Timothy Caughman’s Murder Was a Lynching in Trump’s America.
Just another day in Trumpmerica.
The first thread that binds this killing to past lynchings is Jackson’s motivation. The self-proclaimed white supremacist told police that he hated black men in particular for their relationships with white women, a harkening back to the rationales of an earlier age. “To palliate this record … and excuse some of the most heinous crimes that ever stained the history of a country,” wrote journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett in her 19th-century pamphlet Southern Horrors, “the South is shielding itself behind the plausible screen of defending the honor of its women.” South Carolina Sen. Benjamin Tillman voiced this same justification for this form of murder in a speech on the Senate floor in 1900. “We of the South have never recognized the right of the Negro to govern white men and we never will,” he said. “We have never believed him to be equal to the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives and daughters without lynching him.”
Advertisement
What makes the comparison even stronger is the fact that, like many victims of “lynch law,” Caughman was innocent of any actual crime or offense.
More: Timothy Caughman’s murder was a lynching in Trump’s America.