During
the American War of Independence (or Revolutionary War) a Virginia planter and
magistrate called Charles Lynch, the son of a poor Irish immigrant, was in the
habit of locking up supporters of the British without trial. His friends in
Congress protected him from prosecution after the fact by legalising these
questionable activities. This is the likely origin of the US term Lynch Law for
any kind of pseudo-judicial punishment and, by extension, the word lynching for a mob execution by hanging.
After
the Civil War and Emancipation, lynching became mainly associated with the
murder of black men by gangs of white men (though victims were not exclusively
black and a small but significant minority were female). According to research
at the University of Missouri, nearly 3,500 African Americans were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968. The circumstances varied, but the
overarching purpose was to maintain white control in the southern states by
intimidating African Americans into accepting their servile status. Black
people were discouraged by whatever means necessary from voting, acquiring
education, or challenging white authority.
Civil
Rights legislation changed all that – up to a point. Young African American men
are still disproportionately stopped and searched, pulled over, harassed, charged,
convicted and locked up. Extra-judicial executions now take the form of
shootings of unarmed black men and teenage boys by police officers or by
vigilantes encouraged by a new wave of 'stand your ground' laws.
The
Supreme Court has recently opened the door to discriminatory voting legislation
in individual states, designed to make it harder for certain sections of the
population to vote, particularly those without settled addresses or the time to
wait in long lines at inconveniently placed polling stations during the working
week. Along with the overlapping categories of students, poor people, and the
footloose renter class, minority populations are disproportionately affected.
Eric
Holder, Attorney General for the past six years, has been outspoken on these
issues. Now that Holder has decided to step down, Obama has nominated Loretta Lynch, who is currently the
US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. If appointed she will be the
second African American, the second woman, and the first African American woman
to hold the post.
The
child of a Baptist minister and a school librarian, Lynch was born, as it
happens, in Greensboro, North Carolina, a town significant in the history of
the Civil Rights movement for the 1960 sit-in by black students at Woolworth’s
lunch counter in defiance of the whites-only policy. Lynch is unquestionably
qualified to be Attorney General, though the smear campaign against her, by
people who would object to anyone chosen by Obama, has already begun.
The name Lynch derives from the Gaelic word meaning ‘longship’
or ‘mariner’.
I don’t know where Loretta Lynch got it from, but I’m willing to guess that her
ancestors acquired it unwillingly from a plantation owner of Irish heritage. I
hope she's appointed. It would be heartening to think that she might do
something to rehabilitate this ancient Irish name in the context of American racial politics.
