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'''Walter Seff Isaacson''' (born 1952) is an American historian, author, and journalist best known in the second half of his life for writing outstanding biographies of several public, historical figures, including [[Benjamin Franklin]], [[Albert Einstein]], [[Steve Jobs]], and Elon Musk. Earlier in his life, he was also the chairman of [[CNN]], and the editor of ''[[Time magazine|Time]]''.
===United States===
{{Main|Lynching in the United States}}
[[File:Lynching-of-will-james.jpg|thumb|The lynching of African American [[William "Froggie" James]] in [[Cairo, Illinois]], on November 11, 1909. A crowd of thousands watched the lynching.<ref>{{cite book |title=Black Woman Reformer: Ida B. Wells, Lynching, & Transatlantic Activism |url=https://archive.org/details/blackwomanreform0000silk |url-access=registration |date=2015 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |page=[https://archive.org/details/blackwomanreform0000silk/page/n18 1]|isbn=9780820345574 }}</ref>]]
[[Image:duluth-lynching-postcard.jpg|right|thumb|[[Lynching postcard|Postcard]] of the [[Duluth lynchings|1920 Duluth, Minnesota lynchings]]. Two of the Black victims are still hanging while the third is on the ground.<ref name="Moyers">Moyers, Bill. [https://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11232007/profile2.html "Legacy of Lynching"]. PBS. Retrieved July 28, 2016</ref>]]
Lynchings took place in the United States both before and after the [[American Civil War]], most commonly in Southern states and Western frontier settlements and most frequently in the late 19th century.  They were often performed by self-appointed commissions, [[Ochlocracy|mobs]], or [[vigilantes]] as a form of punishment for presumed criminal offences.<ref>The Guardian, 'Jim Crow lynchings more widespread than previously thought', Lauren Gambino, February 10, 2015</ref> From 1883 to 1941 there were 4,467 victims of lynching. Of these, 4,027 were male, and 99 female. 341 were of unknown gender, but are assumed to be likely male. In terms of ethnicity; 3,265 were black, 1,082 were white, 71 were Mexican or of Mexican descent, 38 were American Indian, ten were Chinese, and one was Japanese.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Seguin|first1=Charles|last2=Rigby|first2=David|date=2019|title=National Crimes: A New National Data Set of Lynchings in the United States, 1883 to 1941|journal=Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World|volume=5|doi=10.1177/2378023119841780|s2cid=164388036|issn=2378-0231|doi-access=free}}</ref> At the first recorded lynching, in [[St. Louis, Missouri|St. Louis]] in 1835, a Black man named McIntosh who killed a deputy sheriff while being taken to jail was captured, chained to a tree, and burned to death on a corner lot downtown in front of a crowd of over 1,000 people.<ref>William Hyde and Howard L. Conrad (eds.), [https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofhi04hyde ''Encyclopedia of the History of St. Louis: A Compendium of History and Biography for Ready Reference: Volume 4.''] New York: Southern History Company, 1899; pg. 1913.</ref>
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Mob violence arose as a means of enforcing [[White supremacy]]<ref name="gibson">{{cite web|first=Robert A.|last=Gibson|title=The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States, 1880–1950|url=https://teachersinstitute.yale.edu/curriculum/units/1979/2/79.02.04.x.html|access-date=July 26, 2010|publisher=Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute}}</ref> and it frequently verged on systematic political terrorism. After the American Civil War, secret white supremacist terrorist groups such as the [[Ku Klux Klan]] instigated extrajudicial assaults and killings due to a perceived loss of white power in America.<ref name="New South 1993">{{cite book|last=Brundage|first=W. Fitzhugh|url=https://archive.org/details/lynchinginnewsou0000brun|title=Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880–1930|publisher=University of Illinois Press|year=1993|isbn=0-252-06345-7|location=Urbana|url-access=registration}}</ref><ref name="Barry A. Crouch 1868">{{cite journal|last=Crouch|first=Barry A.|year=1984|title=A Spirit of Lawlessness: White violence, Texas Blacks, 1865–1868|journal=Journal of Social History|volume=18|issue=2|pages=217–226|doi=10.1353/jsh/18.2.217|jstor=3787285}}</ref><ref name="Foner1988p119-123">{{cite book|last=Foner|first=Eric|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780060158514/page/119|title=Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877|publisher=Harper & Row|year=1988|isbn=0-06-015851-4|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780060158514/page/119 119–123]|url-access=registration}}</ref><ref name="J.C.A. Stagg 1871">{{cite journal|last=Stagg|first=J. C. A.|year=1974|title=The Problem of Klan Violence: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1868–1871|journal=Journal of American Studies|volume=8|issue=3|pages=303–318|doi=10.1017/S0021875800015905}}</ref><ref name="ReferenceA">{{cite book|last=Trelease|first=Allen W.|title=White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction|publisher=Harper & Row|year=1979|isbn=0-313-21168-X|location=New York}}</ref> Mobs usually alleged crimes for which they lynched Black people in order to instil fear. In the late 19th century, however, journalist Ida B. Wells showed that many presumed crimes were either exaggerated or had not even occurred.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|title=Lynching|encyclopedia=[[MSN Encarta]]|url=http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761576853/Lynching.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091028112646/http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761576853/Lynching.html|archive-date=October 28, 2009|url-status=dead}}</ref> The magnitude of the extralegal violence which occurred during election campaigns, to prevent blacks from voting, reached epidemic proportions.<ref name="New South 1993" /><ref name="Barry A. Crouch 1868" /><ref name="Foner1988p119-123" /><ref name="J.C.A. Stagg 1871" /><ref name="ReferenceA" /> The [[ideology]] behind lynching, directly connected to the denial of political and social equality, was stated forthrightly in 1900 by United States Senator [[Benjamin Tillman]], who was previously governor of South Carolina: {{blockquote|We of the South have never recognized the right of the negro to govern white men, and we never will. We have never believed him to be the equal of the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives and daughters without lynching him.<ref name="herbert">{{cite news |first=Bob |last=Herbert |author-link=Bob Herbert |title=The Blight That Is Still With Us |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/opinion/22herbert.html?hp |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=January 22, 2008|access-date=January 22, 2008}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/55/|title='Their Own Hotheadedness': Senator Benjamin R. 'Pitchfork Ben' Tillman Justifies Violence Against Southern Blacks|website=History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web|publisher=George Mason University|access-date=September 3, 2020}}</ref>}}


