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Photograph courtesy of UPI/Corbis-Bettmann

Lynching as Human Sacrifice

In 1899 a newspaper described the lynching, in Georgia, of a black farm laborer charged with killing his white employer: "In the presence of nearly 2,000 people, who sent aloft yells of defiance and shouts of joy, Sam Holt...was burned at the stake in a public road....Before the torch was applied to the pyre, the Negro was deprived of his ears, fingers, and other portions of his body with surprising fortitude. Before the body was cool, it was cut to pieces, the bones were crushed into small bits and even the tree upon which the wretch met his fate were [sic] torn up and disposed of as souvenirs. The Negro's heart was cut in small pieces, as was also his liver. Those unable to obtain the ghastly relics directly, paid more fortunate possessors extravagant sums for them. Small pieces of bone went for 25 cents and a bit of liver, crisply cooked, for 10 cents."

Such lynchings were a form of religious ritual, according to Orlando Patterson, Cowles professor of sociology. In the wake of their devastating defeat in the Civil War, Southerners had to explain why they had lost. "The South, as the most Christian part of the nation, felt that it must have committed some great sin for that bunch of feckless, effete Northerners to defeat them," says Patterson, who argues that lynchings were often a way to cast out that sin. Blacks themselves could not be literally cast out because their labor was needed. So some Southerners found the next best thing. "You symbolically cast them out by ritually sacrificing them," Patterson explains.

Religious ritual sacrifices have several characteristics, including torture, mass attendance, and burning. In a forthcoming book, Rituals of Blood: God, Sex, and Violence in Black and White America, Patterson asserts that 35 to 40 percent of the lynchings qualified as bona fide human sacrifices, serving the same functions that such sacrifices do in any society that practices them. Scholars have overlooked the religious significance of the lynchings, Patterson says.

Fire consecrated the act; the sacrifices did not take place in previously consecrated places, such as churches. But clergymen frequently incited the mob or joined it, and the sacrifice often occurred on a Sunday. Newspaper reports often noted that a collective hush generally came over the crowd at the moment of the victim's death. The awesome transition from life to death silenced even a murderous lynch mob.

Symbolic cannibalism was also typical in such lynchings, Patterson says. "It often involves just smelling and going around with a piece of that person. If that's cannibalism, then what these people were doing was cannibalism, because they did go around with pieces of fried African American hearts and livers." Participants in the ritual would take body parts as ritual mementos, and often adjourned to a common meal afterwards.

Sacrifice is always a communal act and often involves slaves. For example, the pre-Columbian Tupinamba, a Brazilian hunter-gatherer tribe, sacrificed slaves. Those who attempted to escape and were caught were subjected to an elaborate ritual killing. When the slave finally died, women drank the warm blood; the body was cut up and roasted, and the most distinguished members of the community received "delicacies" such as fingers or the fat around the liver or heart.

Blacks, the ultimate domestic enemy, were ideal sacrificial victims, Patterson says. "Societal transitions, moments when the entire community or nation is at risk, are, of course, the most serious, demanding the greatest sacrifices," he writes. "Precisely such a period of liminality was faced by the Old South after the collapse of its system of slavery and its forced transition to a new form of society."

~ Susan G. Parker

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