may 1, 1891 - In Nashville, Tenn., May 1891, a white man sexually assualted an Afro-American girl in a drug store

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He was arrested, and released on bail at the trial. It was rumored that five hundred Afro-Americans had organized to lynch him. Two hundred and fifty white citizens armed themselves with Winchesters and guarded him. A cannon was placed in front of his home, and the Buchanan Rifles (State Militia) were ordered to the scene for his protection. The Afro-American mob never came to fruition. On one hand, it's understandable that an Afro-American mob lynching a white man wouldn't be the greatest idea due to the violent response the white people will have, which is most likely the reason the mob never formed. But on the other hand, some form of justice has to be delivered for the crime committed against the Afro-American girl. Afro-Americans were literally between a rock and a hard place when it came to deciding how they should respond to the mass lynchings and racial violence of the South.

On April 30, 1892, in the same city of Nashville, Eph. Grizzard was charged with rape against a white woman and Ida B. Wells describes the horror that happened to him: "Eph. Grizzard...had been taken from the jail, with Governor Buchanan and the police and militia standing by, dragged through the streets in broad daylight, knives plunged into him at every step, and with every fiendish cruelty a frenzied mob could devise, he was at last swung out on the bridge with hands cut to pieces as he tried to climb up the stanchions. A naked, bloody example of the blood-thirstiness of the nineteenth-century civilization of the Athens of the South!". Comparing Eph. Grizzard to the white rapist who was defended by nearly 300 white armed citizens, the state militia, and a CANON in front of his home, there's a clear disparity. Where is Grizzard's defense? Where is his canon? He was in jail and is supposed to be protected by the police, but they stood by and watched while a white mob dragged Grizzard out to his death.

At the same time these white men were murdering Grizzard in order to "protect" the white virtue and purity of their wives and daughters, a white man was in the same jail for raping eight-year-old Maggie Reese, an Afro-American girl. He was not dragged out of jail by a vicious mob. He was not swung out on a bridge as hundreds of people stabbed at him. He was never touched nor harmed. Another similar case, once again in the same city of Nashville, a white man, Pat Hanifan, raped a little Afro-American girl, and from the physical injuries received, she was ruined for life. He was jailed for six months, discharged, and became a detective in that city.

Notice a pattern? It's insane how the punishment for a white man raping a little black CHILD is 6 months or a couple months in jail, all while untouched and unharmed, but a black man ALLEGEDLY raping a white woman is punished by public execution by a vicious, bloodthirsty white mob. Clearly, Nashville TN, has a problem with a double standard when it comes to the factors of race and gender pertaining to rape. But it's not just Nashville, it's across the entire South that this has happened. And the double standard exposes the white man's lie: they're not lynching black "rapists", they're lynching innocent black men using the disguise of rape to justify their actions.

Important Note: The purpose of compiling the above cases together in the same section is to further expose the double standard and unfairness of lynch law.

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