Willie Lynch Letter...

[7th Crescent]

after reading the thread "is it acceptable for Blacks to be racist"..i looked at responses and i really dont believe heads understand the concept of racism...this is racism in its purist form..I challenge anyone to fine something that African Americans have created and was FOLLOWED/carried out to this extent in the US...PLEASE READ AND UNDERSTAND!!!!!!This is long but worth the knowledge...



his speech was delivered by Willie Lynch on the bank of the James River in the colony of Virginia in 1712.* Lynch was a British slave owner in the West Indies.*He was invited to the colony of Virginia in 1712 to teach his methods to slave owners*there. The term “lynching” is derived from his last name.
[beginning of the Willie Lynch Letter]
Greetings,
Gentlemen. I greet you here on the bank of the James River in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and twelve. First, I shall thank you, the gentlemen of the Colony of Virginia, for bringing me here. I am here to help you solve some of your problems with slaves. Your invitation reached me on my modest plantation in the West Indies, where I have experimented with some of the newest, and still the oldest, methods for control of slaves. Ancient Rome would envy us if my program is implemented. As our boat sailed south on the James River, named for our illustrious King, whose version of the Bible we cherish, I saw enough to know that your problem is not unique. While Rome used cords of wood as crosses for standing human bodies along its highways in great numbers, you are here using the tree and the rope on occasions. I caught the whiff of a dead slave hanging from a tree, a couple miles back. You are not only losing valuable stock by hangings, you are having uprisings, slaves are running away, your crops are sometimes left in the fields too long for maximum profit, you suffer occasional fires, your animals are killed. Gentlemen, you know what your problems are; I do not need to elaborate. I am not here to enumerate your problems, I am here to introduce you to a method of solving them. In my bag here, I HAVE A FULL PROOF METHOD FOR CONTROLLING YOUR BLACK SLAVES. I guarantee every one of you that, if installed correctly, IT WILL CONTROL THE SLAVES FOR AT LEAST 300 HUNDREDS YEARS. My method is simple. Any member of your family or your overseer can use it. I HAVE OUTLINED A NUMBER OF DIFFERENCES AMONG THE SLAVES; AND I TAKE THESE DIFFERENCES AND MAKE THEM BIGGER. I USE FEAR, DISTRUST AND ENVY FOR CONTROL PURPOSES. These methods have worked on my modest plantation in the West Indies and it will work throughout the South. Take this simple little list of differences and think about them. On top of my list is “AGE,” but it’s there only because it starts with an “a.” The second is “COLOR” or shade. There is INTELLIGENCE, SIZE, SEX, SIZES OF PLANTATIONS, STATUS on plantations, ATTITUDE of owners, whether the slaves live in the valley, on a hill, East, West, North, South, have fine hair, course hair, or is tall or short. Now that you have a list of differences, I shall give you an outline of action, but before that, I shall assure you that DISTRUST IS STRONGER THAN TRUST AND ENVY STRONGER THAN ADULATION, RESPECT OR ADMIRATION. The Black slaves after receiving this indoctrination shall carry on and will become self-refueling and self-generating for HUNDREDS of years, maybe THOUSANDS. Don’t forget, you must pitch the OLD black male vs. the YOUNG black male, and the YOUNG black male against the OLD black male. You must use the DARK skin slaves vs. the LIGHT skin slaves, and the LIGHT skin slaves vs. the DARK skin slaves. You must use the FEMALE vs. the MALE, and the MALE vs. the FEMALE. You must also have white servants and overseers [who] distrust all Blacks. But it is NECESSARY THAT YOUR SLAVES TRUST AND DEPEND ON US. THEY MUST LOVE, RESPECT AND TRUST ONLY US. Gentlemen, these kits are your keys to control. Use them. Have your wives and children use them, never miss an opportunity. IF USED INTENSELY FOR ONE YEAR, THE SLAVES THEMSELVES WILL REMAIN PERPETUALLY DISTRUSTFUL. Thank you gentlemen.”
LET’S MAKE A SLAVE
It was the interest and business of slave holders to study human nature, and the slave nature in particular, with a view to practical results. I and many of them attained astonishing proficiency in this direction. They had to deal not with earth, wood and stone, but with men and, by every regard, they had for their own safety and prosperity they needed to know the material on which they were to work, conscious of the injustice and wrong they were every hour perpetuating and knowing what they themselves would do. Were they the victims of such wrongs? They were constantly looking for the first signs of the dreaded retribution. They watched therefore with skilled and practiced eyes, and learned to read with great accuracy, the state of mind and heart of the slave, through his sable face. Unusual sobriety, apparent abstractions, sullenness and indifference indeed, any mood out of the common was afforded ground for suspicion and inquiry. Frederick Douglas LET’S MAKE A SLAVE is a study of the scientific process of man-breaking and slave-making. It describes the rationale and results of the Anglo Saxons’ ideas and methods of insuring the master/slave relationship. LET’S MAKE A SLAVE “The Original and Development of a Social Being Called ‘The Negro.’” Let us make a slave. What do we need? First of all, we need a black ****** man, a pregnant ****** woman and her baby ****** boy. Second, we will use the same basic principle that we use in breaking a horse, combined with some more sustaining factors. What we do with horses is that we break them from one form of life to another; that is, we reduce them from their natural state in nature. Whereas nature provides them with the natural capacity to take care of their offspring, we break that natural string of independence from them and thereby create a dependency status, so that we may be able to get from them useful production for our business and pleasure.
CARDINAL PRINCIPLES FOR MAKING A NEGRO
