1864; James Murray in 1897; Carl Etherington in 1910).
Lynching is the occurrence of extrajudicial killings that began in the United States' pre–Civil War South in the 1830s and had mostly ended by time of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, although instances occurred as late as 1981 or 1998, depending on categorization. Although the victims of lynchings were members of various ethnicities, after roughly 4 million enslaved African Americans were emancipated, they became the primary victims of lynchings by white Southerners. Lynchings in the U.S. reached their height from the 1890s to the 1920s, and they primarily victimized ethnic minorities. Most of the lynchings occurred in the American South, where the majority of African Americans lived, but racially motivated lynchings also occurred in the Midwest and the border states of the Southwest, where Mexicans were often the victims of lynchings.Lynchings followed African Americans with the Great Migration (c. 1916–1970) out of the American South, and were often perpetrated to enforce white supremacy and intimidate ethnic minorities along with other acts of racial terrorism. A significant number of lynching victims were accused of murder or attempted murder. Rape, attempted rape, or other forms of sexual assault were the second most common accusation; these accusations were often used as a pretext for lynching African Americans who were accused of violating Jim Crow era etiquette or engaged in economic competition with Whites. One study found that there were "4,467 total victims of lynching from 1883 to 1941. Of these victims, 4,027 were men, 99 were women, and 341 were of unidentified 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." Several incidents have been cited as the largest mass lynching in history including the 1919 Elaine massacre of African-Americans in Arkansas (100–237), the Los Angeles Chinese massacre of 1871 (19), and the 1891 New Orleans lynchings (11) perpetrated against Italian immigrants. A common perception of lynchings in the U.S. is that they were only hangings, due to the public visibility of the location, which made it easier for photographers to photograph the victims. Some lynchings were professionally photographed and then the photos were sold as postcards, which became popular souvenirs in parts of the United States. Lynching victims were also killed in a variety of other ways: being shot, burned alive, thrown off a bridge, dragged behind a car, etc. Occasionally, the body parts of the victims were removed and sold as souvenirs. Lynchings were not always fatal; "mock" lynchings, which involved putting a rope around the neck of someone who was suspected of concealing information, was sometimes used to compel people to make "confessions". Lynch mobs varied in size from just a few to thousands. Lynching steadily increased after the Civil War, peaking in 1892. Lynchings remained common into the early 1900s, accelerating with the emergence of the Second Ku Klux Klan. Lynchings declined considerably by the time of the Great Depression. The 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy, galvanized the civil rights movement and marked the last classical lynching (as recorded by the Tuskegee Institute). The overwhelming majority of lynching perpetrators never faced justice. White supremacy and all-white juries ensured that perpetrators, even if tried, would not be convicted. Campaigns against lynching gained momentum in the early 20th century, championed by groups such as the NAACP. Some 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress between the end of the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement, but none passed. In 2022, 67 years after Emmett Till's killing and the end of the lynching era, the United States Congress passed anti-lynching legislation in the form of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act. Civil rights groups, such as JULIAN, argue that lynchings are still occurring in the 21st century.
The 1891 New Orleans lynchings were the murders of 11 Italian Americans, immigrants in New Orleans, by a mob for their alleged role in the murder of police chief David Hennessy after some of them had been acquitted at trial. It was the largest single mass lynching in American history. Most of the lynching victims accused in the murder had been rounded up and charged due to their Italian ethnicity. The lynching took place on March 14, the day after the trial of nine of the nineteen men indicted in Hennessy's murder. Six of these defendants were acquitted, and a mistrial was declared for the remaining three because the jury failed to agree on their verdicts. There was a widespread belief in the city that Italian American organized crime was responsible for the killing of the police chief in a period of anti-Italian sentiment and rising crime. Italian American voters were also known to prefer the scandal-plagued city political machine to the new Reform Democrat mayor, whose own role in inciting the violence that followed may well have been an attempt to misuse government power for the repression of his political opponents. Believing the jury had been fixed by organized crime, a mob broke into the jail where the men were being held and killed eleven of the prisoners, most by shooting. The mob outside the jail numbered in the thousands and included some of the city's most prominent citizens. The incident had serious national repercussions. The Italian consul Pasquale Corte in New Orleans registered a protest and left the city in May 1891 at his government's direction. The New York Times published a lengthy statement charging city politicians with responsibility for the lynching of the Italians. Italy cut off diplomatic relations with the United States, sparking rumors of war. Increased anti-Italian sentiment led to calls for restrictions on immigration. The word "Mafia" entered the American lexicon, and this incident increased awareness of the Italian mafioso, establishing it in the popular imagination of Americans. The lynchings were the subject of the 1999 HBO film Vendetta, starring Christopher Walken. The film is based on a 1977 history book of the same name by Richard Gambino.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Madam C.J. Walker