The mob itself advertised lynching as necessary for white supremacy.

Evidence

The Times Democrat, along with other newspaper reports, sought to justify the murders. “Citizens Plead Necessity for White Supremacy” ran the headline on one of the articles. As the historian Jessica Barbata Jackson, at Colorado State University, described it, the idea that the “lynching…was necessary for ‘white supremacy’ ” was the substance of the paper’s argument. “The native-born, white community in Tallulah felt ‘obliged’ to commit the lynching, since the ‘complicity in the conspiracy…could never have been proven legally, and that to ensure white supremacy, no other course was possible than the course pursued.’ — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 140

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: when the perpetrators’ own stated motive is admitted racial enforcement — the evidence a reparations argument needs is often in the perpetrators’ own words, not just victims’ testimony.