Birmingham Voice of the People
April 1, 1916
"BUMPS INTO GIRL; IS LYNCHED"

Cedar Bluff, Miss., March 31--Jeff Brown was lynched by a mob here
late Saturday afternoon. Brown was walking down the street near the
car tracks and saw a moving freight going in the direction in which he
wanted to go. He started on the run to board the moving train. On the
sidewalk was the daughter of a white farmer. Brown accidentally
brushed against her and she screamed. A gang quickly formed and ran
after him, jerking him off the moving train. He was beaten into insensi-
bility and then hung to a tree. The sheriff has made no attempt to find
out who the members of the mob were. Picture cards of the body are be-
ing sold on the street at five cents apiece.

-- Ralph Ginzburg, One Hundred Years of Lynchings ( 1988)

"Murder, just murder, would make us all sane."

--Clay, a black man, to Lula, a white woman,
in LeRoi Jones Dutchman ( 1964)

One of the most intriguing aspects of the white image in the black mind is
the representation of white women in fiction. Responding to the idealiza-
tion--however sexist--of white women by the media and by those de-
fending racism, black writers have clearly wanted to smash this ideal. While
white feminists have been cognizant of how ironically imprisoning it is to
be chained to a pedestal that serves the interests of white men, many
blacks have responded to the fact that this idealized white female image has
been used--both by white men and, at times, by white women (e.g., the

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