Understanding Lynching from Differing Perspectives
Despite living in a similar historical context and having a slight overlap of a few parallel feminist views, Rebecca Latimer Felton’s and Ida B. Wells’ understanding of lynching and mob violence greatly differed. While Felton viewed these atrocities as the consequences of southern white men’s corrupt politics and lack of protection of white women, Wells had a much different understanding. Instead, she understood these carnages through a structural, racial, and gendered view. Although both found lynching and mob violence to be grave social problems, their context and environment heavily influenced their individual perspectives and understandings.
Rebecca Felton’s myopic understanding of lynching was largely influenced by the political, historical, and socioeconomic environment she had lived in. In the Antebellum South, strictly enforced social standards and norms permeated Felton’s everyday life and shaped her understanding of the world. She was surrounded by the…show more content… Wells, who was born about a generation later than Felton, had a much different understand of lynching. She was born a slave during the Civil War and came of age during Reconstruction (Feimster, 37). She believed that lynching was not about protecting white women as the media and society often portrayed. Instead, lynching and mob violence was about protecting white supremacy and maintaining the patriarchy. Wells understood lynching through a structural, racial, and gendered view. To her, it was all about control. White men were able control black women through rape and control black men through a rape narrative. By placing black men in the role of the dangerous antagonist, white southern men could justify these lynchings. Wells argued that those who commited the lynchings and mob violence under the guise of protecting women, were the same white men that “created a race of mulattos” by raping black slave women (Feimster,
