Role of the ASWPL in the decline in lynchings during the 1930s
Raper discusses the role of the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching in the declining number of lynchings during the 1930s. Ultimately, Raper argues that it was a combination of circumstances that contributed to the gradual decline of lynching, although he suggests that the Southern Commission for the Study of Lynching, along with the work of Ames and ASWPL, was especially influential. Here, as elsewhere, he cites Ames' argument against lynching as a protection of white southern womanhood as particularly powerful during that era.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Arthur Raper, January 30, 1974. Interview B-0009-2. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
This is my question, well, two related questions. One big question. Why
did lynching decline? Secondly, how important was the ASWPL really in
the decline of lynching? Among all the different factors that caused its
decline. Was the ASWPL…
- ARTHUR RAPER:
-
The dominant factor?
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
Well…yes.
- ARTHUR RAPER:
-
If you have an inclination sometime, if you want to, I'll show
you the clippings that came out when, I think I have a set of clippings
on—I know I have— that came out when the book came
out, but then this is a little bit after the fact, in terms of her
organization. Because that was '33. Of course, she ran on up
towards '40. I don't know, lynching is related to
a thing that I was trying to say last night, near the end of the session
over there. There are periods when combinations of circumstances make it
possible for new things to emerge and then there
are periods when you are making progress even if you just
don't lose ground. And we're in one of those now,
very pronouncedly. And lynching…I don't know, I
think that the work of the Southern Commission for the Study of
Lynching, plus the work of Mrs. Ames' group would weigh in
there, would weigh in very heavily as one of the reasons for the
decline.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
Well, the research was done, the analysis, the research was done by other
people, but she and her organization spread the word. What was their
validity? That's what I'm trying to get at. If she
had not organized that movement, but the research had been done, so that
this general argument was there, then, what would have happened?
- ARTHUR RAPER:
-
About the same thing. Maybe not quite. It was an additional
plus…
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
Well, this is a hard question, how do you say how much…
- ARTHUR RAPER:
-
I don't think you can. But the nature of mob violence relates
to a whole bunch of factors and the one thing that came into the
situation in 1930, see, we were going into the Depression and what not,
We weren't going into heydays, we were going into hard days
and the lynchings might have gone up tremendously before you got to
'35. And as it was, they generally stayed below what they had
been five years before. And the thing that came in there was the
Southern Commission on the Study of Lynching and plus Mrs.
Ames' work. And that was new. And it
simply wasn't respectable to use protection of southern white
women as a defense for lynching any longer. And Mrs. Ames made a very
real contribution, exactly at that point, as I said when I first started
on it.
