A MAN WAS LYNCHED YESTERDAY #1049
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Caption from poster__
lynchings Crusade
“ The Shame of America,”
At it's headquarters on Fifth Avenue
in New York City, the NAACP flew a
flag that read “A Man Was Lynched
Yesterday.” to report lynching, until
1938, the threat of losing its lease
forced the association to
discontinue the practice.
Established by the NAACP in 1916 to develop an effective
program to stamp out lynching, the Anti-lynching Committee
developed legislative and public awareness campaigns. In 1919
the NAACP published Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States,
1889-1918. This report indicated that 3,224 people were lynched
in the thirty-year period. Of these, 702 were white and 2,522 black
. Among the justifications given for the lynchings were petty offenses
such as "using offensive language, refusal to give up land, illicit distilling."
The Committee also compiled lynching statistics in 1921. It took full-page
advertisements on November 23, 1922, in The New York Times, The
Atlanta Constitution, and several other leading newspapers entitled "The
Shame of America," with the subheading "3436 People Lynched 1889 to
1922." Attempts were made to pass a federal anti-lynching by Senators
Robert F. Wagner and Edward P. Costigan. The Costigan-Wagner bill
would have required local authorities to protect prisoners from lynch mobs.
The proposed bill, which would have made lynching a federal crime rather
than a state crime, was blocked by a filibuster to prevent a vote. Although
lynching never became a federal crime, the song “Strange Fruit” and the
“A Man Was Lynched Yesterday” flags made it nearly impossible for
Americans and politicians to ignore this form of domestic terrorism.
On June 13, 2005, the UnitedStates Senate formally apologized for its
On June 13, 2005, the UnitedStates Senate formally apologized for its
failure to enact a federal anti-lynching law. The Resolution expresses
"the deepest sympathies and most solemn regrets of the Senate to the
descendants of victims of lynching, the ancestors of whom were deprived
of life, human dignity and the constitutional protections accorded all
citizens of the United States."
