Did you know that lynchings increased as cotton prices
dropped? That’s the important lesson in this economic study, E. M. Beck &
Stewart E. Tolnay, The Killing Fields of the Deep South: The Market for Cotton
and the Lynching of Blacks, 1882-1930, 55 AM. SOCIOLOGICAL REV. (1990) 526,
537.
When cotton prices were high, lynchings declined but mob
violence against blacks soared.
There are several implications.
One is that freed slaves and their descendants were too valuable
to kill when the economy was strong, and exploitable labor was needed.
Beck and Tolnay also conclude: “Given
the Deep South’s racial caste structure, whites could harass and assault blacks
with virtual impunity. Blacks were considered legitimate, and even deserving,
objects for white wrath. White workers were in more direct economic competition
with black laborers than with the white elite.”
Given the poor times
experienced by many lower-class whites, the lessons from the 1890s help to
explain the surge in racism today.
PHOTO CREDIT: Circa 1890s, Georgia (Gary Doster)
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