For fear that our future generations may not understand the principles of breaking both of the beast together, the ****** and the horse. We understand that short range planning economics results in periodic economic chaos; so that to avoid turmoil in the economy, it requires us to have breadth and depth in long range comprehensive planning, articulating both skill sharp perceptions. We lay down the following principles for long range comprehensive economic planning. Both horse and ******s [are] no good to the economy in the wild or natural state. Both must be BROKEN and TIED together for orderly production. For orderly future, special and particular attention must be paid to the FEMALE and the YOUNGEST offspring. Both must be CROSSBRED to produce a variety and division of labor. Both must be taught to respond to a peculiar new LANGUAGE. Psychological and physical instruction of CONTAINMENT must be created for both. We hold the six cardinal principles as truth to be self-evident, based upon following the discourse concerning the economics of breaking and tying the horse and the ****** together, all inclusive of the six principles laid down above. NOTE: Neither principle alone will suffice for good economics. All principles must be employed for orderly good of the nation. Accordingly, both a wild horse and a wild or natur[al] ****** is dangerous even if captured, for they will have the tendency to seek their customary freedom and, in doing so, might kill you in your sleep. You cannot rest. They sleep while you are awake, and are awake while you are asleep. They are DANGEROUS near the family house and it requires too much labor to watch them away from the house. Above all, you cannot get them to work in this natural state. Hence, both the horse and the ****** must be broken; that is breaking them from one form of mental life to another. KEEP THE BODY, TAKE THE MIND! In other words, break the will to resist. Now the breaking process is the same for both the horse and the ******, only slightly varying in degrees. But, as we said before, there is an art in long range economic planning. YOU MUST KEEP YOUR EYE AND THOUGHTS ON THE FEMALE and the OFFSPRING of the horse and the ******. A brief discourse in offspring development will shed light on the key to sound economic principles. Pay little attention to the generation of original breaking, but CONCENTRATE ON FUTURE GENERATION. Therefore, if you break the FEMALE mother, she will BREAK the offspring in its early years of development; and when the offspring is old enough to work, she will deliver it up to you, for her normal female protective tendencies will have been lost in the original breaking process. For example, take the case of the wild stud horse, a female horse and an already infant horse and compare the breaking process with two captured ****** males in their natural state, a pregnant ****** woman with her infant offspring. Take the stud horse, break him for limited containment. Completely break the female horse until she becomes very gentle, whereas you or anybody can ride her in her comfort. Breed the mare and the stud until you have the desired offspring. Then, you can turn the stud to freedom until you need him again. Train the female horse whereby she will eat out of your hand, and she will in turn train the infant horse to eat out of your hand, also. When it comes to breaking the uncivilized ******, use the same process, but vary the degree and step up the pressure, so as to do a complete reversal of the mind. Take the meanest and most restless ******, strip him of his clothes in front of the remaining male ******s, the female, and the ****** infant, tar and feather him, tie each leg to a different horse faced in opposite directions, set him afire and beat both horses to pull him apart in front of the remaining ******s. The next step is to take a bullwhip and beat the remaining ****** males to the point of death, in front of the female and the infant. Don’t kill him, but PUT THE FEAR OF GOD IN HIM, for he can be useful for future breeding.
THE BREAKING PROCESS OF THE AFRICAN WOMAN
Take the female and run a series of tests on her to see if she will submit to your desires willingly. Test her in every way, because she is the most important factor for good economics. If she shows any sign of resistance in submitting completely to your will, do not hesitate to use the bullwhip on her to extract that last bit of [b----] out of her. Take care not to kill her, for in doing so, you spoil good economics. When in complete submission, she will train her offsprings in the early years to submit to labor when they become of age. Understanding is the best thing. Therefore, we shall go deeper into this area of the subject matter concerning what we have produced here in this breaking process of the female ******. We have reversed the relationship; in her natural uncivilized state, she would have a strong dependency on the uncivilized ****** male, and she would have a limited protective tendency toward her independent male offspring and would raise male offsprings to be dependent like her. Nature had provided for this type of balance. We reversed nature by burning and pulling a civilized ****** apart and bullwhipping the other to the point of death, all in her presence. By her being left alone, unprotected, with the MALE IMAGE DESTROYED, the ordeal caused her to move from her psychologically dependent state to a frozen, independent state. In this frozen, psychological state of independence, she will raise her MALE and female offspring in reversed roles. For FEAR of the young male’s life, she will psychologically train him to be MENTALLY WEAK and DEPENDENT, but PHYSICALLY STRONG. Because she has become psychologically independent, she will train her FEMALE offsprings to be psychologically independent. What have you got? You’ve got the ****** WOMAN OUT FRONT AND THE ****** MAN BEHIND AND SCARED. This is a perfect situation of sound sleep and economics. Before the breaking process, we had to be alertly on guard at all times. Now, we can sleep soundly, for out of frozen fear his woman stands guard for us. He cannot get past her early slave-molding process. He is a good tool, now ready to be tied to the horse at a tender age. By the time a ****** boy reaches the age of sixteen, he is soundly broken in and ready for a long life of sound and efficient work and the reproduction of a unit of good labor force. Continually through the breaking of uncivilized savage ******s, by throwing the ****** female savage into a frozen psychological state of independence, by killing the protective male image, and by creating a submissive dependent mind of the ****** male slave, we have created an orbiting cycle that turns on its own axis forever, unless a phenomenon occurs and re-shifts the position of the male and female slaves. We show what we mean by example. Take the case of the two economic slave units and examine them close.
