Violent black reaction to lynchings

Suppose that in the early 20th century (or even the 1890s), Southern blacks get so fed up with the lynchings and oppression that they react violently. It could be an all-out rebellion, but more likely, it would be individual organizations seeking to punish lynching by guerrilla warfare/terrorism. Perhaps you'll see retaliatory shootings, bombings, raids, and have known KKK members, participants in lynchings, or just random whites abducted and hanged from trees. What would have been the likely reactions from the South (I agree it would be initially violent but they would have to start seriously thinking of what to do if it doesn't stop despite reprisals) and the Federal government?
 
A far more violent counter terror. More or less on the line of the genocide of the native American tribes. Those not killed would be subject to defacto slavery as the majority of the males would be subsumed into the prison labor system that existed in some southern states. Southern commercial agriculture was dependant on cheap AA labor, which was a disincentive to kill or remove the population, but if things became violent enough fear and hatred could overcome the need of the commercial agriculture interests.

However this falls out it could affect the migration to the cities, the north, and west. Perhaps some portion of the AA population would escape to Mexico or Latin America? Would the north effectively support the AA revolt, or react badly to it?
 
Random terrorism could be self-defeating.
Far wiser to selectively kill the nastiest white supervisors. And kill them quietly, so that it looks like they died in a barroom brawl or car accident.

A disadvantage with a "quiet" approach is that it is impossible to distinguish between common criminals and "freedom fighters." The other challenge is reigning in angry young men after "white boys" got the message and quit whipping " uppity negroes."
 
Could it lead to martial law and federal troops in the south?

If the southern state and local governments aren't effectively arresting and prosecuting the white lynchers and then the blacks respond with violence and then the whites including the local police respond with even more violence against blacks I think the President would need to step in to stop things from spiraling out of control.
 
Indiscriminate slaughter by millitas and "the good old boys" until the proto-black Panthers are all killed or stopped by their own community.
 

TinyTartar

Banned
This is what the Red Summer was. Basically, running gang violence between white and black mobs, usually preempted by a lynching or an interracial act of violence.

In the 1870s, the US Army was basically the ones stopping lynchings, but lynchings were mostly a KKK phenomenon at that point. The 1890s is when you saw lynchings really pick up in numbers, and they were community wide events rather than the actions of a terror group. The reason for this is mostly because of the fact that the informal truce, or spheres of influence, that were respected after 1876 up until 1890, with blacks and whites understanding not to mess with each others zones, was utterly destroyed by the rise of populism in the Democratic Party that condoned mob behavior and actively encouraged it in a way that the Bourbons did not.

The 1890s, and 1919, were the peaks of racial violence in the US. In neither time frame did armed resistance of the black community seem possible or likely to work. What did work was the authorities taking action and being powerful enough to deter lynching, but this was a rare occurrence.
 
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