Roosevelt blamed Black crime for lynchings to court Southern white voters

Evidence

Roosevelt was defiant in his Annual Message to Congress on December 3, 1906 (defiant in his crude attempts to gain southern White voters). He warned “respectable colored people … not to harbor criminals,” meaning the criminals of Brownsville. And then he turned to lynchings: “The greatest existing cause of lynching is the perpetration, especially by black men, of the hideous crime of rape.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 779

Categorization

• SEED: The pattern ‘structural violence (lynching) excused by blaming the victims’ crime’ is a reusable analytical frame for contemporary policing discussions.