Members of mobs that participated in lynchings often took photographs of what they had done to their victims. Souvenir taking, such as the taking of pieces of rope, clothing, branches and sometimes [[Human trophy collecting|body parts]] was not uncommon. Some of those photographs were published and sold as [[lynching postcard|postcards]].<ref>{{cite news |last=Tharoor|first=Ishaan |date=September 27, 2016 |title= U.S. owes black people reparations for a history of 'racial terrorism,' says U.N. panel|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/09/27/u-s-owes-black-people-reparations-for-a-history-of-racial-terrorism-says-u-n-panel/|newspaper= [[The Washington Post]]|access-date=May 1, 2017|quote="Lynching was a form of racial terrorism that has contributed to a legacy of racial inequality that the United States must address. Thousands of people of African descent were killed in violent public acts of racial control and domination and the perpetrators were never held accountable." }}</ref><ref>{{cite report|publisher=[[Equal Justice Initiative]]|title=Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror|year=2017|location=Montgomery, Alabama|url=https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/report/|page=14|edition=3rd|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180510151602/https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/report/|archive-date=May 10, 2018|quote=Public spectacle lynchings were those in which large crowds of white people, often numbering in the thousands, gathered to witness pre-planned, heinous killings that featured prolonged torture, mutilation, dismemberment, and/or burning of the victim. Many were carnival-like events, with vendors selling food, printers producing postcards featuring photographs of the lynching and corpse, and the victim's body parts collected as souvenirs.}}</ref>
Isaacson studied at [[Harvard University]], where he majored in history and literature and graduated in 1974. He later attended [[Pembroke College, Oxford]], as a Rhodes scholar, where he studied philosophy, politics, and economics (PPE) and graduated with first-class honours.<ref name=rpogrebin /><ref name=mball />
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====Anti-lynching legislation and the civil rights movement====
As of 2024, Isaacson is a professor at Tulane University and since 2018 has served as one of several interview hosts for the [[Public Broadcasting Service|PBS]] and CNN news show ''Amanpour & Company''.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Guthrie|first=Marisa|date=8 May 2018|url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/christiane-amanpour-will-lead-new-pbs-late-night-program-1109701|title=Christiane Amanpour Will Lead New PBS Late-Night Program|publisher=The Hollywood Reporter|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180508211023/https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/christiane-amanpour-will-lead-new-pbs-late-night-program-1109701|archive-date=8 May 2018}}</ref>
The [[Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill]] was first introduced to the [[United States Congress]] in 1918 by [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] Congressman [[Leonidas C. Dyer]] of [[St. Louis, Missouri]]. The bill was passed by the [[United States House of Representatives]] in 1922, and in the same year it was given a favorable report by the [[United States Senate]] Committee. Its passage was blocked by White Democratic senators from the [[Solid South]], the only representatives elected since the southern states [[Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era|had disenfranchised African Americans]] around the start of the 20th century.<ref>[https://ssrn.com/abstract=224731 Richard H. Pildes, "Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon", ''Constitutional Commentary'', Vol. 17, 2000]. Accessed March 10, 2008.</ref> The Dyer Bill influenced later anti-lynching legislation, including the [[Costigan-Wagner Bill]], which was also defeated in the US Senate.<ref>Zangrando, NAACP Crusade, pp. 43–44, 54.</ref>


