William Lynch Speech

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The William (or Willie) Lynch Speech (or Letter) is an address purportedly delivered by William Lynch to an audience on the bank of the James River in Virginia in 1712 regarding control of slaves within the colony.[1][2][3] The speaker, William Lynch, is said to have been a slaveowner in the West Indies, summoned to Virginia in 1712; in part due to several slave revolts in the area prior to his visit, and his alleged reputation of being an authoritarian and strict slaveowner.[1][2][3]

[edit] Content

The letter purports to be a verbatim account of a short speech given by a slave owner, in which he tells other slave masters that he has discovered the "secret" to controlling enslaved Africans by setting them against one another. [4]

[edit] Evidence for hoax

No provenance for the speech has ever been supplied, and the text contains numerous anachronisms ("self-refueling", for example, since the word "refueling" dates only to the early twentieth century, or "fool proof", a word not attested until the early twentieth century). For these reasons, along with others, historian William Jelani Cobb of Spelman College believes that the Willie Lynch speech is an internet hoax.[5] Other black historians,[who?] however, are not as convinced that the letter is a fake, citing that the premise of the letter, that is, the treatment of black slaves, is true even if the authenticity of the letter's authorship cannot be proven.

[edit] Popular Reference

Louis Farrakhan, in his open letter regarding the Millions More Movement, cites Willie Lynch's alleged scheme as an obstacle to unity among African Americans.[6]

In the 2005 direct-to-video film Animal, the Speech is used as a plot device to bring together the two main characters, and passed on from Father to Son to Grandson.

In the 2007 movie The Great Debaters, Denzel Washington's character Melvin B. Tolson refers to the Willie Lynch speech as being the definition of the black slave.

The Willie Lynch speech continues to appear in popular culture, with articles, books, and videos being produced purporting to teach people to deprogram themselves and "turn off your Willie Lynch Chip".[7]

[edit] William Lynch

Main article: William Lynch

Some attribute the terms "lynching" and "Lynch law" to William Lynch's name.[2] However, the etymological Captain William Lynch was born in 1742, thirty years after the alleged delivery of this speech.[8] A document published in the Southern Literary Messenger in 1836 that proposed William Lynch as the originator of "lynch law" may have been a hoax perpetrated by Edgar Allan Poe.[9] A better documented early use of the term "lynch law" comes from Charles Lynch, a Virginia justice of the peace and militia officer during the American Revolution.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Lynch, William; as attributed by The Freeman Institute. Willie Lynch Speech. The Freeman Institute. Retrieved on March 9, 2007.
  2. ^ a b c Lynch, William; as attributed by June Thornton-Marsh (2003-01-03). William Lynch. The Colby Institute. Retrieved on March 9, 2007.
  3. ^ a b Lynch, William; as attributed by FinalCall.com News (2005-08-22). Willie Lynch letter: The Making of a Slave. FinalCall.com News. FCN Publishing. Retrieved on March 9, 2007.
  4. ^ Full speech of Willie Lynch (the making of a slave)
  5. ^ Cobb, W. Jelani (2003). Willie Lynch is Dead (1712?-2003). Creative Ink: Jelani Cobb. Archived from the original on 2007-08-14. Retrieved on March 9, 2007.
  6. ^ Farrakhan, Louis. An appeal .... The Official Site for the Millions More Movement. Accessed on October 12, 2005
  7. ^ One of many examples is Dr. Ray Hagins "How to De-Activate Your Willie Lynch Chip".
  8. ^ Stein, Jess, ed. (1988), The Random House College Dictionary (Revised ed.), New York: Random House, p. 800, ISBN 0-394-43500-1 
  9. ^ Christopher Waldrep, The Many Faces of Judge Lynch: Extralegal Violence and Punishment in America, Macmillan, 2002, p. 21.

[edit] External links