THE NEGRO MARRIAGE
We breed two ****** males with two ****** females. Then, we take the ****** male away from them and keep them moving and working. Say one ****** female bears a ****** female and the other bears a ****** male; both ****** females—being without influence of the ****** male image, frozen with a independent psychology—will raise their offspring into reverse positions. The one with the female offspring will teach her to be like herself, independent and negotiable (we negotiate with her, through her, by her, negotiates her at will). The one with the ****** male offspring, she being frozen subconscious fear for his life, will raise him to be mentally dependent and weak, but physically strong; in other words, body over mind. Now, in a few years when these two offsprings become fertile for early reproduction, we will mate and breed them and continue the cycle. That is good, sound and long range comprehensive planning.
WARNING: POSSIBLE INTERLOPING NEGATIVES
Earlier, we talked about the non-economic good of the horse and the ****** in their wild or natural state; we talked out the principle of breaking and tying them together for orderly production. Furthermore, we talked about paying particular attention to the female savage and her offspring for orderly future planning, then more recently we stated that, by reversing the positions of the male and female savages, we created an orbiting cycle that turns on its own axis forever unless a phenomenon occurred and reshifts positions of the male and female savages. Our experts warned us about the possibility of this phenomenon occurring, for they say that the mind has a strong drive to correct and re-correct itself over a period of time if it can touch some substantial original historical base; and they advised us that the best way to deal with the phenomenon is to shave off the brute’s mental history and create a multiplicity of phenomena of illusions, so that each illusion will twirl in its own orbit, something similar to floating balls in a vacuum. This creation of multiplicity of phenomena of illusions entails the principle of crossbreeding the ****** and the horse as we stated above, the purpose of which is to create a diversified division of labor; thereby creating different levels of labor and different values of illusion at each connecting level of labor. The results of which is the severance of the points of original beginnings for each sphere illusion. Since we feel that the subject matter may get more complicated as we proceed in laying down our economic plan concerning the purpose, reason and effect of crossbreeding horses and ******s, we shall lay down the following definition terms for future generations. Orbiting cycle means a thing turning in a given path. Axis means upon which or around which a body turns. Phenomenon means something beyond ordinary conception and inspires awe and wonder. Multiplicity means a great number. Means a globe. Crossbreeding a horse means taking a horse and breeding it with an ass and you get a dumb, backward, ass long-headed mule that is not reproductive nor productive by itself. Crossbreeding ******s mean taking so many drops of good white blood and putting them into as many ****** women as possible, varying the drops by the various tone that you want, and then letting them breed with each other until another circle of color appears as you desire. What this means is this: Put the ******s and the horse in a breeding pot, mix some asses and some good white blood and what do you get? You got a multiplicity of colors of ass backward, unusual ******s, running, tied to backward ass long-headed mules, the one productive of itself, the other sterile. (The one constant, the other dying, we keep the ****** constant for we may replace the mules for another tool) both mule and ****** tied to each other, neither knowing where the other came from and neither productive for itself, nor without each other.
CONTROLLED LANGUAGE
Crossbreeding completed, for further severance from their original beginning, WE MUST COMPLETELY ANNIHILATE THE MOTHER TONGUE of both the new ****** and the new mule, and institute a new language that involves the new life’s work of both. You know language is a peculiar institution. It leads to the heart of a people. The more a foreigner knows about the language of another country the more he is able to move through all levels of that society. Therefore, if the foreigner is an enemy of the country, to the extent that he knows the body of the language, to that extent is the country vulnerable to attack or invasion of a foreign culture. For example, if you take a slave, if you teach him all about your language, he will know all your secrets, and he is then no more a slave, for you can’t fool him any longer, and BEING A FOOL IS ONE OF THE BASIC INGREDIENTS OF ANY INCIDENTS TO THE MAINTENANCE OF THE SLAVERY SYSTEM. For example, if you told a slave that he must perform in getting out “our crops” and he knows the language well, he would know that “our crops” didn’t mean “our crops” and the slavery system would break down, for he would relate on the basis of what “our crops” really meant. So you have to be careful in setting up the new language; for the slaves would soon be in your house, talking to you as “man to man” and that is death to our economic system. In addition, the definitions of words or terms are only a minute part of the process. Values are created and transported by communication through the body of the language. A total society has many interconnected value systems. All the values in the society have bridges of language to connect them for orderly working in the society. But for these language bridges, these many value systems would sharply clash and cause internal strife or civil war, the degree of the conflict being determined by the magnitude of the issues or relative opposing strength in whatever form. For example, if you put a slave in a hog pen and train him to live there and incorporate in him to value it as a way of life completely, the biggest problem you would have out of him is that he would worry you about provisions to keep the hog pen clean, or the same hog pen and make a slip and incorporate something in his language whereby he comes to value a house more than he does his hog pen, you got a problem. He will soon be in your house.

