It has been said that those who fail to heed the lessons of history
are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. Perhaps someone should
pass Kansas State University’s football team a history book.
The Wildcat football team at Kansas State has named its swarming
defense the “Lynch Mob.” While I’m proud that the Wildcat football
program has risen like a phoenix from the ashes of its infamous
“Futility U” days, I am saddened that a team that represents an
institution of higher learning would select such an inappropriate name.
And perhaps even more troubling is that their ignorance of the bloody,
violent, and racist history of the phrase is yet another casualty of
the sanitized historical slant many textbooks I present.
I know football is a violent sport. And sure, a strong defense is
what championship teams are built on. The Purple People Eaters, Steel
Curtain, and Doomsday defenses are prime example of that. Defense has
been a staple in the Wildcats’s rise to national prominence. But I
would hope no team would want to be allied with a name that is
associated with so much racism, pain, and injustice. I could never
imagine a Jewish team naming itself the Storm Troopers, Nazis, or
Burning Ovens, nor could I imagine a team with Native Americans
allowing themselves to be called the Cavalry. Wake up, my brothers.
Some team members have pointed to the fact that rapper Ice Cube’s
posse refers to themselves by that name. I am not enamored with their
name, but I know that it is more of a political statement than an
argument of ignorance. They know their history.
For the record, the American Heritage Dictionary defines lynching
as an execution “by hanging without due process of the law.” Perhaps
many associate the name with a John Wayne-type Western movie with a
posse going after a criminal.
But while the practice has been used extensively on Whites who got
out of line, it is also largely associated with its Black victims.
Prior to the Emancipation Proclamation it was a tool to discourage
slave revolts. After the manifesto, it became a mechanism to mentally
shackle the former slaves, since it could no longer be done by law.
The late Walter White, former executive director of the NAACP,
wrote in his book, Rope and Faggot, that the widely accepted
explanation for the name is that it came from a Virginian named Charles
Lynch, who became upset with the lack of law in the western part of the
state prior to the Revolutionary War. Lynch and friends formed their
own judicial system – with Lynch as the chief magistrate – and meted
out their own brand of capital punishment. Hence the name of the town
of Lynchburg, Virginia.
