Violence against Children

This page introduces violence against children and the understanding that children were not just victims of direct violence but victims as bystanders. The history of violence against children helps to contextualize the risks of Black children’s participation in the Civil Rights Movement. Furthermore, it is necessary to understand these events in order to commemorate their lives. White children also witnessed the violence against Black children. Investigating this history can inform the motivations behind their experiences and understand their assaults upon other Black children.

An Example of Death

During slavery, Black children were brutally abused. Physical violence was not just beating and physical abuse but also raping and sexual abuse by slave owners. Children growing up were under constant threat from the abuse of slaveowners. Violence was not just done to a slave to punish them but to make an example of them. Children were victims of violence and also victims of this trauma.

Children would be subjected to witnessing other slaves being brutalized. Slave owners, to make an example of murders and abuse, would force the children to witness the torture of family members and other slaves.

One recorded account of this was of a child named Joe. Joe was a ten-year-old boy when he witnessed the murder of Gilbert, an adult slave. Joe accompanied the slaveowner who was leading Gilbert out to where the other slaves were working. Gilbert was about to be publicly whipped for running away. When a fight began between the slave master and Gilbert, Joe was asked to retrieve the knife that the slave master dropped. Instead, Joe was forced to stab Gilbert himself while Gilbert was restrained ( Wilma King, 2005, p. 138). Undoubtedly this event would be deeply traumatizing to Joe. His story is one of many children forced to witness the cruelty of slavery and White supremacy in the United States.

Lynching of Children

The most direct record of violence against children because of their race is lynching. In the timeline provided of lynchings during the 1950s-1960s, the youngest child murdered was only 10 years old. However, this record accounts for only 26 lynchings with stated ages. Their ages could have been misrepresented and unreported if the child was younger. In reality, Black children of all ages and even unborn infants have been murdered by white people (Gaida, 2021).   

During slavery, the murder of Black men, women, and children was the destruction of labor assets. Therefore, slaves were at times protected from violence by white people because they were seen as property. Their murder could be convicted as a criminal offense. However, the emancipation of slavery brought an end to this limited protection. Lynching which occurred during slavery increased exponentially after the emancipation of slavery.

The emancipation of slavery also brought more widespread killings as a means of keeping Black freedmen in subordination and out of places of power. Voting rights were a huge focus of the KKK during the Reconstruction. Children became victims of the Ku Klux Khan to punish their parents for voting and acting on rights the KKK did not want Black people to have (Gaida, 2021). Therefore, throughout history, the death of Black children and violence toward them had the purpose of terrorism.

Attempted Genocide

The mass murder of African Americans over the 1800-1950s was attempted genocide. It should be understood that the reason for lynching was an attempt at genocide. Any reason for lynching aside from this is an attempt to vindicate it. This is made evident by the “punishable offenses” which resulted in Black people being lynched and murdered.

Black men, women, and children, could be lynched for not lighting a match, whistling, bumping into a white woman, playing with White children, or living in a town etc (African American Childhoods, King 2005 p. 141-145, EJI). The reason was race. The fact that in the United States, Black people were mass-murdered should be acknowledged as the genocide it was (Ovunc Kutlu, 2021).

The racist stereotype of the criminality of Black people was a part of the justification for lynching. This is because criminals are generally understood as deserving of punishment if guilty. The severity of punishment is then easily justified. Once it is believed that Black people have a propensity to be violent and rapists, killing them is believed to prevent future crimes. Black people were then guilty before even committing any crime. Children were criminals before they were ever innocent. The criminal stereotype was central in justifying the attempted genocide.

Often Black children were not even seen as children at all. As shown in their lynchings, criminal convictions, and sentences, Black children were often regarded as adults (Crystal Webster, Washington Post). Once children are not regarded as children, they are again less likely to be seen as innocent and incapable of evil. When White supremacists painted Black children as criminals, they could justify killing them younger and younger.  