****=niggger**

[K.O.S.]

crazy... thats exactly why folks dont know about it... you just proved an age old point.
good read though, ive read this a few times before, some wild ass info

[Tommyknocker]

Yup, that Willie Lynch´s letter, treatise, gives you a pretty clear picture of what a slave owner´s mindset was like in them days..

But ofcourse it wasn´t just Willie Lynch that had these ideas and beliefs.
He was just smarter and even more diabolic than some.

But THIS was the mindset and beliefs of most white people regarding black people back in the
slave days, to a varying degree ofcourse. But you would be hard pressed to find a whole lotta people at that time, that would disagree with these, that were the common beliefs and ideas regarding black people.

And that goes for the majority of the people that kept slaves, and some of the most significant and prolific slave owners/traders were:

The dutch, the british, the french, the spanish(and when I say spanish I mean the white spanish people from Spain, the same people that colonized latin and southamerica and also enslaved and killed countless of Southamerican indians), And ofcourse among the slave owners and slave traders also MANY were Americans.

Only this shit was EVEN more evil, calculatingly sinister and brutal, than what most people are aware of today..

There was also extensive and systematic rape, of male africans to break them down.
And this was done even before they set foot on American soil. While they were
still in Africa or during the voyage over to America, and sometimes these rapes were perpertrated immediately upon capture.

And this practise of "breakin in" the male slaves was also very much used after the slaves had been taken to America.

And consider this, just how many , and what staggering amounts of slaves do you reckon were captured,
and taken from Africa. When the slave ships returned to their home destinations,
with sometimes less than 20-30% of their original cargo(i.e slaves) and they STILL made
gastronomical amounts of money and generated tremendous wealth from
their slave capturing missons, and the slave trade was without a doubt(at this time), THE very most lucrative and low risk business venture..

Many african male slaves were singled out from the rest of the group,
they would single out the biggest and strongest men, and they would then systematically
rape them. As a deliberate and perverse way to break down their spirit and will to resist.

But these rapes, (that were performed by male slave capturers, mercenaries, slave masters and other various types of people that were involved in the kidnapping, buying and capturing of slaves), were also a way to emasculate the men, to make them lose their identity as men,
and to make their natural role as fathers, soldiers, and leaders etc, be lost.

And this also caused a break down in the dynamics of the african family (as far as those that were captured and brought to America.)

The man and the woman were caused to distrust eachother, distrust and anemosity WAS one of the biggest instruments and most effective tool, used by the slave owners and their
help, overseers, etc..

And as most people know, the whip was a very crucial and essential tool that the slavemasters used.

However what many people don´t seem to know, or are aware of, is the terminology from these times, the slave days, that still lives on today, and is still often used.
And most people don´t even know where these words originate from..

For example the word "cracka", nowadays a derogatory term used to describe a white person, usually one that´s from the country side etc..

Do ya´ll know where this term originates from, and what it used to signify??
I´m pretty sure most of you don´t.

And once more, here´s where the whip comes into play again, and we see and understand how widely and to what terrible extent the whip was used.

The term cracka comes, (originally), from the white man with the whip.
And this is also where the term or expression, "crack the whip" comes from.

Actually, the Term "cracka" comes from the cracking of the whip,
and the man who used to "crack the whip", these were terms used to describe that.

And today people even black people use the expression crack the whip,
and don´t even realize where it comes from, and what it used to signify..

Just some extra info and some more insight on what took place in the slavery days..

And this should be remembered and people should have a sound and correct understanding of what really took place during these terrible centuries.. and slavery lasted closer to 500 years than 400 years..

[STRONGARM]

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, historians such as William Jelani Cobb of Spelman College consider the Willie Lynch speech to be an internet hoax.

You guys need to research before believing random internet shit.

[Tommyknocker]

ERRATA:

"and they STILL made
gastronomical amounts of money and generated tremendous wealth from
their slave capturing missons.."

That´s OBVIOUSLY soposed to read: "astronomical" amounts..

[K.O.S.]

Originally Posted by STRONGARM

You guys need to research before believing random internet shit.

naw bruh, my fam read this when they were young b4, the internet... and trust me thats the least of your worries if your talking about spoofed information...

[STRONGARM]

naw bruh, my fam read this when they were young b4, the internet...

um no..

The first reference to the Willie Lynch speech was in a late 1993 on-line listing of sources, posted by Anne Taylor, who was then the reference librarian at the University of Missouri at St. Louis (UMSL).[2] She posted ten sources to the UMSL library database and the Lynch speech was the last item in the listing. Taylor in her 1995 email exchanges with the late Dr. William Piersen (Professor of History, Fisk University) and others interested in the origin of the Lynch speech indicated that she keep the source from where she received the speech anonymous upon request, because he was unable to establish the authenticity of the document.

The 1995 Million Man March was broadcast live on C-Span television and thus millions of people throughout the U.S. and the world heard about the alleged Willie Lynch speech for the first time.

1993 - 1995.. pretty sure the internet was around. smh..

Originally Posted by Prof. Manu Ampim

WHO WAS WILLIE LYNCH ?

The only known “William Lynch” who could have authorized a 1712 speech in Virginia was born 30 years after the alleged speech was given. The only known “William Lynch” lived from 1742-1820 and was from Pittsylvania, Virginia. It is obvious that “William Lynch” could not have authored a document 30 years before he was born! This “William Lynch” never owned a plantation in the West Indies, and he did not own a slave plantation in Virginia.



DIVIDE & RULE

The Lynch speech lists a number of divide and rule tactics that were not important concerns to slaveholders in the early 1700s, and they certainly were not adopted. The anonymous writer of the Lynch speech states, “I have outlined a number of differences among the slaves: and I take these differences and make them bigger.” Here is the list provided in the Lynch speech: age, color, intelligence, fine hair vs. coarse hair, tall vs. short, male vs. female.



