Language:
English
Year of publication:
2010
Titel der Quelle:
Southern Jewish History
Angaben zur Quelle:
13 (2010) 45-80
Keywords:
Jews
;
Jews Legal status, laws, etc.
;
Antisemitism History 1500-
;
Violence
;
Jews History
Abstract:
In April 1925, a mob broke into the Martin County jail in Williamston, North Carolina; they attacked a Jewish prisoner, Joseph Needleman, and emasculated him. Needleman had been in jail awaiting trial for the rape of a local non-Jewish woman. The lynching of Needleman was an organized action supported, or at least condoned, by law-enforcement officials. The case was ill-substantiated by evidence and had strong antisemitic overtones. State authorities, eager to end "mob justice" in North Carolina, prosecuted and punished Needleman's attackers. Notes that, in this case, lynching was an instrument of racial repression. In Southern society, where the racial status of the Jew was ill-defined, the attack was driven by a fear of miscegenation and contamination of the white race.
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