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A Negro hanging from a tree in a real lynching. Photo: Library of Congress; a sculpture of a lynching victim; Spectators looking at charred corpse of Jesse Washington hanging from tree after lynching, Waco, Texas, May 15, 1916; two Negroes hang from a tree in Marion, Indiana. Lynchings were a popular pastime for America over the years, rivaling checkers and horseshoes in that, according to the U. S. Senate, at least 4,742 people, predominantly blacks, were reported lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968. 99% of those murders went unpunished. A Jew named Leo Frank who's murder conviction was commuted by the Georgia governor was lynched by a mob who stormed a prison and grabbed him.

A little loose with the Noose

FROM THE WHAT WERE THEY THINKING DEPARTMENT: A noose was placed around a student's neck in an elementary school in Grambling, Louisiana by a black teacher; at a lab school associated with Grambling State University, three first-year teachers assisted in stunt...the teachers involved are black, one teacher has already been put on leave...will Rev. Al Sharpton show up with bus loads of Ku Klux Klansmen miffed because their favorite tool is being disrespected in school yard horseplay? As part of the show and tell for kindergartners, one of the kids had the noose placed around her neck, all as part of a rally for the Jena 6 show of support for the six hoodlums who beat up a kid at a school in Jena, La. USA TODAY report The kids involved in the Grambling affair were black and pictures of them with shackles and chains, as well as the mock lynching were done as part of sensitivity training for racism, to be able to experience it first hand and the photos of the bizarre event were ordered removed from the schools website by the president of the university...good thing they didn't decide to drag any kids behind a pickup truck.

More on the background of the Noose
Are lynchings something for blacks to joke about? There are many blacks who wouldn't consider this issue to be one of jest or fun, or even an appropriate demonstration, even by blacks.
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was deeply troubled by continued lynchings in the South in 1936 and revealed in this letter that her husband, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, declined to take federal action fearing it would cause more "antagonism" and perhaps more lynchings. Mrs. Roosevelt was attempting to get Congress to make lynchings a federal crime and the Senate never would go along with it, leading the Senate to apologize to lynching victims (who may have been a little choked up at this timely action on the part of the brave politicians) in a resolution in 2005.