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On the distinction between "Posse" and "Lynch mob"

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@Zacwill: I would like to address the distinction between "lynch mob" and "posse". Contemporary reports used "posse" as lynch mobs often formed with the explicit assistance and direction of law enforcement (eg: Lynching of Anthony Crawford). "Posse" was a euphemism to give their murder the cover of legal legitimacy, nothing more.

From Lynching in the United States:

A significant number of lynching victims were accused of murder or attempted murder.

Per footnote a:

While all accounts agree on the large number of people participating in the lynching, there is no consistent term to describe that group. Contemporary newspaper accounts used the term posse uniformly.[1][2][3]

Hamer's autobiographical account uses lynch mob.[4] Recent historians have used both

mob[5][6] and posse.[7][8]

Note that to reflect these different characterizations the intro now describes Pullen as: an African-American sharecropper who was lynched by a posse of local white citizens

I would also contend that the death of Joe Pullen meets formal academic definitions of Lynching

From Lynching in the United States:

Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University, defined conditions that constituted a recognized lynching, a definition which became generally accepted by other compilers of the era:

  1. There must be legal evidence that a person was killed.
  2. That person must have met death illegally.
  3. A group of three or more persons must have participated in the killing.
  4. The group must have acted under the pretext of service to justice, race, or tradition.[9][10]

From the NAACP website:

A lynching is the public killing of an individual who has not received any due process. These executions were often carried out by lawless mobs, though police officers did participate, under the pretext of justice.

Lynchings were violent public acts that white people used to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in the South. Lynchings typically evoke images of Black men and women hanging from trees, but they involved other extreme brutality, such as torture, mutilation, decapitation, and desecration. Some victims were burned alive.

A typical lynching involved a criminal accusation, an arrest, and the assembly of a mob, followed by seizure, physical torment, and murder of the victim. Lynchings were often public spectacles attended by the white community in celebration of white supremacy. Photos of lynchings were often sold as souvenir postcards.[11]

The death of Joe Pullen perfectly satisfies the NAACP's definition, and I would argue the Tuskegee definition (which is often regarded as incomplete by academics[12]) as well because for the death to have been legal the "posse" would have had to have the intention of giving Pullen due process, and I personally have a hard time believing that this "posse" had any intention of taking Joe Pullen alive, and even if they did he would have been given a show trial in front of an all white jury, promptly hung and then likely mutilated in some horrific manner just like he was anyway (I would cite examples but trust me when I say that you don't want pictures of that in your brain). You must understand the reality of Joe Pullen's situation, he was a Black man accused of killing his White landlord in the Jim Crow South. People were lynched for far less.— FenrisAureus ▲ (she/they) (talk) 19:06, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pullen's death does not in fact "perfectly satisfy" the definition you cited, since he was not killed illegally. It is not illegal for law enforcement to return fire when a fugitive shoots at them (killing three people in this case, in addition to the original victim). Zacwill (talk) 22:53, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You may not think that this was a lynching, but the cops who did it seem to think it was given that they call it one [1] — FenrisAureus ▲ (she/they) (talk) 19:40, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I get an error message when I try to access that page. Zacwill (talk) 13:01, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Idk. Maybe it's because you're not in the US?🤷‍♀️ Try using a VPN if you have one. On the page, the Drew police department refer to the death as a lynching. — FenrisAureus ▲ (she/they) (talk) 20:35, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  1. ^ Machine Gun Used in Hunting Down Negro Murder, Providence, RI: Evening Tribune, 15 Dec 1923, p. 1
  2. ^ Terrible results of battle with lone negro farmer, Easton, PA: Easton Daily Free Press, 15 Dec 1923, p. 3
  3. ^ Negro Murderer Was Killed, vol. 4, Nevada, MI: The Nevada Daily Mail and Evening Post, 15 Dec 1923, p. 1
  4. ^ Hamer, Fannie Lou (1986). "To Praise Our Bridges". In Abbott, Dorothy (ed.). Mississippi Writers: Reflections of Childhood and Youth Volume II: Nonfiction. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 9780878052349.
  5. ^ Umoja, Akinyele Omowale (2003), We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement, New York University Press, ISBN 9780814725245
  6. ^ Finnegan, Terrance (11 February 2013), A Deed So Accursed: Lynching in Mississippi and South Carolina, 1881–1940, University of Virginia Press, ISBN 9780813933856
  7. ^ Woodruff, Nan Elizabeth (2003), American Congo: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta, Harvard University Press, p. 138, ISBN 9780674010475
  8. ^ Salvatore, Nick (15 October 2007). Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America. Hachette Digital, Inc. ISBN 9780316030779. Retrieved 6 July 2013. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  9. ^ Guzman, Jessie Parkhurst; Foster, Vera Chandler; Hughes, William Hardin (1947). Negro year book: a review of events affecting Negro life, 1941–1946. Prelinger Library. Tuskegee, Al.: Dept. of Records and Research, Tuskegee Institute. p. 303.
  10. ^ "Bibliography of data sources". MonroeWorkToday.org. Auut Studio. 2016. Retrieved 2016-12-01.
  11. ^ "History of Lynching in America - NAACP". naacp.org. Retrieved 20 February 2024.
  12. ^ Waldrep, Christopher (2000). "War of Words: The Controversy over the Definition of Lynching, 1899-1940". The Journal of Southern History. 66 (1): 75–100. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/2587438. {{cite journal}}: Check |doi= value (help); External link in |doi= (help)

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