| But federal investigations into lynchings could only concentrate on trying to prove that the lynchers had violated their victims' civil rights. |
| Likewise, the collective anonymity of the executioners ensured that few lynchers were ever prosecuted. |
| However, if riots are indeed a language, to return to Brooks's metaphor of mirroring, then it is a language learned from white lynchers. |
| These western hills were rocky, and at their end a growth of firs, scrub oak, and brush gave the lynchers shelter. |
| In effect, lynchers could go about their horrific deeds with the protection of the law and little fear of retribution. |
| The clear reference to lynchers who ravaged black America in Cotter's day belies the poet's reputation for silence about such painful American issues. |
