Memorializing Lynch Victims

Rationale for the Event

As with similar extant work (e.g., Burke and Banks 2012; Mobley 2007; Pat 2006), we sought not to increase student understanding of sociological concepts but rather to help white students replace colorblind ideologies with understandings that used their sociological imaginations, affecting attitudes about and understanding of the historical roots of racial inequality. Participants (N = 282) were undergraduates enrolled in two sections of a large, lecture-format Introduction to Sociology course at Utah State University (USU). The majority were not sociology majors, and this class would likely be their only exposure to the discipline. Teaching about racial conflict using an experiential approach made particular sense at USU, where 84 percent of undergraduates are non-Hispanic white and nearly three-quarters are “in-state”—from one of the least racially diverse US states (Analysis, Assessment, and Accreditation 2011; Bureau of the Census 2012). In light of most white undergraduates’ limited exposure to racial diversity, we believed that combining factual and empathic knowledge had the greatest likelihood of changing white students’ attitudes about the structural sources of racial inequality.

Lynching dramatically illustrates how historical practices and structures have limited black social and economic progress. ² In the decades following the Civil War, mob violence was used to terrorize and economically and politically suppress the black population (Wells-Barnett 1969). This violence also strategically benefitted whites by tethering African Americans to the emerging sharecropper system. An average of one black man, woman, or child was lynched each week in the American South between 1882 and 1930 (Tolnay and Beck 1995), preventing black geographic mobility and constraining black economic advancement (Ransom and Sutch 2001). The geographic concentration of historical racial violence is linked to contemporary issues, including interracial homicide (Messner, Baller, and Zevenbergen 2005), state use of the death penalty (Jacobs, Carmichael, and Kent 2005), and incarceration rates (Jacobs, Malone, and Iles 2012).

We developed this event using Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning model (ELM), which asserts that once an individual has a concrete experience with a new concept, she or he is able to reflect on that experience, translate it into abstract concepts, and apply those concepts to new situations. We believe that part of the memorial’s impact emerges as white students realize the extent of racial violence and reflect on that experience. As students connect racial violence to the specific names and human stories that form the basis of the memorial, previously abstract concepts about racial inequality attain the contours of personhood. White students are then able to critically examine the world around them and understand the structure of racial inequality in other domains.

Organizing the Event

Faculty, teaching assistants, and undergraduates in two large Introduction to Sociology sections collaborated with the campus Alpha Kappa Delta (AKD) chapter to organize the event. Prior to the event, 274 students who were enrolled in the class completed the pretest. The survey instrument and procedures for its administration were approved by the campus institutional review board (IRB). IRB approval was not required for the event. Student AKD leaders and class members—19 of whom chose to fulfill course service learning requirements by participating in the event—created a Facebook event page and publicity flyer; reserved a location, a tent canopy, tables and chairs, and amplification equipment; recruited volunteers; and sent press releases. Faculty guided this process and developed handouts that discussed both the particulars of the event and historical information on lynching.

The event was held in a high-traffic area outside of the student center, used for “free speech” activities and social events. Roughly 50 volunteer readers were scheduled for 10-minute shifts and were asked to arrive 15 to 20 minutes early. “Information and outreach” volunteers remained at the booth to distribute fact sheets and substitute should a scheduled volunteer not appear for a shift. Student organizers made reminder calls to volunteers an hour prior to each one’s scheduled shift, served as contacts for volunteers and the media, and distributed the script to readers. A faculty member and member of the student organizing committee were always present. ³

