This Day in African-American History (White-on-Black Violence in the Land of Lincoln)

August 14, 1908—A white woman’s spurious claim of rape led to the start of three days of violence directed against the African-American citizens of Springfield, Ill. By the end of the rampage—which featured racial wolfpacks that burned 40 homes and 24 businesses, not to mention pummeling more than a dozen people and leaving at least seven dead (and probably more) in their wake—the governor of the state had declared martial law and five thousand troops were needed to restore order.

I’m sure there are more extensive studies of these days of mindless rage, but for the time-pressed, I can recommend two short accounts: George F. Will’s column from earlier this week and a short vignette in, of all places, an extremely fine baseball book that doubles as a fascinating social history of early 20th-century America: Crazy ’08, by Cait Murphy.

It’s impossible to ignore the great irony of this orgy of looting, rioting, and lynching—it happened in the town that launched the political career of Abraham Lincoln, the “Great Emancipator,” and which also serves as the site of his final resting place. To be sure, Lincoln was careful in his debates with Stephen Douglas not to challenge the politically privileged position of whites over blacks in the virulently racist society of his time. But had he lived several decades more, as the crime of lynching entered American society like a virus, it’s inconceivable to me that this most humane of men would not have denounced it.

There was only one positive development from the violence, in my opinion: it so shocked the opinion of liberal whites that they joined with African-Americans the following year to form the NAACP.

I have to admit to some impatience on the subject of the labels we have for people and their views—fascist, communist, liberal, conservative. Whatever shorthand use they provide us is lessened by the ways in which so many people close their minds to an argument simply according to such labels, without any regard to the complexities of a person’s background, position or overall views.

Lynchings provide one demonstration of this very situation. A post on a blog called “O.U.P. (for Oxford University Press), “Why Is H.L. Mencken Relevant Today?” discusses the seeming contradiction of a great columnist, editor, memoirist, and lexicographer whose private musings have led posterity, not unreasonably, to see him as racist and anti-Semitic.

African-Americans first began to desert the GOP during FDR’s administration, as the New Deal provided desperately needed employment for this most economically marginalized of groups. Unlike Mencken, who tossed around terms like “blackamoor” pretty freely, F.D.R. did not, to my knowledge, use racial epithets.

Anyone who’s read my posts on Roosevelt knows my respect for the way he gave hope to Americans during the Depression, conserved America’s resources, and led the global coalition that halted the seemingly unstoppable march of the Axis powers. He amply deserves his reputation as one of America’s greatest presidents. Yet on the issue of lynching legislation, Mencken was far braver than the political titan of the ‘30s and ‘40s.

Even without pressing for voting rights or equal public accommodations—perhaps a political non-starter given the times—F.D.R. could have made a signal difference for African-Americans in the very fact of their lives by pressing to ban lynching. It would have signaled unmistakable that nobody was above the law and would have dealt a body blow to racism in this country. It might even have been politically possible to pull this off—while many white politicians were willing to go along with segregation, lynching revolted many—including more aristocratic southerners—as crude. Instead, he did nothing, hoping that the employment boost provided by the New Deal, as well as the constant advocacy of his wife Eleanor, would be enough to convince African-Americans that his heart was in the right place.

Contrast that with Mencken, whose protests against lynching on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, coupled with his advocacy of federal legislation against the practice in front of Congress, led to threats against his life. In light of this stance, historians who’ve denounced him for racism might want to reconsider whether FDR was all that much enlightened than Mencken.