What Is This Thing We Call “Lynching”?

Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch

Several years ago, I had a small supporting role in a community theater production of To Kill a Mockingbird. As part of my role, I formed part of the crowd that came to lynch Tom Robinson. I had no lines, just some improv behind the speaking parts. This quiet anonymity let me watch events unfolding from behind, permitting me to notice that this was an unrealistic depiction of a lynching.

With the President’s Twitter declaration yesterday that the perfectly legal and Constitutionally mandated impeachment proceedings against him are a “lynching,” perhaps it’s time to reconsider what that word means. Because, although the tail end of the “lynching era” remains within living memory, that’s getting further and further away. Fewer people remember what a lynching really meant, and it’s getting misrepresented by people with a dishonest message to peddle.

To Kill a Mockingbird depicts a crowd of lower-class toughs from the wrong side of town rushing the prison. Their courage boosted by liquor, they work one another into a lather of rage until, propelled by their sense of moral outrage, they distract the sheriff with false leads, thinking they’ll have an undefended jailhouse door. Except they get there and find Atticus Finch guarding it with his lantern, Diogenes-like. And, of course, his rifle.

This misrepresents lynchings in multiple ways. First, it distances both Harper Lee and her intended audience of Northern White leftists from the event by making lynchers into po’ white trash. Except the history of lynching makes clear that people from every social stratum attended lynchings, including members of the professional and upper classes. In some events, lynchings became community events, with picnics and music attending.

Besides, lynchings didn’t happen by cover of darkness, and didn’t require calling law enforcement on a “snipe hunt.” The very nature of lynchings required them to happen in broad daylight, and the sheriff was as likely to hold the door as bar it. Because although lynchings were considered “extra-legal,” they weren’t really forbidden. The whole point was to showcase how the perpetrators of unlawful killings had no fear of consequences.

The President's original tweet.
Click to enlarge

By contrast, the Democratic leadership has been paralyzed by fear of consequences. Despite having a robust House majority and a President who seemingly can’t open his mouth without confessing yet another crime, Nancy Pelosi dithered for months before officially beginning impeachment inquiries, because she believed her party would suffer at the polls. This despite the proceedings being so completely legal, they’re the only trial proceeding defined in the Constitution.

Theologian James H. Cone calls lynching the closest American society had to the Roman tradition of crucifixion. Like the death of Jesus, the deaths of countless Black Americans wasn’t simply intended to kill the target, it was intended to humiliate the target. And the real audience wasn’t the victim, it was the survivors, who received the unquestionable message: your lives are in our hands.

To understand how thoroughly unafraid of consequences White lynchers really were, realize that lynchings were documented with cameras. Not only did perpetrators photograph the bodies after they’d been killed, they photographed themselves with the bodies, and sold the resulting pictures as souvenir postcards. Lynching perpetrators literally boasted about their participation in violent murders, and shared images of themselves doing it, like we share Instagrams of our dinner.

In Mockingbird, the lynchers desist their efforts when Scout Finch recognizes one of them and calls him by name. Certainly, if we acknowledge that lynchers photographed themselves with the body, getting recognized won’t likely convince them to quit. But even if Harper Lee misrepresented lynching thus, it means she believed one thing: people who committed lynchings were capable of shame. And that’s where the analogy breaks down.

When we consider who, in the current arrangement, boasts about crimes, shares images of their transgressions, and turns a profit on the effort, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the lynching isn’t being perpetrated by the Democrats. Trump and Giuliani have gleefully confessed multiple crimes, sometimes on live TV, confident they’ll face no consequences. Meanwhile, the “checks and balances” fail to do anything, because they’re beholden to extralegal pressures.

To Kill a Mockingbird is possibly America’s most widely read book about race and racism; I have difficulty determining exact numbers, but I’ve read estimates that it’s read in as many as 75% of American schools. But it sanitizes racism by shifting the onus onto poor Whites clinging to society’s margins. It depicts lynching unrealistically. And this leads directly into the President misrepresenting lynching toward himself.