Southern White Women’s Anti-Lynching Struggle: Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, 1930-1942
Abstract
This article examines the anti-lynching struggle of Jessie Daniel
Ames and the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of
Lynching (ASWPL) in the 1930s, which aimed to bring an end to
the practice of lynching in the southern states of the U.S. Originally
a form of vigilante violence against various individuals, especially
in the areas far from federal government’s control, lynching became
a practice based on racial superiority in the late nineteenth century.
Allegations of sexual assault by African American men against white
women were often used to justify the actions of lynch mobs in the
southern states. In this respect, alongside northern anti-lynching
organizations, southern white women standing up against lynchings,
which were supposedly carried out in the name of protecting them,
made a significant contribution to the anti-lynching struggle in the first
half of the twentieth century. This paper analyzes the actions taken
by the organization under the leadership of Ames in order to change
widely held assumptions about the lynchers and their victims.
Keywords
References
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