Reading began at 9:00 a.m. and lasted until nearly 7:00 p.m. The script, organized chronologically, included each person’s name, race, and gender; the offense for which she or he was accused; and the date and location of the person’s death (see Figure 1). During the event, the faculty member and lead student organizer each had a complete script. Three additional copies were available for readers. At any moment, a volunteer was reading aloud from one script, and the next two scheduled volunteers had copies, allowing them to follow the script’s progress. Both participating classes met for the first half of the assigned period in their regular classroom to discuss lynching and its racial dimensions. A teaching assistant presented a 15-minute mini-lecture that defined lynching, discussed the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of lynch victims, and emphasized that black men were the most frequent victims. This intersection of race and gender was used to illustrate the myth of the black sexual predator (Davis 1992)—a myth that is countered by the facts that (1) a minority of lynch victims were accused of sexual offenses and (2) many lynch victims were innocent of their “crimes.” Class members then walked to the event together and were instructed to participate by listening to the memorial until the end of the class period—roughly 20 minutes, or the time needed to read roughly 100 names.

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Figure 1.

Excerpt from Memorial Script.

Assessing Impact

Three weeks before the event, students completed an 18-item anonymous pretest in their regularly scheduled class. Questions focused on attitudes and beliefs about race relations and racial inequality, using questions from the Hamilton College National Youth Opinion Poll (Levitt Public Affairs Center 1999) and New Mexico State University Racial Attitudes Questionnaire, which combines items from multiple instruments (Stephan and Stephan 1993, 1996, 2000). All but two questions were scored on a 12-point Likert-type scale, allowing for a range of agreement or disagreement. We compared aggregated pre- and posttests results to identify whether participation affected student attitudes about U.S. racial inequality and race relations. During the class immediately following the event, students completed the same questionnaire and were invited to write open-ended comments. An additional posttest item asked students about their event participation, with responses ranging from nonparticipation to serving on the organizing committee. We expected that posttest responses would evidence increased perceptions of the historical and structural bases for racial inequality and decreased tolerance for racial inequality. We also expected to observe higher levels of colorblind ideology on the posttest among students who did not attend the event.

Qualitative Evidence

Due to IRB confidentiality requirements, we were unable to collect student demographics. We acknowledge this limitation of the study. Students of color—particularly students of African descent—likely had emotional reactions substantially different from those of white students. Our inability to link responses with student race masks this difference, and we are hesitant to speculate how black students may have reacted. Qualitative responses suggest that the experience enabled many, presumably white, students to more deeply understand the legacy of racial inequality and how dominant institutions serve to protect whites from knowledge of their own advantage. This realization was particularly true for students who were directly involved in the event’s coordination, nearly all of whom were white. Virtually all written comments were from students who used the event for the course service learning requirement. As one student said, “I am surprised that we are not really taught about this in our history classes. . . . It is like we are trying to hide what has happened in the past.” Another student made connections between historical racial violence and contemporary issues: “[The event] really brought [injustices] to light. . . . One can still look and see the injustice and inequality of the criminal justice system . . . by looking at the rate of incarceration among the black community.”

A final set of comments suggested that students developed empathic understanding of inequality. As one student wrote: “I loved how the names, locations, and dates were all a part of the name calling section. It gives each individual person his/her own identity [and] . . . shows that he/she was [an] actual person.” These comments suggest that the memorial had a powerful impact on students, particularly those who encountered the humanity of victims through experiential means—reading names or entering names into the script. We think that requiring participation in such meaningful ways may increase the event’s impact.

Quantitative Results

To isolate effects of the event from other course components, we compared (1) pretest responses (n = 274) with posttest responses for students who had attended the event (n = 223) and (2) posttest responses for those who had (n = 223) and had not attended the event (n = 58). Preliminary analyses suggested that differences between groups resulted from effects on “extreme” responses—a decline in the percentage of students with high levels of support for colorblind ideologies, or an increase in the percentage of students supporting more structural understandings of racial inequality. Therefore, we collapsed the responses to create new variables identifying low, medium, and high levels of colorblind attitudes for each survey item. We then calculated chi-square statistics to identify whether the concentration of students exhibiting high support for colorblind perspectives declined or the percentage voicing low support for colorblind attitudes increased.

