BLAST FROM THE PAST.

• Position: Books on lynching

Nearly 4,500 Black Americans were killed by lynching between 1877 and 1950. Another 350 or more were lynched between 1950 and 1968. The first federal anti-lynching law was proposed in 1918, but it would be in February 2020, more than one hundred years later, before the U.S. House of Representatives would finally pass a bill calling lynching a "hate crime." However, the bill has stalled in the Senate. The Progressive and its predecessor, La Follette's Magazine, have written often against lynching. Here are a few examples from the previous century:

Lynching Harms the Community

BY ANNA HOWARD SHAW, November 1919

One great objection to lynching is its effect upon the community itself, particularly upon the young, and the lawlessness and disregard for order which underlies lynching, when nine times out of ten it is not because of abhorrence of the crime committed, but a desire on the part of the mob to vent barbarous natures in some form or another upon those who are weak and incapable of retaliation.

Murdering Negroes

By ROBERT M. LA FOLLETTE, August 1919

The mobbing of harmless, helpless Negroes in the capital of this country is the nation's everlasting shame. The responsibility for starting the riots, which ruled Washington for days, rests upon disorderly lawless whites. Peaceable, unoffending colored men and boys were beaten up and murdered...