African-American History

Learn about African American history with these old magazine articles. Find information on Black Civil Rights violations in the 1920s.

Origin of the Term ”Jim Crow”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

The first three paragraphs of this article explain the 19th Century origins of a moniker that represents the most hideous institution born on American shores. The term in question is Jim Crow – a sobriquet that came into use decades before the American Civil War but was refashioned into a synonym that meant institutional racism. The article goes on to recall one African-American Congressman and his fruitless efforts to clean up Jim Crow.

‘School Crises in Dixie”
(American Magazine, 1956)

Not since the Civil War has the nation faced such an explosive situation as it will when public schools in the South open their doors next month. In a plea for tolerance, sympathy and understanding in the South as well as the North, Pulitzer Prize award winning journalist Virginius Dabney (1901 – 1995) analyzes and interprets a problem serious to Americans in every section of the country.

Lynching Record For The Year 1918
(The Crises, 1918)

Attached is a two page account of the sixty-four lynchings that took place during 1918; the names of the victims, dates, locations, and their alleged violations. There is no mention made concerning how the data was collected.

According to THE CRISES records there were 64 Negroes, 5 of whom were Negro women, and four white men, lynched in the United States during the year 1918, as compared with 224 persons lynched and killed in mob violence during 1917, 44 of whom were lynchings of Negroes…

The Lynching Evil as Understood by Robert Moton
(Review of Reviews, 1919)

A digest concerning the thoughts of Tuskegee Institutes’s Robert R. Moton (1867 – 1940) and his reflections on the 1919 lynchings. Principal Moton pointed out that lynching served as the primary cause for the northerly migration of the African-Americans and was creating a labor shortage that would in no way benefit the economies of the Southern states. He stated that more and more Whites were recognizing the injustice of the crime and taking measures to actively oppose it. Seven influential Southern newspapers were named that had recently condemned lynching.

Lynching as an Extension of Chivalry?
(The New Republic, 1922)

This small column from the pages of THE NEW REPUBLIC reported that women from five Southern states had gathered together in 1922 intending to pass a set of resolutions that would remedy one aspect of the Negro question (an illusive phrase that meant lynching). The attached article remarked that these women

…feel a deep sense of appreciation for the chivalry of men who would give their lives for the purity and safety of the women of their own race, yet They wish to bring about a state of public opinion which will compel the protection and purity of both races.

The Klansman on the Supreme Court
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

When the U.S. Supreme Court gave their decision concerning the 1940 appeal of a lower court’s verdict to convict three African-Americans for murder, civil libertarians in Washington held their collective breath wondering how Justice Hugo Black approached the case. Black, confirmed in 1937 as FDR’s first court appointee, admitted to having once been made a ‘life member’ of the Ku Klux Klan. This column was one of any number of other articles from that era that reported on the Alabaman’s explanation behind his Klan associations:

I did join the Klan… I later resigned. I never rejoined.

The Lynchings of 1934
(Literary Digest, 1935)

Four paragraphs tallying up the number of lynchings that took place throughout the course of 1934. The study was compiled by the Department of Records and Research of the Tuskegee Institute, which also compared the amount to the number of lynchings that took place during the previous four years.

Fifteen people, all Negroes, were lynched during 1934…Mississippi led in the number of lynchings, six; Florida and Louisiana came next with two each; and one each was recorded for Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas.

Klan Methods and Customs
(Literary Digest, 1922)

This article reported on the alarming growth and surprising appeal that the KKK was attaining in 1922. The unnamed journalist described numerous incidences that clearly reflected the Klan’s open contempt for law throughout the country- concluding that the Klan was beyond redemption. The article revealed that the newspaper editors who lived and worked in those regions where the Klan was most active had greater contempt for them than we otherwise might have been lead to believe.

The Modern Klan
(Atlantic Monthly, 1922)

An Atlantic Monthly article by LeRoy Percy (1860– 1929), a well-off planter who had successfully fought the spread of the KKK into Washington County, Mississippi. This article explains how the Klan operated in 1922. Their wide-spread appeal is also discussed.

One of the strangest aberrations in American life since the war is the growth of the Ku Klux Klan. In the North that organization, when considered at all, has been thought of as a colossal buffoonery, a matter unworthy of the time or thought of intelligent folk; and indeed for the average American, with his common sense and his appreciation for the ridiculous, any other attitude of numbers would seem unlikely…The Klan excludes from membership Negroes, Jews, Catholics and foreign-born, whether citizens or not. In its own phrase, it is the only Gentile White Protestant American-born organization in the world. It is secret… When asked if he is a member, the custom is for a good Klansman to evade, more rarely to reply in the negative, but in any event not to avow his membership.


Click here to learn about the origins of the term Jim Crow.

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