White Baptist women condemned lynching by exposing its protection-of-white-women pretext

Evidence

The terrible conditions which exist in the South make us cry out in bitterness of soul, “How long, O Lord, how long!” Human beings of a darker hue than we are lynched without trial. A man made in the image of God, destined for eternal life or eternal death, is mutilated, partly burned at the stake, then cut up, and pieces of flesh and bones sold for souvenirs, while a part of the heart is sent in triumph to the Governor of the State. Is this better than barbarism? The cry of the white man, that all this is necessary to protect white women, provokes another question, Who protects negro [sic] women??! — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 523

Categorization

• SHARE: A document that vividly turns the rape-protection rationale for lynching back on its defenders; worth sharing with anyone working on lynching rhetoric or the politics of the ‘protection of white women’ trope.
• XREF: Echoes Ida B. Wells’s Southern Horrors argument about the ‘old threadbare lie’ of defending white womanhood; shows white women themselves adopted the critique. — connects to: White Baptist missionary women broke from genteel silence to condemn lynching — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 521; Theology of white Protestant superiority undergirded a century of lynchings — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 29

Broader Connections

• White Baptist missionary women broke from genteel silence to condemn lynching #expands (0.95) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 521
• Theology of white Protestant superiority undergirded a century of lynchings #qualifies (0.72) — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 29