Lynching Quotes

“The idea of YOU lynching anybody! It’s amusing. The idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a MAN! Because you’re brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a MAN? Why, a MAN’s safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kind – as long as it’s daytime and you’re not behind him.”

– Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 22. Colonel Sherburn, the wealthy shop owner, challenges and calls out the mob gathered to lynch him after he shoots town drunk Boggs. The same mob who thinks it’s brave to tar and feather a woman.

She turned on him in scorn. “Listen, N*****,” she said. “You know what I can do to you if you open your trap?”
Crooks stared hopelessly at her, and then he sat down on his bunk and drew into himself.
She closed on him. “You know what I could do?”
Crooks seemed to grow smaller, and he pressed himself against the wall. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, you keep your place then, N*****. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain’t even funny.”

– John Steinbeck

Of Mice and Men, Chapter 4. Curley’s wife viciously attacks Crooks and threatens to have him hung, after he tells her she does not belong in his bunk and should leave.
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