The song "[[Strange Fruit]]" was composed by [[Abel Meeropol]] in 1937, inspired by the photograph of a lynching in Marion, Indiana. Meeropol said that the photograph "haunted me for days".<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Cross and the Lynching Tree|url=https://archive.org/details/crosslynchingtre0000cone|url-access=registration|last=Cone|first=James H.|publisher=Oribis Books|year=2011|location=Maryknoll, New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/crosslynchingtre0000cone/page/134 134]}}</ref> It was published as a poem in the ''New York Teacher'' and later in the magazine ''[[New Masses]]'', in both cases under the pseudonym Lewis Allan. The poem was set to music, also by Meeropol, and the song was performed and popularized by [[Billie Holiday]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/strangefruit/film.html|website=Pbs.org|title=Strange Fruit}} PBS ''Independent Lens'' credits the music as well as the words to Meeropol, though Billie Holiday's autobiography and the Spartacus article credit her with co-authoring the song.</ref> The song reached 16th place on the charts in July 1939.{{citation needed|date=December 2014}} The song has been performed by many other singers, including [[Nina Simone]].
Isaacson is the author of several notable books, including:
* ''Pro and Con'' (1983), ''Kissinger: A Biography'' (1992)
* ''Benjamin Franklin: An American Life'' (2003)
* ''Einstein: His Life and Universe'' (2007)
* ''American Sketches'' (2009)
* ''Steve Jobs'' (2011)
* ''The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution'' (2014)
* ''Leonardo da Vinci'' (2017)
* ''The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race'' (2021)
* ''Elon Musk'' (2023)


By the 1950s, the [[civil rights movement]] was gaining new momentum. It was spurred by the lynching of [[Emmett Till]], a 14-year-old youth from Chicago who was killed while visiting an uncle in Mississippi. His mother insisted on having an open-casket funeral so that people could see how badly her son had been beaten. The Black community throughout the U.S. became mobilized.<ref name="Atlantic"/> Vann R. Newkirk wrote "the trial of his killers became a pageant illuminating the tyranny of [[white supremacy]]".<ref name="Atlantic">{{Cite news|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/02/how-the-blood-of-emmett-till-still-stains-america-today/516891/|title=How 'The Blood of Emmett Till' Still Stains America Today|last=II|first=Vann R. Newkirk|work=The Atlantic|access-date=July 3, 2017|language=en-US}}</ref> The state of Mississippi tried two defendants, but they were acquitted by an [[all-White jury]].<ref>Whitfield, Stephen (1991). ''A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till''. pp 41–42. JHU Press.</ref> David Jackson writes that it was the photograph of the "child's ravaged body, that forced the world to reckon with the brutality of [[American racism]]."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://100photos.time.com/photos/emmett-till-david-jackson|title=How The Horrific Photograph Of Emmett Till Helped Energize The Civil Rights Movement|website=100photos.time.com|access-date=July 3, 2017|archive-date=July 6, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170706123149/http://100photos.time.com/photos/emmett-till-david-jackson|url-status=dead}}</ref>
Isaacson is also the co-author with Evan Thomas of ''The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made'' (1986).


