William Lynch Speech

__NOTOC__The William (or Willie) Lynch Speech (or Letter) is an address purportedly delivered by William Lynch to an audience on the bank of the James River in Virginia in 1712 regarding control of slaves within the colony.cite web |url=http://www.freemaninstitute.com/lynch.htm |title=Willie Lynch Speech |accessmonthday=March 9 |accessyear=2007 |last=Lynch |first=William |coauthors=as attributed by The Freeman Institute |publisher=The Freeman Institute] cite web |url=http://www.colby.edu/health.serv/wiillyncu.html |title=William Lynch |accessmonthday=March 9 |accessyear=2007 |last=Lynch |first=William |coauthors=as attributed by June Thornton-Marsh |date=2003-01-03 |publisher=The Colby Institute] cite web |url=http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_2167.shtml |title=Willie Lynch letter: The Making of a Slave |accessmonthday=March 9 |accessyear=2007 |last=Lynch |first=William |coauthors=as attributed by FinalCall.com News |date=2005-08-22 |work=FinalCall.com News |publisher=FCN Publishing] The letter purports to be a verbatim account of a short speech given by a slave owner, in which he tells other slave masters that he has discovered the "secret" to controlling enslaved Africans by setting them against one another.cite web |url=http://thetalkingdrum.com/wil.html |title=Willie Lynch: The Making of a Slave |accessdate=2008-06-25 |last=Lynch |first=William |coauthors=as attributed by The Talking Drum |work=The Talking Drum |publisher=The Talking Drum Collective] The speaker, William Lynch, is said to have been a slaveowner in the West Indies, summoned to Virginia in 1712; in part due to several slave revolts in the area prior to his visit, and his alleged reputation of being an authoritarian and strict slaveowner.

The text of the speech appeared on the internet as early as 1993, when a reference librarian at the University of Missouri–St. Louis posted the document on the library's Gopher server.cite web |url=http://www.umsl.edu/services/library/blackstudies/winbail.htm |accessdate=2008-06-21 |last=Taylor |first=Anne Cleëster |title=Email to Samuel Winslow and Lee Bailey about researching The Narrative. |work=The Slave Consultant's Narrative: The life of an Urban Myth? |publisher=University of Missouri-St. Louis, Thomas Jefferson Library Reference Department |archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/20070808191222/www.umsl.edu/services/library/blackstudies/winbail.htm |archivedate=2007-08-08|quote=Thepublisher who gave me this wanted to remain anonymous on the gopher versionbecause he couldn't trace it, either, and until now I've honored his wishes.] The librarian later revealed that she had obtained the document from the publisher of a local newspaper, "The St. Louis Black Pages", in which the narrative had recently appeared. The librarian elected to leave the document on the Gopher server, as she believed that "even as an inauthentic document, it says something about the former and current state of AfricanAmerica," but added a warning about the provenance of the document.

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, historian William Jelani Cobb of Spelman College believes that the Willie Lynch speech is an internet hoax. [cite web |url=http://www.jelanicobb.com/portfolio/willie_lynch_is_dead.html |title=Willie Lynch is Dead (1712?-2003) |accessmonthday=March 9 |accessyear=2007 |last=Cobb |first=W. Jelani |coauthors= |date= |year=2003 |work=Creative Ink: Jelani Cobb |archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/20070814182601/http://www.jelanicobb.com/portfolio/willie_lynch_is_dead.html|archivedate=2007-08-14]

Popular references

Louis Farrakhan, in his open letter regarding the Millions More Movement, cites Willie Lynch's scheme as an obstacle to unity among African Americans.Farrakhan, Louis. [http://www.millionsmoremovement.com/news/open_letter.htm An appeal ...] ." The Official Site for the Millions More Movement". Accessed on October 12, 2005]

In the 2005 direct-to-video film "Animal", the Speech is used as a plot device to bring together the two main characters, and passed on from Father to Son to Grandson.

In the 2007 movie "The Great Debaters", Denzel Washington's character Melvin B. Tolson refers to the Willie Lynch speech as being the definition of the black slave.

The Willie Lynch speech continues to appear in popular culture, with articles, books, and videos being produced purporting to teach people to "deprogram" themselves and "turn off your Willie Lynch Chip". [One of many examples is [http://www.houseofnubian.com/IBS/SimpleCat/product/ASP/product-id/25919560.html Dr. Ray Hagins "How to De-Activate Your Willie Lynch Chip"] .]

On the hip-hop group Black Star's 1998 self-titled album (lyrics by Mos Def and Talib Kweli), the song "RE-DEFinition" contains a lyric referring to the speech: "...'How to Make a Slave' by Willie Lynch is still applyin'...".

The spoken-word artist Taalam Acey makes reference to William Lynch in his "Market for Niggas", which contains the sentence: "I guarantee everybody right now a thousand dollars your record will sell as long as it sounds like Willie Lynch wrote it."

William Lynch

Some attribute the terms "lynching" and "Lynch law" to William Lynch's name. However, the etymological Captain William Lynch was born in 1742, thirty years after the alleged delivery of this speech.Citation | year =1988 | editor-last= Stein | editor-first= Jess | title = The Random House College Dictionary | place =New York | publisher =Random House | edition=Revised | page=800 | isbn =0-394-43500-1] A document published in the "Southern Literary Messenger" in 1836 that proposed William Lynch as the originator of "lynch law" may have been a hoax perpetrated by Edgar Allan Poe. [Christopher Waldrep, "The Many Faces of Judge Lynch: Extralegal Violence and Punishment in America", Macmillan, 2002, p. 21.] A better documented early use of the term "lynch law" comes from Charles Lynch, a Virginia justice of the peace and militia officer during the American Revolution.

References

ee also

*Divide and conquer

External links

*cite web |url=http://www.umsl.edu/services/library/blackstudies/narrate.htm |title=The Slave Consultant's Narrative: The life of an Urban Myth? |archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/20070808080232/http://www.umsl.edu/services/library/blackstudies/narrate.htm |archivedate=2007-08-08 (The first traceable online publisher)
* [http://www.africanholocaust.net/news_ah/willielynch.htm Willie Lynch dispute]
* [http://www.afro-netizen.com/2003/09/willie_lynch_is.html Examination of text's inaccuracies by William Jelani Cobb]
* [http://manuampim.com/lynch_hoax1.html Death of Willie Lynch Speech (Part I) by Prof. Manu Ampim]
* [http://thetalkingdrum.com/wil.html Full speech of Willie Lynch] (the making of a slave)
* [http://imdb.com/title/tt0437072/ Movie "Animal" on IMDB, which prominently refers to the speech]