“five lines for lynching”: James Weldon Johnson, the New York Age, the republican party
One hundred years ago today … Two New York Age editorials addressed the subject of lynching as it had appeared in the Republican National Party platform.
New York Age, 19 June 1920, p. 4. Newspapers.com.
The unsigned piece sardonically lists subjects that the platform treated at greater length: “The League of Nations, Mexico, A Mandate for Armenia, Foreign Relations, Congress and Reconstruction, Education and Health, Taxation, Industrial Relations, National Economy …”
Lynchings were a constant threat to African Americans in 1920. On June 15, four days before this issue of the New York Age appeared, three African American men—Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie—were lynched in Duluth, Minnesota, likely with the support of local police.
Earlier in the year, the Crisis had published “The Lynching Industry” (see our February 4 post), reporting that it had verified 77 lynchings of African Americans in 1919, with the understanding that there were certainly more.
On January 29, Arthur Spingarn, representing the NAACP, had appeared before the Judiciary Committee of the US House of Representatives to urge the passing of a bill making lynching a federal crime—or, if that bill be deemed unconstitutional, a constitutional amendment (New York Tribune, 30 January, 1920, p. 11). One version of such legislation, the Dyer Act, had been proposed in 1918.
So, it is unsurprising that James Weldon Johnson would take up the subject in his weekly column for the New York Age . (We featured Johnson and the newspaper in our January 3 post). (See also our February 26 post about a NAACP public meeting on mob violence against African Americans.)
James Weldon Johnson, half-length portrait at desk with telephone. 1910-1920. Library of Congress.
Johnson found hope in that fact that the Republican Party was addressing lynching at all, even while ignoring race issues otherwise.
New York Age, 19 June 1920, p. 4. Newspapers.com.
The Dyer Bill was eventually defeated in 1922 by filibustering southern Democrats. Nor has any anti-lynching bill succeeded in the century since. The latest version of an attempt to get lynching into the Federal criminal code, called the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, has been, as of this writing, held up in the US Senate by Rand Paul (R-Kentucky). In the two weeks since Paul’s action delaying the proposal, a spate of lynchings has occurred in the US, against a backdrop of Black Lives Matter demonstrations decrying racist police killings.
wRITTEN BY JONATHAN GOLDMAN, JUNE 19, 2020.
TAGS: lynching, racism, African American history, NAACP