Most lynchings ceased by the 1960s,<ref name=tuskegee_umkc>{{cite web |url=http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingsstate.html |title=Lynchings: By State and Race, 1882–1968 |access-date=July 26, 2010 |quote=Statistics provided by the Archives at Tuskegee Institute. |publisher=University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100629081241/http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingsstate.html |archive-date=June 29, 2010 }}</ref><ref name=tuskegee_umkc2>{{cite web |url=http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingyear.html |title=Lynchings: By Year and Race |access-date=July 26, 2010 |quote=Statistics provided by the Archives at Tuskegee Institute. |publisher=University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100724162418/http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingyear.html |archive-date=July 24, 2010 }}</ref> but even in 2021 there were claims that racist lynchings still happen in the United States, being covered up as suicides.<ref>{{cite news|first=DeNeen L. |last=Brown |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/08/08/modern-day-mississippi-lynchings |title='Lynchings in Mississippi never stopped' |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=August 8, 2021 |accessdate=February 16, 2022}}</ref>
==Attribution==
{{WPAttribution}}


In 2018, the [[National Memorial for Peace and Justice]] was opened in Montgomery, Alabama, a memorial that commemorates the victims of lynchings in the United States.
==References==
<references>


On March 29, 2022, President [[Joe Biden]] signed the [[Emmett Till Antilynching Act]] of 2022 into law, which classified lynching as a federal [[hate crime]].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Zaslav |first=Ali |date=March 8, 2022 |title=Senate passes Emmett Till Antilynching Act of 2022 |url=https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/07/politics/senate-passes-antilynching-law/index.html |access-date=March 29, 2022 |work=CNN}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Shear |first=Michael D. |date=March 29, 2022 |title=Biden Signs Bill to Make Lynching a Federal Crime |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/29/us/politics/biden-signs-anti-lynching-bill.html |access-date=March 30, 2022 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref>
<ref name=rpogrebin>Robin Pogrebin, [https://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/09/business/at-work-and-at-play-time-s-editor-seeks-to-keep-magazine-vigorous-at-75.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm "At Work and at Play, Time's Editor Seeks to Keep Magazine Vigorous at 75"], ''[[New York Times]]'', March 9, 1998.</ref>
 
<ref name=mball>{{cite news|first=Millie|last=Ball|url=http://www.nola.com/books/index.ssf/2011/12/steve_jobs_biographer_is_homet.html|title=Steve Jobs' biographer is hometown son Walter Isaacson|publisher=The Times-Picayune|date=11 December 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20120212154631/http://www.nola.com/books/index.ssf/2011/12/steve_jobs_biographer_is_homet.html|archive-date=12 February 2012}}</ref>
 
</references>

Latest revision as of 13:17, 7 July 2024

Walter Seff Isaacson (born 1952) is an American historian, author, and journalist best known in the second half of his life for writing outstanding biographies of several public, historical figures, including Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk. Earlier in his life, he was also the chairman of CNN, and the editor of Time.

Isaacson studied at Harvard University, where he majored in history and literature and graduated in 1974. He later attended Pembroke College, Oxford, as a Rhodes scholar, where he studied philosophy, politics, and economics (PPE) and graduated with first-class honours.[1][2]

As of 2024, Isaacson is a professor at Tulane University and since 2018 has served as one of several interview hosts for the PBS and CNN news show Amanpour & Company.[3]

Isaacson is the author of several notable books, including:

  • Pro and Con (1983), Kissinger: A Biography (1992)
  • Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003)
  • Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007)
  • American Sketches (2009)
  • Steve Jobs (2011)
  • The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (2014)
  • Leonardo da Vinci (2017)
  • The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race (2021)
  • Elon Musk (2023)

Isaacson is also the co-author with Evan Thomas of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (1986).

Attribution

Some content on this page may previously have appeared on Wikipedia.

References

  1. ↑ Robin Pogrebin, "At Work and at Play, Time's Editor Seeks to Keep Magazine Vigorous at 75", New York Times, March 9, 1998.
  2. ↑ Ball, Millie. Steve Jobs' biographer is hometown son Walter Isaacson, The Times-Picayune, 11 December 2011.
  3. ↑ Guthrie, Marisa. Christiane Amanpour Will Lead New PBS Late-Night Program, The Hollywood Reporter, 8 May 2018.
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