The Cross and the Lynching Tree

by James H. Cone

Yet Harding, like most whites, was unmoved by black suffering. No one in America could claim that they did not know that whites were lynching blacks, nor could legal authorities claim ignorance, since lynchers made no effort to hide their identity or their deeds. Bishop Henry M. Turner of the A.M.E. Church mocked the euphemism, “At the hands of persons unknown,” the typical designation for lynchers that often appeared in newspaper accounts after the fact: Strange . . . that the men who constitute these [mobs] can never be identified by . . . governors or the law officers, but the newspapers know all about them—can advance what they are going to do, how and when it was done, how the rope broke, how many balls entered the Negro’s body, how loud he prayed, how piteously he begged, what he said, how long he was left hanging, how many composed the mob, the number that were masked, whether they were prominent citizens or not, how the fire was built that burnt the raper, how the Negro was tied, how he was thrown into the fire, and the whole transaction; but still the fiendish work was done by a set of “unknown men.”[21]