However, none of these “tactics” were concerns to slaveholders in the early 1700s in the West Indies or colonial America. No credible historian has indicated that any of the items on the Lynch list were a part of a divide and rule strategy in the early 18th century. These are current 20th century divisions and concerns. Here are the Lynch speech tactics versus the real divide and rule tactics that were actually used in the early 18th century:



DIVIDE & RULE TACTICS



LYNCH SPEECH vs. HISTORICAL FACTS



Age Ethnic origin & language

Color (light vs. dark skin) African born vs. American born

Intelligence Occupation (house vs. field slave)

Fine hair vs. coarse hair Reward system for “good” behavior

Tall vs. short Class status

Male vs. female Outlawed social gatherings



It is certain that “Willie Lynch” did not use his divide and rule tactics on his “modest plantation in the West Indies.”





20th CENTURY TERMS IN LYNCH SPEECH

There are a number of terms in the alleged 1712 Lynch speech that are undoubtedly anachronisms (i.e. words that are out of their proper historical time period). Here are a few of the words in the speech that were not used until the 20th century:



Lynch speech: “In my bag here, I have a fool proof method for controlling your Black slaves.”



Anachronisms: “Fool proof” and “Black” with an upper-case “B” to refer to people of African descent are of 20th century origin. Capitalizing “Black” did not become a standard from of writing until the late 1960s.



Lynch speech: “The Black slave after receiving this indoctrination shall carry on and will become self re-fueling and self generating for hundreds of years.”



Anachronism: “Re-fueling” is a 20th century term which refers to transportation.





OTHER STRANGE FEATURES

William Lynch is invited from the “West Indies” (with no specific country indicated) to give only a short eight-paragraph speech. The cost of such a trip would have been considerable, and for the invited speaker to give only general remarks would have been highly unlikely.


Lynch never thanked the specific host of his speech, he only thanked “the gentlemen of the Colony of Virginia, for bringing me here.” Here, he is rude and shows a lack of etiquette. Also, no specific location for the speech was stated, only that he was speaking “on the bank [sic] of the James River.”


Lynch claims that on his journey to give the speech he saw “a dead slave hanging from a tree.” This is highly unlikely because lynching African Americans from trees did not become common until the late 19th century.


Lynch claims that his method of control will work for “at least 300 hundred years [sic].” First, it has gone unnoticed that the modern writer of the “speech” wrote three hundred twice (“300 hundred years”), which makes no grammatical sense. It should be “300 years” or “three hundred years.” Second, the arbitrary choice of 300 years is interesting because it happens to conveniently bring us to the present time.


Lynch claims that his method of control “will work throughout the South.” This statement clearly shows the modern writer’s historical ignorance. In 1712, there was no region in the current-day U.S. identified as the “South.” The geographical region of the “South” did not become distinct until a century after the alleged speech. Before the American Revolutionary War vs. Britain (1775-1783) the 13 original U.S. colonies were all slaveholding regions, and most of these colonies were in what later became the North, not the “South.” In fact, the region with the second largest slave population during the time of the alleged William Lynch speech was the northern city of New York, where there were a significant number of slave revolts including the rebellion in 1712.


Lynch fails to give “an outline of action” for control as he promised in his speech. He only gives a “simple little list of differences” among “Black slaves.”


Lynch lists his differences by alphabetical order, he states: “On top of my list is ‘Age’, but it is there only because it starts with an ‘A’. “ Yet, after the first two differences (“age” and “color”), Lynch’s list is anything but alphabetical.


Lynch spells “color” in the American form instead of the British form (“colour”). We are led to believe that Lynch was a British slaveowner in the “West Indies,” yet he does not write in British style.


Lastly, the name Willie Lynch is interesting, as it may be a simple play on words: “Will Lynch,” or “Will he Lynch.” This may be a modern psychological game being played on unsuspecting believers?


WHO WROTE THE LYNCH SPEECH?

It is clear that the “Willie Lynch Speech” is a late 20th century invention because of the numerous reasons outlined in this essay. I would advance that the likely candidate for such a superficial speech is an African American male in the 20s-30s age range, who probably minored in Black Studies in college. He had a limited knowledge of 18th century America, but unfortunately he fooled many uncritical Black people.



Some people argue that it doesn’t matter if the speech is fact or fiction, because white people did use tactics to divide us. Of course tactics were used but what advocates of this argument don’t understand is that African people will not solve our problems and address the real issues confronting us by adopting half-baked urban myths. If there are people who know that the Lynch speech is fictional, yet continue to promote it in order to “wake us up,” then we should be very suspicious of these people, who lack integrity and will openly violate trust and willingly lie to our community.



Even if the Willie Lynch mythology were true, the speech is focused on what white slaveholders were doing, and there is no plan, program, or any agenda items for Black people to implement. It is ludicrous to give god-like powers to one white man who allegedly gave a single speech almost 300 years ago, and claim that this is the main reason why Black people have problems among ourselves today! Unfortunately, too often Black people would rather believe a simple and convenient myth, rather than spend the time studying and understanding a situation. Too many of our people want a one-page, simplified Ripley’s Believe It or Not explanation of “what happened.”

Originally Posted by William Jelani Cobb

As a historian, I am generally skeptical of smoking guns. Historical work, like forensic science, isn't some flashy field — it depends on the painstaking aggregation of facts that lead researchers to the most likely explanation, but rarely the only one. Slavery was an incredibly complex set of social, economic and legal relations that literally boiled down to black and white. But given the variation in size of farms, number of enslaved workers, region, crops grown, law, gender-ratios, religion and local economy, it is unlikely that a single letter could explain slave policy for at least 151 years of the institution and its ramifications down to the present day.

