America.
The Great Migration was spurred by the “Jim Crow Law”, the poverty in the post-civil war and by the Lynchings in the South. Lynching is the practice of murder by extrajudicial action. In the United States, Lynching rose in number after the civil war in late 1800 following the emancipation of the Slaves. Between 1914 and 1918 more than 500000 African Americans left the farms in the South for a better condition of life in the Northern cities.
This movement was part of the Great Migration from 1890 to the 1960 and eventually allowed more than 6 million of blacks to migrate. The flow declined after 1930 but was still recorded after the 1960′s. Northern jobs opened up by thousands. By moving, North did not mean that African American left Racism behind. Many whites resented their presence in the neighborhood so much that in 1915 a movie” the birth of a Nation” portrayed blacks as deranged and dangerous. The racial unrest led to riots.
Lynching has most frequently targeted African American in the Northern states during this Great Migration of blacks with the political goal of promoting White Supremacy and black powerlessness. Pictures of Lynching and photographs were published as postcards and sold in the USA or in a country like Germany to the adepts of the Nazism. People being lynched were occasionally burned alive with body parts amputated kept as souvenirs. Lynchings were frequent from 1890 to 1930 with a peak in 1892. In the 20th century, they were secretly conducted by small groups of people. In the old west, Native Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans were the primary targets.
Lynchings were also associated with inflation and economic distress, like with low cotton prices. Many white southerners resisted the granting of the US Constitutional rights to freedmen after the American civil war until 1877 when the federal troops were removed. Violence continued around elections until blacks were disfranchised by the states across the south from 1890 to 1908.
White Democrats enacted the segregation and brought the Jim Crow Laws to enforce the “second-class status” of the blacks during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and encouraging more Lynchings in the South especially in the state of Florida and Georgia. 302 Lynchings were recorded by the Tuskegee Institute.
The exact number of recorded Lynching can’t be known but the Tuskegee Institute has recorded 3446 blacks and 1297 whites lynched between 1882 and 1968 with an annual pick in 1890. A study published in 2015 by the Equal Justice Initiative found nearly 3959 black men, women, and children lynched in the 12 southern states during 1877-1950. The state of Georgia led with 586.
African Americans Intellectuals and Journalists started protesting and lobbying against Lynching and government complicity. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) produced anti-lynching plays and literary works, publicizing injustices, investigating incidents. They wanted to pass federal legislation. From 1882 to 1968 nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were Introduced in Congress but only 3 passed the House. 7 presidents petitioned congress between 1890 and 1952 to pass a federal law but none succeeded.
Charles Lynch, a Virginia Justice of the peace came with this punishment of loyalist and termed it the “Lynch Law”. They applied this law to members of the abolitionist movement and other people opposing slavery.
During the second war, southern home guard unit will lynch white southerner suspected to be a Unionist. A major motive was to maintain an effort to have white supremacy. The more black Population the higher the number of Lynching. The economic competition was also another factor, predominance of Democrats, competition among church groups, Low cotton price. White will lynch black for financial gain or to establish political or economic dominance.
An African American journalist, Ida B. Wells discovered in her investigations in 1890, that one-third of blacks who die by Lynching was accused of Rape or Attempted Rape, another third was accused with Murder 