Radical Pamphlets

The pamphlets below were given out to White people during the desegregation of schools. They are harrowing because they spread the criminal stereotype. The pamphlets implied that Black children were capable of violent crimes. White supremacists were trying to criminalize Black children and demonize them to incite violence against the children from white mobs and white children.

Don’t Hurt my Child

During the Civil Rights movement, violence mounted against African Americans as they protested. Children were aware of the dangers of violence from white supremacists. The death of Emmert Till horrified and enraged the Movement. A determination to fight for children resulted from the death of the innocent child.

The realities of the mounting violence made it evident that children and adults would risk being killed, assaulted, and lynched for just living or risk the violence while fighting for their freedoms. Despite the risk, children and adults did continue to protest and fight white supremacy and demand their rights as people. Children went with their parents to sit-ins. In many cases, children of all ages were held in the arms of an adult as they were both dragged out violently by police.

After the passing of Brown v.s. Board of education, children began organizing their own protests. If they were not there themselves, children watched on tv as firehoses were let loose on children in Birmingham. The mass arrest of children during the Children’s Crusade in Birmingham continued to highlight the fact that children had no more rights or protection than adults.  No matter their standing, children were aware of the violence all around them and deeply affected by the traumas of the Civil Rights Movement.  

After 1934, when Black children were sent to desegregated schools, they were bullied and assaulted by other students their age. Their families also continued to be threatened by mobs who threw bricks at their homes and terrorized them with violence.

Passing on the Violence

The death of a Black person was often an example to Black people to terrorize them. However, the other target audience for the violent treatment of Black people were White people and their children. The horrors of lynching around the United States became entertainment to white people. Postcards and parts of the victims’ bodies were sold for profit (Nhaya Vaidya & Sara Wiatrak’s, 2021). The lynchings themselves gathered mobs of onlookers by the thousands.

In their numbers were the eyes of white children looking on as their parents committed the atrocities. They were there to learn the barbaric actions. Postcards and other media publications over the 1800s to 1930s were meant to popularize the terrorism of Black people.

White children did imitate the actions and violence of their parents. Their early exposure to violence destroyed their innocence and many times ensured their racism. One example of this imitation was in Richmond, Virginia, where a group of white children only 13 years old and younger were described as “Lynchers that were to be.” The group chased after a twelve-year-old Black boy throwing stones at him, intent on killing him. The boy escaped by taking refuge in the house of a white woman.

There are many accounts of white children repeating the jeers of adults at Black people. One account put a boy at the center of a confrontation with Black men trying to enter a segregated store. When the situation started getting violent a young boy witnessing the scene shouted, “I’m gonna kill me a n****.” (There Goes My Everything, Sokol, 2006).

With each generation, children became aggressors earlier than even their parents. The violent outbursts of White children towards other Black children were encouraged. During the desegregation of Little Rock, Arkansas white mothers encouraged their children to bully Black children. In some instances, the white women attacked the Black children themselves. For example in New Orleans, a group of white mothers attacked four Black children who were desegregating a school there (Rebecca Brückmann). White supremacists were weaponizing their children to bully, harass and kill Black children.

Sometimes the children’s humanity was able to fight the persuasion of white supremacists. One case of this was Robert F. Williams. He witnessed the violent arrested of a Black woman by Sheriff “Big” Jesse Helms. He watched as the woman was dragged on the pavement ripping her skin and causing her to shed blood over the sidewalk. The event horrified Robert and galvanized him against white supremacy in his adulthood (King, 2005). However, Robert F. Williams and other children like him were rebels of their race and not the majority, especially in the Deep South.

There is a generational tragedy of children who witnessed the hatred of white supremacists. There is no way to measure the trauma inflicted on their innocence.  Countless Black children bore the horrors of violence during the centuries of white supremacy in the United States.  However, Black children’s awareness of the conflict motivated their activism during the Civil Rights movement. Because of this, thousands were able to stand up for themselves and future children.

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Read More about Children’s participation in the Civil Rights Movement in the next article on the Path.