struction Period, its lynching, its refusal to accept the verdict of Appomattox. The Ku Klux Klan, both of the seventies and of recent years, is a concrete example of the working of the defence mechanism in its resort to physical violence. Aware that all peaceful efforts to suppress the Negro are proving increasingly unsuccessful, the lyncher hopes by increased savagery to achieve the desired goal. It is this attitude which creates what Frank Tannenbaum in Darker Phases of the South terms "the South's emotional fixation on the Negro." Having created the mental picture of the Negro as inferior, dangerously addicted to sex crimes, and likely to burst into unbelievably horrible activities if pressure upon him is slackened in the least, the South has become the quailed victim of its own selfishly created fear, which is rooted in this defence mechanism. The result clearly has worked for the almost complete closing of many Southern minds to facts or reason. One can argue until one is blue in the face that the figures do not substantiate the charge that most lynchings are for protection of white women; that even if they were, lynching has been ineffective, as the percentage of lynchings for alleged rape has remained practically constant throughout the past half-century; that white women of the South have vigorously repudiated lynching as necessary for their protection; that lynching, among its other faults, has brutalized the lyncher and probably added to cases where rape or attempted rape actually oc-
