Conventional wisdom tells us lynchings in the US are a historical phenomenon. George Floyd’s murder graphically demonstrates they are not.
For many, the word ‘lynching’ conjures up images of an angry mob throwing a rope over a branch and hastily dispatching its victim before the authorities can intervene. But as anyone who has taken more than a cursory glance at the history of white US ‘mob justice’ will know, lynchings in post-slavery/Reconstruction America were anything but. They were protracted, brutal affairs overwhelmingly committed against black men as calculated acts of intimidation and fear.
What happened to George Floyd was nothing less than a public lynching. Unfortunately, the list of similarities does not end there.
