The Corner

Lynchings & Other Evils

Roger, it’s rarely a good idea to compare broad historical social movements

that produce great evil. The discrete histories are so much different. I

don’t really think anything is “decided” arguing “What was more evil —

Slavery or the Holocaust?”

However, if we’re looking at body counts, it should be noted that many who

look at the Americas don’t just examine the post -Civil War period and Jim

Crow. They also point to the entire Middle Passage period where millions of

Africans lost their lives during their transport here. As for the

post-Reconstruction period, I’m not sure if the fact that blacks were “only”

lynched at a rate of 2 1/2 times as much as whites is exactly reassuring.

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