Post-Emancipation Violence in America / Lynching and the Subversion of Legal Rights

Post-Emancipation Violence in America, also, Lynching and the Subversion of Legal Rights. Community Remembrance Project. Post-Emancipation Violence in America. After the Confederacy's defeat, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution ended slavery and guaranteed newly emancipated black people constitutional rights of citizenship. Reconstruction promised federal enforcement and challenged the prior racial caste system created during slavery. However, even before federal protection ended in 1877, thousands of African Americans were victims of racially- and politically-motivated massacres, murders, and lynchings, especially in the South. Racial terror lynching, in particular, claimed the lives of many African Americans who advocated for equal rights, resisted economic exploitation, or were accused of crimes or perceived violations of racial customs. Lynch mobs regularly displayed complete disregard for the legal system, even abducting black people from courts, jails, and out of police custody. Law enforcement officials often failed to intervene and sometimes participated in mob violence, leaving no guarantee of custodial protections for black people in white-controlled political spaces. Terror lynching would persist over the next century, with some of these acts of terror occurring in front of crowds numbering in the thousands. Many of the names of lynching victims were not recorded and remain unknown, but over 200 documented lynchings took place in Tennessee alone, at least four having taken place in Davidson County., Lynching and the Subversion of Legal Right. The Davidson County Jail stood near here, on what was called Water Street or Front Street, throughout most of the 19th century. Despite the duty of law enforcement to provide custodial protection, the jail was a repeated site of lynchings and violence that devastated the African American community. On March 25, 1872, a white mob forcibly removed a black man named David Jones from the jail, shot him twice, and hanged him from a lamp post in Public Square. Though police officers cut Mr. Jones down and dispersed the crowd, he died hours later from his injuries. On the night of April 30, 1875, a mob abducted another black man named Jo Reed from the county jail and dragged him to the nearby suspension bridge, at the current site of the Woodland Street Bridge. In front of a large crowd of onlookers, Mr. Reed was shot multiple times in the head and hanged from the bridge. His body was abandoned to the Cumberland River after the rope broke and he fell into the water below. These lynchings were acts of racial terrorism, often committed without intervention by law enforcement officials and commonly left unpunished. Each lynching in Davidson County created trauma and pain, while reinforcing white supremacy and denying African Americans in the community their basic rights. We remember these events in support of justice, human rights, and decency for all.