Policing Jim Crow America: Enforcers’ Agency and Structural Transformations

This is a critical historiographical essay animated by the research question of how the decisions of police and sheriffs illuminated and drove the transformation of white supremacy through different forms from emancipation to the end of Jim Crow segregation. It situates this focus amidst current methodological trends that stress structural oppression and argues that law-enforcers’ agency could illuminate discussions among historians and other scholars about the relationship between formal and informal law alongside the rise of the modern criminological state. The historical importance of enforcers is accentuated in the story told in each section—the shifting demographics of enforcement during Reconstruction; the inequalities of policing alongside lynching in the last decades of the nineteenth century; the complex interplay between policing and segregation statutes, colorblind criminal law, and mob violence in the Jim Crow South; the concurrent modernization of racialized policing nationwide; and the displacement of informal mob law and formal racial caste by a national regime of extralegal police violence, unequal patterns of incarceration and execution, and federal protections of civil liberties and civil rights.

The January 6 Insurrection: Historical and Global Contexts

The 6 January 2021, Trumpist insurrection is in continuity with centuries of white mob violence in the United States, going back to the thwarted 1861 attempt to attack the Capitol in order to overturn Lincoln’s election. At the same, time Trumpism as a modern phenomenon also exhibits links and affinities to contemporary global neofascist and rightwing populist movements. Although small towns and rural areas were heavily represented among the participants on 6 January, analysts need—in the spirit of Marx—to avoid the Lassallean trap of writing off rural populations as uniformly conservative. In this sense, we need to grasp the pervasive racism at the root of Trumpism and its analogues without falling into a view of rural areas as monolithic.

Plurality and Pluralism

This chapter demonstrates the decline of state pluralism, the logic of aggregative identities in political mobilization in independent India, and, in closing, the moral psychology and institutional structure of democratic violence. It argues that caste’s hierarchical and segmenting features produced a logic of mobilization that, over time, accorded legitimacy to identitarian aggregation of all shades—not just those identified by the constitution-makers as deserving of recognition on the grounds of social justice. Simultaneously, the chapter shows how the definition of Hinduness acquired meaning through the differences with Muslims and Christians. Electorally, this identity took shape only over the past three decades, and the BJP’s electoral rise and sustenance have come alongside a rise in “everyday violence.” This chapter explores the conditions of possibility for such violence—the complexity of agential structures in the modern Indian state; the nature of mob violence; and mismatch between a social organization’s incentives and a political party’s compulsions.

OF HOUSEBREAKING AND COMMON PURPOSE: S v Leshilo 2017 JDR 1788 (GP)

Some aspects of substantive criminal law generate more controversy than others. One of the features of the common-law crime of “housebreaking with the intent to commit a crime” is the possible difficulty of proving what “further intent” the accused harboured upon breaking into premises: what crime did the accused intend to commit within? To assist the prosecutor in this regard, the legislature intervened by extending the ambit of the common-law crime to include not just housebreaking where the “further intent” of the accused could be properly identified, but also housebreaking where the “further intent” of the accused could not be identified. Thus, in terms of the Criminal Procedure Act (51 of 1977), a charge of housebreaking with intent to commit a crime “to the prosecutor unknown” (s 95(12)), and a conviction in these terms (s 262) was established. These provisions have proved very controversial, with De Wet commenting that in providing this statutory extension to the common-law crime, the legislature miraculously created a representation of something that is conceptually impossible.The common purpose doctrine also provides invaluable assistance to the State in situations where more than one actor has been involved in the commission of a crime, and where it is extremely difficult to ascertain which actor was responsible for which act. Typically, such crimes arise out of mob violence. A strict application of the rules of causation in such circumstances often makes proof of individual perpetrator liability extremely hard to establish. The consequence of the difficulty in establishing a causal link between the actor’s conduct and the harmful result may be lesser liability or even no liability for the harm. The common purpose doctrine (defined below) however provides that where the actors share a common purpose to commit a crime, and act to that end, the conduct of each actor is imputed to each of the other actors. Thus the difficulty with proof of causation is entirely circumvented. But at what cost? Despite a Constitutional Court judgment to the contrary, Burchell has consistently argued that the common purpose doctrine “is a contradiction of the fundamental rule that the prosecution must prove the elements of liability beyond reasonable doubt and, therefore, an infringement of the presumption of innocence”.In the case of S v Leshilo (2017 JDR 1788 (GP)), both these controversial aspects – the statutory extension to the housebreaking crime, and the common purpose doctrine – are drawn together, making a consideration of the judgment in this case both instructive and worthy of closer analysis.

