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2 The 21st Century-Making the Connection! MARCH 1999 MBC Wolverine OBSERVER
Legal Studies Historical Spotlight
Blacks and the
Death Penalty
First Place
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in the Senior College Division
of the yearbook competition.
The two-day event, Febru
ary 25-26, featured a host of
workshops, seminars and
networking activities for fu
ture journalists. The opening
remarks were made by Cable
News Networks’ co-anchor,
Leon Harris, who was also
awarded the Louis R. Lautier
Award for Career Achieve
ment. Students from over 20
high schools, two-year and
four-year colleges and uni
versities participated in the
event. Milton Coleman,
Deputy Managing Editor of
The Washington Post, gave
the keynote address at the
awards luncheon. Both Har
ris and Coleman gave tips on
how to succeed in the field of
journalism and urged stu
dents to consider journalism
careers.
Congratulations are ex
tended to all participants
who contributed to our
success.
By Juanita B. Hodges
MBC LEGAL STUDIES MAJOR
According to Stephen B.
Bright, visiting lecture in Law
at Harvard and Yale Law
Schools, and director of the
Southern Center for Human
rights in Atlanta, the death
penalty is a “direct descen
dant of lynching and other
forms of racial violence and
oppression in America.” The
death penalty is part of a
criminal justice system which
can be used to eliminate those
society feels are useless, or
who are seen as a threat to its
social, economic and political
existence...the majority of
these people, however, are
poor and black.
The excuse used to justify
the lynching of black men in
the south up until the mid-
1900’s was the accusation
that black men were rapists
of white women. Walter
White, author of “Rope and
Lawyers
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community, and in the black
community as well. In fact,
some of my well-intentioned
colleagues here at Morris
Brown, and at other institu
tions of higher education have
sometimes advised students
not to go to law school...
"because there are too many
lawyers.”
The state of Georgia is an
example of the dearth of black
lawyers throughout the na
tion. There are 159 counties
in Georgia, however, outside
of a five-county Atlanta met
ropolitan area, the approxi
mate number of black lawyers
in other locations in the state
include: 20 in Savannah; 6 in
Columbus; 3 in Griffin; 3 in
Augusta, and 5 in Macon. A
similar pattern exists in every
state in the union.
It is important, therefore, to
carefully examine the facts
regarding the presence of
blacks in the legal profession
before making important ca
reer decisions. In this way we
avoid many of the pitfalls and
misconceptions of popular be
liefs.
Faggot” explains however,
that this “alleged propensity”
for sex crimes by African
Americans was unheard of in
the United States during
slavery or prior to 1830. Ida
B. Wells, a contemporary of
Frederick Douglass, and
leading 19 th century black
anti-lynching advocate dem
onstrated in her writings and
lectures that the real reason
for lynching was white fear
and resentment of black edu
cational and economic ad
vancement.
The next phase of lynching
of blacks began after the Civil
War, and the formal abolition
of slavery as a result of the
enactment of the 13th
Amendment to the U.S. Con
stitution in 1865. The re
moval of slavery as a forced
labor system forced many
white southerners fearful of
blacks’ advancement to find
ways to control skilled, free
black labor in the market
place. Stewart Tolnay’s
“Festival of Violence” details
how waves of black lynching
peaked in periods of economic
depression due to southern
whites fears of competing
with free black workers for
jobs.
To make matters worse, it
was just one year after the
13 th Amendment was ratified,
that white terrorist organiza
tions such as the Knights of
the White Camelia and the
Ku Klux Klan came into exis
tence. These groups also used
lynching to instill fear in free
African-Americans. These
blatant public killings of
blacks coupled with a lack of
legal protection resulted in
more that “two million” Afri
can-Americans migrating
north beginning in the 1890’s
where northern whites
greeted them with further
mob lynching.” Following the
1908 riot in Spring, Illinois,
the NAACP and other anti
lynching proponents began to
lobby Congress in 1921, 1935
and 1940 for an anti-lynching
bill. This growing “debate
and outcry led southern
states to abandon the lynch
ing rope”...and to replace
lynching with another method
of killing blacks who “despite
the handicaps of ignorance,
poverty and oppression were
steadily adding to their
wealth and education.” The
new method of control was
the “judgement and imposi
tion of capital (death) sen
tences on black defendants
by all white juries.”
Beginning in the 1920’s, the
number of African-Americans
killed as a result of court im
posed death penalties ex
ceeded the number killed an
nually by lynching. In the
1930’s, all white juries con
victed and sentenced more
people to death than at any
other time in American his
tory. More than two-thirds of
those condemned to death
were poor, black defendants
often represented by Hi-
prepared court appointed at
torneys.
Whether or not an African-
American is put to death in
this country is heavily influ
enced by the race of the vic
tim. After an analysis of 28
studies of death penalty sen
tencing, the U.S. General Ac
counting Office reported in
1990 that the “race of the vic
tim was found to influence
the likelihood of being
charged with capital murder
or receiving the death pen
alty.” Those who murdered
whites were found to be more
likely to be sentenced to death
than those who murdered
blacks. “African-Americans
who are accused of killing
whites are 19 times more
likely to be executed than
whites who kill African-
Americans. This report came
after the U.S. Supreme
Court’s 1971 decision in Fur
man v. Georgia, where the
Court acknowledged that the
death penalty was “unconsti
tutionally” applied to blacks.
Afterwards, the Court rein
stated the death penalty in
1976. In 1987 the Court con
cluded in McCleskey v. Kemp
that the victims of race and
the imposition of the death
penalty was “statistically”
significant in the whole
(criminal justice) system.
Despite dramatic racial dis
parities in death penalty
cases, Congress in 1994 re
fused to include the Racial
Justice Act in the 1994 crime
bill (which provides the death
penalty for at least 60 of
fenses). This Act would have
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