Lynching
By Dawson Jacobs
General Context
Lynching is a form of mistreatment that occurred under the pretenses of enacting “justice.” Characterized by torture inflicted on a single individual by a group of people through violence, lynching placed justice in the hands of those inflicting the violence. Predominately used in the 19th and 20th centuries, lynching has scarred history for many years. Lynching affected many ethnicities of people; however, African Americans became the main target for this form of punishment after many African American slaves were emancipated. Lynching usually occurred when a white man would feel wronged by Black man, and the white man would take unsanctioned liberties with punishment ("Confronting the Legacy”).
Lynching became a source of terror amongst the African American community as many were public executions. The threat of this punishment spread quickly by word of mouth, by pictures printed and published, and the actual victims' bodies who were typically put on display by hanging. When someone was to be lynched, the person “at fault” would be rounded up by a group of people, bound, strung up into a tree or tied at the base of a tree, and whipped and mutilated until presumed dead, beaten until unconscious, or severely enough that the injuries would result in death. After death, the spectacle continued; images were taken of the killed and passed around or sold as a form of souvenir along with body parts severed from the deceased body.
Connection to Novel
The novel Of Love and Dust by Ernest J. Gaines contains many forms of punishment that are not explicitly mentioned or referred to by name; lynching is one of those. Lynching, the word itself, is not mentioned frequently in the novel, however it is alluded to repeatedly as the novel progresses. The characters like Aunt Margaret and Bishop are aware of the location of lynching (near trees) due to the haunting fact that there is always a possibility that they could be lynched beneath them.
In the novel, lynching goes beyond ethnicity, class, and role within a community to explain the reach that this form of punishment had on all people that made up a community, whites and blacks both. However, Gaines is careful to create the distinction between why it is noticed by different characters and how it correlates to their role in lynching; whites inflicted this form of punishment without retribution and Blacks suffered this form of terrifying “justice.”