Lynching

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-12-02

Creator(s)

Unknown

Language

English

John B. Ashbaugh examines Theodore Roosevelt’s complicated views on race and charts his history with various ethnic and racial groups, including Native Americans, African-Americans, and Jews. Ashbaugh highlights the influence of Roosevelt’s southern born and raised mother and her brothers, both of whom served the Confederacy during the Civil War. Ashbaugh stresses that Roosevelt’s views evolved over time, and he demonstrates how Roosevelt believed in and promoted the Progressive views of his time such as the assimilation of Native Americans, but that he also respected many aspects of Native culture and had enduring friendships with individual Native Americans. Ashbaugh presents Roosevelt’s views on Jews and immigration, and he details many aspects of Roosevelt’s feelings toward and relationship with African-Americans, including his condemnation of lynching, his White House dinner with Booker T. Washington, and the Brownsville incident.

Five photographs and two illustrations appear in the text.

Collection

Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal

William N. Tilchin asserts that President Theodore Roosevelt was guided in his policies by a strong sense of morality, one that had been instilled in him by his father. Tilchin examines four areas of Roosevelt’s presidency–the control of corporations, the status of African-Americans in the Jim Crow South, the conservation of natural resources, and diplomacy–and argues that in each Roosevelt’s sense of morality, of right and wrong, guided his approach. Tilchin states that Roosevelt’s greatest moral shortcoming in his policies occurred over race, noting Roosevelt’s failure to adequately curtail lynching and his treatment of African-American soldiers in Brownsville, Texas. On the other hand, Tilchin says that in his conservation policies, Roosevelt “was the very model of an effective moral leader,” and he praises Roosevelt for his foreign policy that had as one of its underpinnings that the United States acted as a “morally upright” and civilized nation.

A political cartoon and three photographs of Roosevelt supplement the essay.

Collection

Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal

This partial page of the Augusta Chronicle contains a number of articles, including a report on the extradition of Charles C. Browne, repercussions against a lynching which occurred in North Carolina, and a divorce case.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-08-08

President Roosevelt and a bear labeled “Russia” look at one another. Roosevelt holds a “protest agains the Kishineff massacres” while the bear holds up a “protest against lynching in the United States.”

Comments and Context

As President Theodore Roosevelt and his Administration sought means effectively to protest the pogrom in Kishinev, Moldova — where Tsarist forces killed almost fifty Jews and injured hundreds — he was acutely aware of a wave of lynchings in the United States, and his obligation to respond… and, perhaps, address the similarities. 

Of course, the national Administration did not sanction nor encourage lynching, but state governments did, and so did some prominent politicians, like Senator Ben “Pitchfork” Tillman of South Carolina.

President Roosevelt expresses his horror at the growth of lynching in the United States and commends Governor Durbin for his recent action against lynching.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-08-06

Booker T. Washington informs President Roosevelt that, according to the Chicago Tribune record, the number of lynchings in 1905 was the lowest that has occurred in the past twenty years.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-01-04

Senator Benjamin R. Tillman of North Carolina says no Southern gentleman will now share a table with President Roosevelt because he invited Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House. This is a sentiment shared among many Southern politicians, which is concerning. That Black people are treated extremely unfairly in the South is well-known and understood, but the public is supposed to believe that they are treated this way because they are disproportionately criminal. The response by Southern leaders to Washington’s dinner with Roosevelt show that this is not actually the issue at hand, rather that racism is. By degrading others, these men degrade themselves.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-11-04

A newspaper article describing the investigation of a lynch mob in Alabama, who murdered Horace Maples.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-10-25

President Roosevelt details the state of lynching against African Americans in the current era. He suggests solutions to the problem of African American criminals, including increased education for young people. He ends by saying, “It is important that the condition of the Negro in New York, in Philadelphia, in Springfield and Chicago shall be studied exactly as he is studied in the South.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-11-02

A paragraph by Booker T. Washington to be appended to an editorial he has written on lynching. Washington contests the idea that Roosevelt’s presidency has caused an increase in chaos in the South, and asserts that under Roosevelt there have been fewer lynchings than in any year since 1885, and that the highest number of lynchings had instead come during years of Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland’s presidencies.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-10-17

Newspaper article that uses George R. Koester’s own articles about three lynchings in Gaston, South Carolina, to cast doubt on Koester’s claims that he did not participate in lynchings.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1901-11-04

In this vignette cartoon, Uncle Sam stands at the center placing money in a box labeled, “To Save the Heathen of Foreign Lands.” Around him are vignettes showing American pastimes of pigeon shooting, cockfighting, boxing, and turkey-grabbing, as well as a lynching. Caption: And yet Uncle Sam is always giving money to “save the heathen.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1897-09-08

The Russian foreign office has refused to accept a petition on behalf of Russian Jews forwarded by President Roosevelt. The foreign office considers it a domestic matter and compared the situation to the United States accepting an anti-lynching petition.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-07-03

Print shows a southern vigilante holding a rope with a noose and a “Sheriff” holding a paper that states “2000 dollars must be paid by the county, for each lynching. Law of South Carolina.” An African American man cowers behind the sheriff. A large building labeled “Courthouse” is in the background. Caption: If motives of humanity and justice won’t stop them, may be this will.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1899-06-14

Justice, an old woman, sleeps at a desk, with cobwebs, spiders, and mice taking over the courtroom. Outside a window an armed group of vigilantes have broken down the door to a jail and removed a man whom they are about to hang from a nearby tree. One man carries a flag that states “Lively Lynchers.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1883-07-04

Oscar K. Davis releases this item for the morning papers of August 3, 1912. Theodore Roosevelt describes in detail the treatment of African Americans by both the Republican and Democratic Parties, but believes that for the Progressive Party, this issue is not a race issue, but a moral issue. Roosevelt concludes that the Progressive Party, as well as Southern black men, will be best served by appealing to Southern white men who support civil rights.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1912-08-01

The ghostly figure of a manic-looking man, labeled “Judge Lynch” and carrying a book labeled “Lynch Law” and a lighted torch, hovers over a procession of people. The procession is led by three solid citizens followed by farmers, unruly elements, and finally a long line of regular citizens including women, who look back at a small column of smoke in the distance – presumably a lynching. One of the unruly men shoots at a dog. (“Judge Lynch” was the personification of the practice, frequently found in the South, of executing African Americans suspected of crimes without the benefit of trial. In the second decade of the Twentieth Century, Progressives advocated various reforms designed to circumvent the state governments viewed as the tools of entrenched interests. The Recall was intended to allow the citizenry to directly vote officials out of office. The cartoonist suggests that this first be used to abolish the practice of lynching.)

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1912-02-21

Newspaper article praising President Roosevelt for his speech at Arlington. It was the first time Roosevelt had publicly spoken about lynching. It also addresses both the positive and negative reviews of the speech.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1902-05

A collection of articles about the status of race relations in the United States and the prospect of equal rights for African Americans.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1902-05-17