America's Dark Past

Lynchings: America's Dark Past

The video of the beating of Rodney King that surfaced before the 1992 LA riots shocked the world. America, the symbol of democracy, the leader of the free world, according to the vicious beating of unarmed civilian Rodney King, told a completely different narrative. The world's perception of what kind of country America advertised to be shifted dramatically as it recognized that American freedom undoubtedly had its flaws and shortcomings. However, the present image of America, the portrayal of unfair brutality and injustice depicted in the Rodney King video reflected not something new but something traditional, something deeply rooted in American history. In the 21st century it takes on the form of the Charlottesville violence, in the 1990s it took on the form of the Rodney King beating, and before the civil rights movement in an era of blatant racism, it took on the form of lynchings.

The blog post here is to recognize the 1992 LA riots as not an isolated incident, but as a major event along a long timeline of racist violence in America. Specifically, in order to understand that the extreme amount of police brutality shown in the Rodney King video is nothing new, an examination of the acts of physical violence before that event needs to take place. And, undoubtedly, lynchings were the major form of physical violence enacted against African Americans that embodied the very ideas of racism and injustice in America.

According to Time Magazine, during the Jim Crow era, up to 4,000 African Americans were violently lynched. The lynchings were known as "racial terror lynchings" and the victims were often killed under the reasoning that they had committed a social transgression, acts as trivial as bumping into a white woman. Preposterous as it sounds, the perpetrators of the lynchings were never accused for their crimes as the police turned a blind eye. Understanding this dark side of America's history, the Rodney King incident seems to be a continuation of the exact physical violence stemming from racist ideology that existed in the Jim Crow era.

-David Park