Research Paper on Rosewood

Discuss white mob violence against African Americans during the interwar period (specifically, 1917-1923), include the Rosewood incident in Florida. What are the common elements? What are the key differences? Why are these incidents more common during this time period? The interwar period of America less racial violence towards the beginning of the Second World War (Racial Violence in…). Go back a few years from than and this nation was practically bathed with the blood of innocents killed just because they were different. Yet some people saw these innocents as a threat to their life- style which was simply too much to deem. The obsession with white domination was the main cause for white mob violence during the interwar period but individual instances varied in their motives and the methods of expressing hatred of African Americans. The thought of white supremacy has been instigated in American History as early as colonial times. Colonists used laws that restricted slaves and slave owners alike. Slave owners were forced by the laws to insist on the slave codes. People of colonial times used slave patrols to put the fear of slave rebellions to rest by watching slaves (Jong 220). These slave patrollers were the first policemen, but unlike the honorable policemen of today, theses individuals were corrupt and took justice in their own hands (Waldrep and Bellesiles 283). Patrollers not only targeted slaves but also free blacks. These people could be harassed at any time the patrollers pleased. Patrollers had the right to abuse and humiliate slaves along with other innocent people (Jong 221). Southern whites were desperate to keep their rule over African Americans even after slavery had been outlawed in the rest of the nation (Jong 221). Whites used the executions of blacks, whether they were legal or not, as way to show their dominance over the race and their own immunity to the law (Vandiver 10). During the time of Reconstruction in the south slavery was made

Cited: De Jong, Greta. "Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas." Journal of Social History 36.1(2002) 220+. 2 Mar 2009 . Dye, R. Thomas. "Rosewood, Florida: The Destruction of an African American Community." The Historian 58.3(1996) 605+. 2 Mar 2009 . Gibson, Robert . "The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States, 1880-1950." yale.edu. Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. 26 Apr 2009 . Luders, Joseph E. "Civil Rights Success and the Politics of Racial Violence." Polity 37.1(2005) 108+. 2 Mar 2009 . Markovitz, Jonathan. Legacies of Lynching: Racial Violence and Memory. Minneapolis: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004. Olzak, Susan. "The Political Context of Competition: Lynching and Urban Racial Violence, 1882-1914." Social Forces 69.21990 395. 30 Mar 2009 . Racial Violence in the United States. Chicago: Aldine Publishing, 1969. Shapiro, Herbert. White Violence and Black Response: From Reconstruction to Montgomery. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988. Vandal, Gilles. "Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920." Journal of Social History 40.2(2006) 541+. 2 Mar 2009 . Vandal, Gilles. "The Making of a Lynching Culture: Violence and Vigilantism in Central Texas, 1836-1916." Journal of Southern History 39.2(2005) 555+. 2 Mar 2009 . Vandiver, Margaret. Lethal Punishment: Lynchings and Legal Executions in the South. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006. Waldrep, Christopher, and Michael Bellesiles. Documenting American Violence: A Sourcebook. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.