Lynching

Ingersoll's responses read by Herman Roskams in France.

Interview title, Music, Newspapers, Lynching, and Arbitration.

Published in the Interocean, Chicago, Illinois, March 1897.

First question, How do you enjoy staying in Chicago? Ingersoll's answer.

I came across a statement, uh, this is based on an article I read in the National Review.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez publicly claimed that there is widespread modern-day lynchings and racial terror.

Now, I did a little bit of digging into the veracity of the claims just to make sure that I wasn't speaking against this for the sake of it, and the truth is, publicly available reporting indicates that several cases have actually been classified as self-inflicted, and other investigations are still unresolved.

And so I would caution anyone from jumping on narratives for the sake of it.

Calling unresolved deaths a possible homicide can invite investigators to discover what happened.

That tends to be the way it is.

The problem is when you declare a collection of deaths modern-day lynchings for the sake of a political narrative, well, th-that's, that's simply to superimpose a progressivist narrative before the truth is established.

Now, why does that matter? Lynching has a specific history.

Ingersoll's responses read by Herman Roskams in France.

Interview title, Music, Newspapers, Lynching, and Arbitration.

Published in the Interocean, Chicago, Illinois, March 1897.

First question, how do you enjoy staying in Chicago? Ingersoll's answer.

I would rather be deceived than killed.

Wouldn't you?

This ends our interview Music, Newspapers, Lynching and Arbitration.

Section 22 of Selected Interviews with Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume 2.

Near Asbury Park, New Jersey, a colored man has been accused of murdering a child.

Lynching was threatened for a while, but the prisoner has maintained his innocence, and the police now think that he is telling the truth, after they have tortured him with the quote third degree, end quote.

At Montezuma, Georgia, two Negroes have been lynched for killing a night policeman.

In Maryland, Dick Titus, a colored person, has just died.

But your essay entitled Witnessing Jesus Hang, reading Mary Magdalene's view of crucifixion through Ida B.

Wells Chronicles of Lynching.

I assigned that piece in my Gospel of Mark class last semester.

And so I was so pleased.

There was the February 2026 hanging death of a 21-year-old, Kyle Basinga, and the August 2026 hanging deaths of a 29-year-old Black woman in Jackson, Mississippi, 38-year-old Demetrius Fleming in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, and the hanging death of an unidentified man in Raleigh, North Carolina.

When I say the word lynching, what comes to mind? You're probably imagining a Black person hanging from a tree, put there by a white person.

But the technical and social definition of lynching is a murder carried out by a group of people outside the legal and judicial system.

Lynching was a method of social, physical, and political violence used by white people to put Black Americans into submission.

It further created a social caste system.

It became widely practiced in the South after 1877, which signaled the end of Reconstruction.

A typical lynching would involve an accusation, usually false, a mob of some sort being created by white people, and the Black person who was accused being hunted or dragged from their home or jail cell and strung up from a tree, shot, both, or worse.

Sometimes victims would be dismembered while dead or alive, and pieces of the body would be taken home and used as souvenirs and keepsakes.

Crime Near Asbury Park, New Jersey, a colored man has been accused of murdering a child.

Lynching was threatened for a while, but the prisoner has maintained his innocence, and the police now think that he is telling the truth.

After they have tortured him with the quote third degree end quote.

At Montezuma, Georgia, two Negroes have been lynched for killing a night policeman.