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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VI. Justice - 27. Violence and Intimidation - 1. The Pattern of Violence
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Chapter 27. Violence and Intimidation 559
in the rural South and peonage unnecessary, these laws have become increas-
ingly obsolete.
But quite apart from laws, and even against the law, there exists a
pattern of violence against Negroes in the South upheld by the relative
absence of fear of legal reprisal. Any white man can strike or beat a Negro,
steal or destroy his property, cheat him in a transaction and even take his
life, without much fear of legal reprisal. The minor forms of violence
—
cheating and striking—^are a matter of everyday occurrence, but the major
ones are infrequent enough to be talked about. Negroes, of course, try to
avoid situations in which such violence is likely to occur, and if Negroes
do incur the displeasure of a white man, a mere command or threat is
usually enough to control them without the use of actual violence. The
Negro’s economic dependence upon whites makes these verbal controls
especially potent. But accidental insult, and sometimes nothing at all
except the general^ insecurity or sadism of certain whites, can serve as occa-
sion for violence. Of course, there are certain checks on violence: most
Southerners do not want to be mean or dishonest toward Negroes directly.
Public opinion in the South tends to frown upon any white man who acquires
a reputation for being consistently mean or dishonest, and on rare occasions
may even ostracize him socially or encourage the application of legal
sanctions against him. But the general attitude is one of laissez faire: if a
plantation owner cheats or beats his Negro tenants, “that’s his business”}
if a Negro is the victim of a sudden outburst of violence, “he must have
done something to deserve it.” Above all, the Negro must be kept in his
“place.”
There is little that Negroes can do to protect themselves, even where
they are a majority of the population.* They cannot easily secure the
protection of police or court against white men. They cannot secure the
protection of white employers against white men, unless the latter are poor
or have had a bad reputation. They can, of course, strike back but they
know that that means a more violent retaliation, often in an organized
form and with danger to other Negroes. In an important sense, lynching
and the wholesale destruction of Negro property are often merely the
extreme forms of organized white retaliation against Negroes who have
struck back when they were struck or cheated first by whites.** This retalia-
tion more frequently takes a less violent form: the legal system may be
called on to imprison the Negro for “attacking a white man”; white men
may pretend that they are going to lynch the Negro but end up by only
beating him or using the “tar and feather” technique; or the Negro may
be “nm out of town” and warned not to return.
‘Neg^roes cannot protect themselves esfecially where they are a majority of the popu<^
lation, since this is for the most part in the Deep South.
^ The causes of lynching^ are discussed in Sections % and 3 of this chaptcri
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