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Originally Posted by DNSB
As far as I recall and this is going back quite a ways, the punishments handed out by "Judge Lynch" included whippings, branding, conscription and property seizure in the 1780's but no mention of hangings or other deaths. Perhaps Judge Lynch was still affected by his Quaker upbringing?
This research was triggered by a line in Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, " Oh, different today, but was 2075 and touching a fem without her consent—plenty of lonely men to come to rescue and airlock never far away. As kids say, Judge Lynch never sleeps."
A quick check on Wikipedia came up with Lynching in the United States. To quote the first sentence: " Lynching is the practice of murder by a group of people by extrajudicial action." So hanging is not the only method.
Groups such as the Ku Klux Klan did not exclusively murder black men, they were quite willing to lynch others -- Jews, immigrants, gays and lesbians and in their early history Catholics. Check the La Paloma raid in 1937 for an example. I would suggest that only those with strong stomachs read some of the descriptions of the KKK in action. |
I do find it odd that somehow the idea of a lynch mob has been recently redefined as something racial. Lynch mobs were a standard in westerns when I was growing up and there wasn't anything racial about them. It was purely a mob targeting someone they thought guilty of a crime. Did the KKK murder blacks? Sure, but then again blacks breath, however it doesn't follow that breathing is a racial thing. I suspect that racists is the new nazi, i.e. a tag designed to shut down discussion.