Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum

by Antonia Hylton

The function of lynching was so much more than a bypassing of the justice system. It was a form of psychological terrorism. And it sent several messages. One basic message was that they had killed people like Williams and Armwood before and, if necessary, would do it again. But the more subtle and crucial message was that they still owned Black people. That they could sever their body parts, and continue to have complete and utter dominion. They controlled their livelihoods and their prospects. They could take ownership of people seen as destitute, different, and strange. They also owned the narrative. Each lynching stole the life of its victim, but it also wrought immeasurable trauma on every Black person who witnessed or heard the story. Between 1889 and 1930, 3,724 people were lynched in the South; over four-fifths were Black. In almost every case, no serious effort was made to identify and punish lynchers. How could you not go mad?