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"A party of hooded Klu Klux Klan riders galloped up to our home in Omaha, Nebraska, one night."
The term "Lynch culture" has often been applied to the informally organized system of brute violence and murder carried out by whites in the Klu Klux Klan and smaller localized groups such as the Black Legion. These lynchings often took place without benefit of trial or legitimate charges. Notorious for the sadistic methods used against victims, they were carried out in a carnival like atmosphere. Photographs were taken to be made into postcards, and bloody "souvenirs" taken from the victim.In Omaha, Nebraska, the city where Malcolm was born, an infamous lynching took place in 1919. William Brown was awaiting trial in the Douglas County Courthouse when a white mob broke in and removed him. Brown was beaten, castrated, killed by voluminous gunfire, dragged by an automobile and then left hanging from a light pole. According to Harold Cruse, immediately following World War I, over nearly 6 months from April to October of 1919, twenty-two cities across the nation experienced race riots. Seventy-four blacks along with one white organizer of the International Workers of the World (IWW) were lynched. This is not say that African Americans did not retaliate. Along with silent parades, marches and protests, outraged Blacks who had defended the nation in war, were forced to engage in physical violence in self-defense.
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