Considering the limited number of extant sources from 18th century, if this speech had been "discovered," it would've been the subject of incessant historical panels, scholarly articles and debates. It would literally be a career-making find. But the letter was never "discovered." Rather, it simply "appeared" on the Internet — bypassing the official historical circuits and making its way directly into the canon of American racial conspiratoria.

Like I said.. do some independant research on the matter.

[Simagine]

Very interesting, Strong I have to go back and search in my fathers bookcase/big ol library and search for the correct dates but, I think the books he has about this are well before 93. I haven't read the entire letter posted here so I don't know if this is the correct one. But if I'm not mistaken it was indeed before that year that it was mentionned of.

Also check out

YouTube - Willie Lynch Letter & The Making Of A Slave

[Tommyknocker]

Let me shed some light on this..

First of all, The Willie Lynch letters ARE authentic.

That´s bottom line. And all this ole fuzzy bullshit that´s being claimed in order to try to discredit the authenticity of the Lynch letters, the absurd claims about the usage of certain words etc,
and what-not, is neither HERE nor THERE.

First of all, the Willie Lynch letters were written VERY long ago.
At this time I couldn´t give you an exact date or year. But their evidentally very old.

AND, they have been UPDATED!! That explains how certain words might seem malplaced
or "before their time" etc.

Just keep that in mind. The letters have been UPDATED, several times. For THAT exact reason,
the language changes all the time, and some of the words have been changed to make the reading more comprehensible to the reader.

So these little proposterous claims and opinions, saying that the letters are fake,
are absurd and outright lies.

I tell you what, instead of being so incredulous about the source of these letters,
where did they originate from etc, which is just silly talk, since the authenticity of the letters have already been confirmed and established VERY long ago!

So this li´l, "the first time they were ever published was on the internet sometimes in the
90´s", just 86 that BS!

Ya´ll talking about the letters having been published ( for the first time), in the 90´s???

Naah, get yer facts straight. The Willie Lynch letters where first published in a newspaper in Minnesota, during the slavery days.

I wish ya´ll who disbelieve in the Willie Lynch letters, would use and apply the same scrutiny
regarding these unfounded and incorrect and fabricated arguments, for saying that the letters are not real!

And for ANYONE that knows the first thing about the slavery days, and especially for ANYONE who´s a little more well acquainted with this subject than most,
ask yourself THIS:

Are the Willie Lynch letters speaking about, and confirming all the things that have already been established and confirmed about the slavery days, and the times during which slavery took place?

Things that have already been confirmed and prooven to be correct historically?
I.e the many undisputable facts that are widely known about the slavery?

And the answer is yes! The Willie Lynch letters DO confirm MANY facts about the slavery days
that is already common knowledge. And that right there is perhaps the most simple and most easily understood characteristic regarding the Willie Lynch letters.

They don´t contradict ANYTHING that is already known to be facts of the slavery days.

But I tell ya´ll one thing doe. The Willie Lynch letters weren´t just a "handbook" on how to break in slaves, and how to instill fear in them, how to keep them from rebelling etc..

The Willie Lynch letters were really, and in actuality, BLUEPRINTS, on how to perpertrate a GENOCIDE,
on the black race.

Simple and plain, THAT´S what these letters are REALLY all about.
That´s what they´re teaching and instructing.

So, in conclusion: Do ya´ll now see, how eager some people must have been,
and still ARE, to try to discredit these letters, and to cover up the truth!

Think about THAT for a few moments..

[STRONGARM]

There's nothing to think about.. the letters have NEVER been "Updated".!? The fuck are you talking about.!? That's the ORIGINAL "speech". Nothing has been updated.

Do ya´ll now see, how eager some people must have been,
and still ARE, to try to discredit these letters, and to cover up the truth!

Um.. you do understand all the quotes I posted are from BLACK people right..?

William Jelani Cobb, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of History at Spelman College

Professor Manu Ampim is an historian and primary (first-hand) researcher specializing in African and African American history and culture. He has a B.S. in Business Management and M.A. in History/African American Studies. His master thesis, “The Revolutionary Martin Luther King, Jr.” (1989) is being expanded into a two-volume work entitled, “Martin Luther King: The Evolution of a Revolutionary.”

He has taught in the Department of History at Morgan State University (Baltimore, MD), and at San Francisco State University in the Dept. of Ethnic Studies. Also, Ampim has studied at Oxford University in England, and collaborated on a NASA-sponsored research project, which examined the ancient climate and migration patterns in Africa. Currently, Prof. Ampim teaches Africana Studies at Merritt College in Oakland, CA, and he is teaching a 7-Step Primary Research Methodology Course at Advancing The Research.

So your OWN people are trying to cover up something that the rest of the modern world doesn't believe in the first place.!?

WHAT SOME HISTORIANS HAVE SAID ABOUT THIS HOAX:

It's really sad that so many African-Americans not only believe this "urban legend" (to put it in decent language), but that so many seem not to care that it is not really true. Anyone who does not care about the truth is in big trouble. For the record, the "Willie Lynch" letter was actually a recent creation, as evidenced by the language used. It was actually created in 1993 as a chain letter which spread like a bad disease throughout Black America. Research indicates that it was "loosely adapted" (to put it nicely) from a section of Anatoli Vinogradov's fictional 1935 novel "The Black Consul" that dealt with Napoleon's supposed plans to divide and conquer the Haitians during the Haitian revolution.