The Monster and the Mob: A Critical Analysis of Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936) and James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931)

Both released during the 1930s, Fritz Lang’s film Fury (1936) and James Whale’s film Frankenstein (1931) shed light on the threat of mob violence during a decade shaken by economic depression and social turmoil. Considered together in this film analysis, Lang’s Fury and Whale’s Frankenstein reveal the ways lynch violence infiltrated American cultural output during the 1930s. In turn, both directors can be seen as shedding a much-needed light on the social scourges of racism, antisemitism, and homophobia in the 1930s America by including scenes with mobs attempting to kill an innocent who is nevertheless presumed guilty without due process.

Why the finest of Russians did not condemn the anti-Jewish pogroms

The article considers the plight of the ‘Jewish tribe' in imperial Russia in the context of the historical events of 1881 and 1882 as perceived and acted on by Ivan Turgenev. Based on copious documentary evidence, this study offers an answer to the question of why one of the most compassionate and cultured of Russian intellectuals did not condemn the pogroms. The author analyses the political situation in the wake of the assassination of Tsar Alexander II and describes the persistent but fruitless efforts by Turgenev and his followers to convince the new regime of the importance of continuing with the reforms. Also presented are documents confirming Turgenev's interest in the Jewish problem of the years 1881-1882 and the reasons why, despite his sympathy for victims of the pogroms, Turgenev never denounced the mob violence. Lastly, the article examines Turgenev's routine of ‘small actions,' when the writer provided active and effective support to vast numbers of people, including those directly impacted by the events of 1881. The article debunks the myths about Turgenev's apolitical stance and his siding with the official ideology and policy on ethnic issues.

Conclusion

The Conclusion of the book considers the extent to which Joseph Smith was correct that the states’ rights doctrine condoned mob violence against religious minorities and that the United States would never experience universal religious freedom without a federal government empowered to protect religious minorities. The Missouri militia’s invocation of the violent expulsion of Mormons from the state as their plan to expel abolitionists in the 1850s is examined as a telling example. Joseph Smith’s presidential campaign and its tragic end encapsulate the failure of nineteenth-century Americans to establish universal religious freedom. Many Americans championed states’ rights as a way to maintain race-based slavery in the Southern states, but few acknowledged that this philosophy also disadvantaged religious minority groups. The Conclusion also considers the role of systemic religious discrimination in federal policy for the management of Utah Territory and the multiple denied applications for Utah statehood.

Electioneering Missionaries

This chapter describes the electioneering efforts of more than 400 missionaries that Mormon leaders dispatched throughout the United States to campaign for Smith, carrying copies of Smith’s political pamphlet aimed to win political support for their prophet. The experiences of these missionaries varied by location. One large rally led by campaign missionaries in Boston ended with a brawl between hecklers and the police. Other missionaries faced the threat of mob violence in the South because of their distribution of Smith’s pamphlet, which contained calls for the end of slavery. Missionaries in New York City created a campaign newspaper, The Prophet, to help boost Smith’s electoral profile.

Albanian Diaspora Mobilization for Kosovo Statehood

This chapter and the previous Chapter 4 are interconnected as they both discuss Albanian diaspora mobilizations. This chapter unpacks the typological theory through seven causal pathways in the Kosovo Albanian transnational social field. Three of these are associated with the secessionist period of the 1990s, when the foreign policies of host-states diverged from the diaspora goal of Kosovo independence. A relatively rare non-contentious pathway occurred when diaspora entrepreneurs acted autonomously under limited global influences. A more common dual-pronged approach pathway was visible when diaspora entrepreneurs were exposed to two non-state actors, the non-violent Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) and the radical Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In a contentious pathway, almost everyone in the diaspora was engulfed in response to the 1998–9 warfare. Four causal pathways occurred when host-land foreign policies were more open to endorse Kosovo’s statehood. Dual-pronged mobilization was visible under the influences of mob violence in Kosovo in 2004. The rest of the pathways were non-contentious. Acting autonomously, diaspora entrepreneurs developed political and cultural projects aimed to raise Kosovo’s status abroad. Under the homeland government’s influence diaspora entrepreneurs pursued public diplomacy, celebrity and football diplomacy, the building of cultural centres, education exchanges, and curriculum for the diaspora. When exposed to homeland parties, diaspora entrepreneurs followed political party dynamics, whether supporting or challenging them.

Historical Mob Violence and the 2016 Presidential Election

As a 2016 presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump invoked racially charged rhetoric to galvanize conservative white voters who felt left behind in the “new economy.” In this article, we ask whether Trump’s ability to attract electoral support in that way was linked to local histories of racist mob violence. We use county-level data on threatened and completed lynchings of Black people to predict support for Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary and general election across eleven southern states. We find that fewer voters cast their ballots for Trump in counties that had suppressed a comparatively larger share of potentially lethal episodes of racist mob violence. Supplementary analyses suggest that counties’ histories of violence are also related to their electoral support for Republican presidential candidates more broadly. We posit that this correlation points to the durable effects of racist violence on local cultures and the imprint of community histories on the social environment.