The Stain of Lynching on American History

In 1929, when Charlie Sifford was 7 years old, Walter White, former head of the NAACP (1931-55), wrote a book titled "Rope and Faggot." He sadly concluded that lynching had become so ingrained in American life that it might never be erased. “Mobbism," he wrote, "has inevitably degenerated to the point where an uncomfortably large percentage of American citizens can read in their newspapers of the slow roasting alive of a human being in Mississippi and turn, promptly and with little thought, to a comic strip or sporting page. Thus has lynching become an almost integral part of our national folkways.” This is the underbelly of American history we should all abhor, but at the same time, never forget.

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