We Black scholars and professional historians should take this as a wake up call to get out of the ivory tower and teach the masses REAL Black history to keep them from being misled by the clever crackpots who collect cash by confusing the credulous. The REAL story of the damage done to Blacks from slavery may be found in actual slave narratives like "The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass," and detailed studies by legit scholars such as Carter G. Woodson's "Miseducation of the Negro" and Kenneth Stampp's "The Peculiar Institution."

There is a speech attributed to William Lynch which has been circulated on the internet and elsewhere, and which even Louis Farrakhan referred to at the Million Man March of October 16, 1995. By quoting extensively from the "Willie Lynch" speech, Mr. Farrakhan inspired the birth of a new term, Willie Lynch Syndrome, based on Lynch's supposed speech.

This speech is a ridiculous fake, written in the 1990s (there's no record of it being circulated before 1993).

First, the writer of this speech has made hardly any attempt to use the writing/speech style of the early 18th century.

Second, the author was not at all successful at steering clear of very specific anachronisms. We'll name only the most glaring word-choice errors: fool-proof, used in the speech, actually dates from only 1902. The noun program is not used in the sense found in this speech until the 1830s. Self-refuelling is an utter anachronism, as the term refuelling did not arise until the early 20th century. Use of installed when referring to something other than a person did not first occur until the mid-19th century. Moreover, attitude did not refer to anything other than a physical position until the mid-19th century.

Third, a speaker would hardly need to so carefully identify the date and place of his speech, nor would he be likely to refer to King James as "our illustrious King, whose version of the Bible we cherish", unless he were a person of the 1990s making a clumsy attempt at writing a fake speech from the early 18th century. We cannot imagine why the writer introduces the theme of "James... our illustrious king" unless it is merely to emphasize that this took place in colonial times. Only someone creating a fake would need to try to establish a date for the speech within the fake itself. And, by the way, James was long-dead by 1712, the monarch of that era being Queen Anne. Finally, there is no evidence that a William Lynch from a "modest plantation" in the West Indies ever existed. There is, however, plenty of evidence for the existence of Captain William Lynch of Pittsylvania, Virginia, whom we have identified as the probable source of the verb lynch, and who was born fifty years after the date given in the speech above.

There are other obvious characteristics of the speech which render it a 20th-century creation. Some of these are discussed at a web site devoted to the subject and created by Anne Taylor, collection development librarian at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. By the way, Ms. Taylor seems to be one of the first to have posted the speech on the internet. She obtained it from the publisher of a free publication in St. Louis, The St. Louis Black Pages, dated 1994 but published in 1993. This is the earliest reference we've been able to find to the Willie Lynch speech in print. We think it's time to send Willie Lynch's speech to the urban legends department.

I suspect that the narrator's name--Mr. Will Lynch--is a humorous put-on. Moreover, when Mr. Lynch thinks about dividing the slaves, he forgets the division that was most obvious to a West-Indian planter: nationality--both African ethnic divisions--Akan, Ibo, Mandingo and American divisions between so-called new Negroes [native Africans] and those born in the New World. His old vs young and dark vs light divisions would be most peculiar among early eighteenth-century African Americans (in both the West Indies and Virginia) who did not have such color gradations as in our own time and who still maintained the near absolute African respect for age.

First, I think it is rather odd for a speaker, even in 1712, to go to such lengths to locate the speech in time and space. The hearers of a speech would have no need for such a preamble: they are there and then, and it is not so clear that this was being spoken for a later printing. It is, however, useful to encourage a later reader to place the speech in a time and place, and the florid style fits a contemporary, though usually false, expectation for florid speech by speakers of the time.

Next, "the bank of the James River," is too generic. If the speaker was making the reference as a matter of courtesy, it is unusual -- indeed it would have been rude -- not to thank the specific hosts: why on the banks of the River, and no reference to a planter at whose landing or house such a speech must have been given? This omission gives rise to another problem: why a speech on such a topic, and given by someone ostensibly imported by ship for the purpose of giving it, would be given to an open riverside assembly, and not in a house or meeting room. It is unlikely that a planter or planters would underwrite the passage of a speaker from the Indies and not have arranged a suitable place for invitees to hear such a speech without fear of being overheard by the lower classes.

Next (and I promise this is my last point about the geography) there is utterly no reason for anyone arriving in Virginia to have thought of a single thing, "As our boat sailed south on the James River". The James River flows north, not south, from Hampton Roads. The only way he would travel south on it is after having given the speech and not before. While such a reference would have been impossible for someone on the banks of the river, it does reinforce, to the modern reader challenged by geography that the speaker is in the South.

As for other reference to time, the speech refers the river as "named for our illustrious King, whose version of the Bible we cherish." While this is a bit afield of my own areas of specialty, I think this is a rather anachronistic manner of referring to the English Bible: such an overt reference to a "version" makes clear that there are other versions, something to me that sounds a tad odd in the mouth of such a declared Anglican. James's 1611 English Bible had pretty so much fully replaced the Geneva Bible as the Bible of the English-speaking world by 1660, that in 1712, this sounds out of place. A reference to James as "patron of our Bible" would have been much more likely.

There are other textual problems that are better left to others (why is the speech so short when the speaker was imported and is speaking in an age of rhetoric as public entertainment? why "West Indies" and not an island name? why "color" and not "colour"? why bank and not "banks"?), but I wonder most about the reference to controlling slaves for 300 years.

Why would a person be invited from the West Indies to Virginia just to deliver an 8-paragraph speech? Back then, such a voyage would have been too strenuous and expensive for this, especially from an unknown person, especially when letter-writing was still the main form of long-distance communication? Of course, Lynch could have been in Virginia on business just before being spontaneously invited to speak. Still, if there had been a William Lynch whose word was so valued that he should deliver such a short speech in person rather than in writing, then certainly his speech would have been reprinted and commented upon in the local newspapers.

