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Footnotes 1349
Miller observed:
“In the first place it causes the whites to hate the Negro, as It is a part of human
nature to hate those whom we have injured. In the second place it causes the Negro
ro hate the whites. It is universally conceded that lynching has no deterrent effect upon
the class of crimes alleged to excite its vengeance. On the contrary, it probably has the
opposite effect. The criminals and outlaws of the Negro race, who care nothing for
life or death, may be thus hardened into resolves of revenge, and lie waiting to strike
the hated race where the blow will be most keenly felt.” (Kelly Miller, Race Adjust-
ment [1908], p. 69.)
Similarly Stone:
“But the point I would urge is that the illegal execution of Negroes by lynching,
even when torture is added, has an inciting rather than a deterring influence upon the
large number of potential criminals.” (Alfred H. Stone, Studies in the American Race
Problem [1908], p. 465.)
^®Moorfield Storey, Problems of Today (1920), pp. 128 ff.; Weatherford and
Johnson, oj>, cit.y pp. 437 ff.
James Weldon Johnson, Along This Way (1934), pp. 3^1-374.
Donald Young points to the conflict of “interests” as a basic cause of lynching and
suggests that the decrease in Negro lynchings in the South “may be ascribed not so
much to a recognition of the evils of lynching, fer sCy as to decreasing clashes of inter-
ests between black and white in the South.” {^American Minority PeofleSy p. 256.)
He follows out the thought by stating:
“This suggests the futility of anti-lynching laws, of interracial commissions, and of
educational programs in warring against mob action. Laws taking the prosecution of
mob members out of the local courts Into the federal would be only a well meant
gesture, for even federal judges are human, reflect local sentiment, and must depend
on the cooperation of local witnesses who are convinced that lynching Is justified to
preserve group welfare. It is for this reason that local legal authorities are usually without
either the power or the will to prevent or prosecute such offenses. To impose a heavy
fine on the county in which lynchings take plaCe, a suggestion based on the theory that
the substantial property owners of the community would be spurred to prevent them
in order to save their pocketbooks, could have but little effect, for the stronger belief
would still persist that such coercion was necessary to protection.
“Interracial commissions and other educational programs are valuable to the extent
that the clash of group interests is fictitious, and can be shown to be so. Usually such
programs reach only the more substantial elements in a community, people who as a
rule are neither leaders of nor participants in mob action. Why should they be? They
have achieved personal security, and are not directly in conflict with the minorities
who are the object of lynchings. Their interest is a secondary one, derived from the
masses directly in conflict with Negroes, Chinese, strikers, or other competing groups.
This is the fundamental explanation of the fact that mobs, with few exceptions, are
composed of the handicapped social classes who cannot be reached by appeals to justice
and humanity.” (Ibid,y pp. 256-257.)
This reasoning—^which, incidentally, is also adhered to by many among the young
Negro intellectuals under Marxist Influence—is not convincing to us. Collective “inter-
ests” do not exist as solid and unchangeable social entities. The “interests,” as they arc
felt, depend upon the actual bonds of identification; a “redefinition of the situation”
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