Crime and Punishment in American History - Lawrence M. Friedman [122]
Lynching
Vigilantism still has its defenders; some modem self-help anticrime groups even call themselves (and proudly) vigilantes. But there is not much to be said for the southern version (or perversion) of do-it-yourself justice—lynch law. The very term is southern: it preserves the name of Colonel Charles Lynch, of Bedford County, Virginia. During the disturbed times of the 1780s, Lynch organized an extralegal group to catch and punish wrongdoers. Lynch conducted “regular though illegal trials,” and punishment—whipping, mostly—was “inflicted under a large and locally famous walnut tree standing in Lynch’s yard.”59
But “lynching” came to have a much more sinister meaning: mob murder of men and women accused of crime, dragged from their cells and killed—or killed before the justice system could get any sort of grip on them. The line between some vigilante activity and out-and-out lynching was sometimes fuzzy at best. In a number of instances, sheriffs in Arizona unlocked the jail or simply skedaddled, and let the “vigilantes” do their work. In 1873, for example, Sheriff Oury of Tucson suddenly became ill from eating too much watermelon, and the Chief Justice decided it was just the day to visit San Xavier Cathedral; three men in jail fell victim to “vigilantes.”60
Lynching, however, became more and more a part of the southern way of life. In Tampa, Florida, in 1882, a white drifter named Charles D. Owens broke into the home of John A. McKay, a leading businessman. He found Mrs. McKay’s twenty-six-year-old sister, Ada McCarty, and assaulted her “with intent to rape,” although he was frightened away before he could accomplish his “hellish purpose.” Owens was caught and put in jail. An angry crowd gathered, almost immediately. The mob “marched on the jail, seized the prisoner . . . and carried him to a large oak tree across the street from the courthouse.” Owens begged for mercy, but a noose was put around his neck and he was strung up on the tree. The rope slipped; Owens fell screaming to the ground, but six men grabbed the rope and pulled him up, and he died.61
The lynching of Owens was unlike many, if not most, vigilante actions. There is nothing to suggest that the courts of Tampa could not handle this case, could not dish out punishment. No one, in any event, waited to find out. Rather, the mob decided that honor demanded direct action—the honor of the white woman, her family, and the community. The lynching was part of an “unwritten code.” Southerners distrusted the state, and preferred, in these cases, “personal justice.” They “believed strongly that community justice included both statutory law and lynch law”; indeed, lynch law “was perceived as a legitimate extension of the formal legal system.”62
The Owens lynching was by no means unique. One incident in New Orleans, in 1890, is important as an early example of fear of organized crime. The chief of police, David Hennessey, blamed a secret criminal society, the Mafia, for an outbreak of violence in the Italian community. Hennessey was subsequently murdered, but before he died, he accused the “Dagos” of responsibility. A roundup of Italians followed, and nine were put on trial. The jury found six of them not guilty, but could not decide what to do with the other three. In the meantime, an angry mob gathered outside the jail; soon some twenty men broke into the building and slaughtered all nine defendants.63
In one important sense, however, the Tampa incident and the New Orleans massacre were atypical. By far the majority of the victims were southern blacks murdered by gangs of whites. Lynching was hardly necessary as an instrument of terror and domination during slavery. But after the war lynching became a “crucial extralegal prop” of white supremacy. The Ku Klux Klan can be considered a kind of organized lynch mob. It was responsible for killing some four hundred blacks between 1868 and 1872. Blacks were lynched for murder or rape; they were also lynched for political reasons,