Space constraints prevent us from presenting quantitative results for all 18 items. In Table 1, then, we present only those items with significant between-group differences. ⁴ Students who attended the event reported lower support for several measures of colorblind ideology compared with both the pretest sample and students who did not attend the event. We believe that items for which we observe differences between the pretest and attendees’ posttests, but not between posttests for students who attended and did not attend the event, capture the effects of the material presented in class. Results suggest that this material increased students’ acknowledgement of whites’ responsibility for race relations and decreased their belief that a racial battle exists in the United States.

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Table 1.

Significant Differences in Support for Statements at Pretest, at Posttest, and by Attendance.

	All Pretest vs. Attendee Posttest	Attendees vs. Nonattendees
Blacks responsible for poor race relations	Reduced**	NSD
Racial battle exists in the United States	Reduced ‡	NSD
Diversity education important	NSD	Increased ‡
Evaluate race relations today	NSD	Worse*
U.S. race relations always characterized by conflict	NSD	Increased*
“Separate but equal” is OK	NSD	Reduced ‡
Diversity in college admissions important	Increased*	Increased*
Blacks responsible for reducing racial inequality	Decreased**	Decreased ‡
Historical circumstances impede black progress	Increased***	Increased*
Would confront racist comment	Increased**	Increased ‡

Notes: NSD = no significant difference. N = 274 pretests, 58 nonattendee posttests and 223 attendee posttests. Comparisons between pre- and posttest restricted to posttests from attendees.

‡

p ≤ 0.10, *p ≤ 0.05, **p ≤ 0.01, ***p ≤ 0.001

On four items, there were no significant differences between pretests and attendees’ posttests, although differences between posttest responses between attendees and nonattendees were significant. Compared with students who attended the event, those who did not attend exhibited less support for diversity education, more positively evaluated current race relations, disagreed that conflict has consistently characterized American race relations, and exhibited greater acceptance of social segregation as long as all people have equality of opportunity. In each of these cases, nonattendees were either less likely to hold “low colorblind” attitudes, more likely to hold “high colorblind” attitudes, or both. This raises the possibility that the decision to attend the event was predicated partly on students’ prior racial attitudes.

We observe significant differences between all pretests and attendees’ posttests and between attendees’ and nonattendees’ posttests on four items, isolating the effects of the event from attitudinal changes resulting from the lecture-based presentation. Students who attended the event demonstrated greater support for considering diversity in college admissions, assigned blacks less responsibility for racial inequality, and were more willing to confront a coworker who told a racist joke. Perhaps most important, event attendees voiced significantly higher support than the other groups for the idea that historical circumstances have constrained black progress.

Conclusion

Given the limited racial and ethnic diversity at Utah State University, our findings suggest that this exercise is effective with white students who lack meaningful personal experience with racial diversity and the structural sources of inequality. This experiential approach helped students—the vast majority of them white—overcome opposition to key tenets of sociological thinking: that structures within which people operate constrain individual outcomes and that those structures result from historical processes. We think making this connection is the most important means by which the event activates white students’ sociological imaginations: the sheer number of victims, combined with the humanizing effect of hearing their names and brief details of their deaths, emphasizes the structural nature of racial violence, challenging white students’ individualistic approaches to racial inequality while underscoring its effect on individuals.

The deep impact for students actively involved in the event’s production suggests that “service learning” maximizes racial attitude changes (Marullo 1998). In light of these results, we suggest involving more students in the event’s organization, perhaps as a course requirement. Note that students who attended the event did not eschew all measures of colorblind ideology. Without exception, however, statistically significant differences indicate that (white) students who attended the memorial developed greater belief in structural sources of inequality and the enduring consequences of the history of racial violence. All significant differences suggest a decline in colorblind ideologies. We believe that being directly confronted with lynch victims’ humanity, and the volume of racial violence in American history, forces students to reflect on their experience and reshapes their understanding of the structural sources of contemporary inequality.