Lynching (1911)
The mob spirit in America is far from dead. Time and time again the disappearance of lynching has been confidently announced. Still this species of murder and lawlessness flourishes blithely. Its sickening details in the last few weeks have been as bad as could be imagined. The cause of this is obvious: a disrespect for law and a growing cheapness of human life. Why should America lose respect for law? Because for years some of its best brains have been striving both in the profession of law and on the bench to show how worthless legislation is and help less to accomplish its ends. To cite an instance: The Constitution of the United States, the highest law of the land, says that citizens of the United States cannot be disfranchised on ac count of race or color. Yet every schoolboy knows that Negro Americans are disfranchised in large areas of the South for no other reason than race and color. This is but one in stance of our laughing at law.
Why should America count human life cheap? Because it is cheap. Because it is difficult to punish a rich murderer and extremely difficult for a black suspect to escape lynching. Back of the despising of life lies the con tempt for men who live. They are not ends, but means—“hands” for doing my work, “masses” for me to contemplate, “niggers” for me to keep down. Their lives, their hurts, their thoughts and aspirations—what is that to me as long as I live and enjoy and rise? Shall my race be disturbed, my fortune taxed, my world turned upside down because six black men in Florida are murdered or a woman and a child hanged by ruffians at Oklahoma? Nonsense. They are not worth it. They can be bought for fifty cents a day. Thus we despise life.
The result is mob and murder. The result is barbarism and cruelty. The result is human hatred. Come, Americans who love America, is it not time to rub our eyes and awake and act?
Citation: Du Bois, W.E.B. 1911. “Lynching.” The Crisis. 2(4):158–159.