Also, he claims to want to give an "outline of action," yet no such plan is clearly given. It seems that a person who travels from the West Indies to Virginia for a speech would have elaborated more.

Thirdly, in paragraph 6, the author writes that "distrust is stronger than trust," yet only 5 sentences later, contradicts himself, saying, "it is necessary that your slaves trust and depend on us." Such a big contradiction would be expected from someone whose audience is listening intently for detailed information about specific steps in maintaining its livelihood through better control of his property. Why the switch in subjects from 3rd to 2nd person? Why not mention at least 2 or 3 methods of using dark-skinned slaves against light-skinned ones, and vice versa?

Contradiction and lack of detail make me leery of any claims that this "speech" is not a hoax.

Furthermore, the obvious stab at the sore points in African-American psyche, such as gender and facial feature issues, makes me believe it was written for a contemporary audience, since "female vs. ... male and ... male vs. ... female." would not have been so major a societal issue amongst slaves in 1712 in the United States.

Science, is more about the painstaking aggregation of facts that lead researchers to the most likely explanation, but rarely the only one. Slavery was an incredibly complex set of social, economic and legal relations that literally boiled down to black and white. But given the variation in size of farms, number of enslaved workers, region, crops grown, law, gender-ratios, religion and local economy, it is unlikely that a single letter could explain slave policy for at least 151 years of the institution and its ramifications down to the present day.

Considering the limited number of extant sources from 18th century, if this speech had been "discovered" it would've been the subject of incessant historical panels, scholarly articles and debates. It would literally be a career-making find. But the letter was never "discovered," but rather it "appeared" - bypassing the official historical circuits and making its way via internet directly into the canon of American racial conspiratoria.

On a more practical level, the speech is filled with references that are questionable if not completely inaccurate. Lynch makes reference to an invitation reaching him on his "modest plantation in the West Indies." While this is theoretically possible - the plantation system was well-established in the Caribbean by 1712 - most plantation owners were absentees who chose to remain in the colonizing country while the day-to-day affairs of their holdings were run by hired managers and overseers. But assuming that Mr. Lynch was an exception to this practice, much of the text of his "speech" is anachronistic. Lynch makes consistent reference to "slaves" - which again is possible, though it is far more likely people during this era would refer to persons in bondage simply as "Negroes."

In the first paragraph, he promises that "Ancient Rome would envy us if my program is implemented," but the word "program" did not enter the English language with this connotation until 1837 - at the time of this speech it was used to reference a written notice for theater events.

Two paragraphs later he says that he will "give an outline of action," for slave-holders; the word "out-line" had appeared only 50 years earlier and was an artistic term meaning a sketch - it didn't convey it's present meaning until 1759. Even more damning is his use of the terms "indoctrination" and "self-refueling" in the next sentence. The first word didn't carry it current connotation until 1832; the second didn't even enter the language until 1811 -- a century after the purported date of Lynch's speech. More obviously, Lynch uses the word "Black," with an upper-case "B" to describe African Americans more than two centuries before the word came to be applied as a common ethnic identifier.

In popular citations, Lynch has also been - inexplicably - credited with the term "lynching" which would be odd since the speech promises to provide slave-holders with non-violent techniques that will save them the expense of killing valuable, if unruly, property. This inaccuracy points to a more basic problem in understanding American history.

The violence directed at black people in America was exceptional in the regard that it was racialized and used to reinforce political and social subordination, but it was not unique. Early America was incredibly violent in general - stemming in part from the endemic violence in British society and partly from the violence that tends to be associated with frontier societies. For most of its history, lynching was a non-racial phenomenon- actually it was racial in that it most often directed at white people. "Lynch law" was derived from the mob violence directed at Tories, or British loyalists, just after the American Revolution. While there is disagreement about the precise origins of the term - some associate it with Charles Lynch, a Revolution-era Justice-of-the-Peace who imprisoned Tories, others see it as the legacy of an armed militia founded near the Lynche River or the militia captain named Lynch who created judicial tribunals in Virginia in 1776 - there is no reference to the term earlier than 1768, more than half a century after the date given for the speech.

Given the sparse judicial resources (judges were forced to travel from town-to-town hearing cases, which is where we get the term "judicial circuit") and the frequency of property crimes in the early republic, lynching was often seen as a form of community justice. Not until the 1880s, after the end of Reconstruction, did "lynching" become associated with African Americans; gradually the number of blacks lynched each year surpassed the number of whites until it became almost exclusively directed at black people late in the century.

On another level, the Willie Lynch speech would seem to give a quick-and-easy explanation of the roots of our much-lamented "black disunity." You could make similar arguments about the lingering effects of a real historical document like the 1845 tract "Religious Instruction of Negroes" - written by a proslavery Presbyterian minister -- or the British practice of mixing different African ethnicities on slave ships in order to make communication - and therefore rebellion - more difficult. But this too is questionable - it presumes that whites, or any other diverse group, do not face divisive gender issues, generation gaps and class distinctions. Willie Lynch offers no explanation for the white pro-lifer who guns down a white abortion-provider or white-on-white domestic violence. He does not explain political conflicts among different Latino groups or crime in Asian communities. Unity is not the same as unanimity and in the end, black people are no more disunited than any other group of people - and a lot more united than we give ourselves credit for.