Modern Day Lynching

As the dust of the Civil war settled, many Blacks saw an era of prosperity and hope. many state and federal offices which Reconstruction had allowed them to hold. But this was not enough. The architects of the revived South needed something more to further the cause of white supremacy and Black oppression. Out of this need, the era of Jim Crow was born with its "separate but equal" claims. And with it came a wave of violence against America's newest citizens. The social atmosphere of white supremacy which Jim Crow had managed to create soon became a tide of hatred. Bolstered by the idea of the inferiority of Blacks and the protection of "white womanhood," whites saw it as nothing to trample Blacks in a storm of violence. These attacks included lynchings, burnings, and race riots. And though the majority of this violence took place in the South, the North was by no means immune. For more than a century, angry whites made the life of Black America a continuous nightmare.