New Media Research Studio

“I have outlined a number of differences among the slaves: and I take these differences and make them bigger, I use fear, distrust, and envy for control purposes.”

The Willie Lynch Letter details the techniques developed by white Southern slave owners to control the slave population, and the perpetual social and psychological implications, still dividing and dominating all americans.
Some people find this letter explains many of the problems our country and black communities are facing.

Check it out for yourself:

Full Text of The Willie Lynch Writings: “Let’s Make A Slave” by The Black Arcade Liberation Library

Willie Lynch Letter (pdf)

Some people say that Willie Lynch never existed and the letter is not true, that it was written fraudulently, after slavery was abolished, to spread a conspiracy theory.

Willie Lynch? Y’all Still On That? by Madison J. Gray

There have been debates over when it was written and by who. But in the search for the author, we should not jettison the content of the letter or deny its implications. Whoever wrote the Willie Lynch Letter, it remains more than “true.” The techniques for ‘slave making’ (aka man/woman breaking) described in the letter were unquestionably used to dominate and oppress the slave population, during the formative years of our nation.

And the social implications are more relevant now than ever. The central tenet outlined in the Willie Lynch system is the creation of illusions of division between people, and to foster hatred, competition, distrust, contempt and jealousy across all intersections of identity, pit old against young, male against female, dark against light. This is a technique for social control not specific just to black communities in America. It has been used to enforce and reinforce colonialism across the globe, and in the US to secure many other ethnic groups as reliable, subjugated labor groups.

While I personally think all of this could not have been conceived by one man (but rather through a diffuse process of social control developed across borders and decades) who wrote the Willie Lynch letter doesn’t matter to me. Either way, this document provides valuable information about our history, and a tool for liberation from our violent, divided and exploitative past.

The letter has been polarized: the mainstream views Willie Lynch as a hoax, conspiracy theory, or b.s. and the only people who give value to the letter are radical and considered extremist, and probably already understand its implications. I found the letter on websites like:

Final Call News, a Nation of Islam newspaper

Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner

illvox.org Anarchist People of Color

This is frustrating to me because the letter, if taken more seriously, could really effect a more mainstream crowd. It is more concise and compelling than any history textbook version of American slavery and racism. While it should not be used to scapegoat all of our social ills, it should be seen as a tool to help everyone, not just black communities, to see our social divisions for what they really are. So far, Willie Lynch has had the opposite effect: for someone to acknowledge that the letter holds real meaning, they must be willing to identify with what most would see as extremist or fringe.

So I wonder: how was the letter first circulated? how was it first named a conspiracy theory/fake? how has the www fostered its polarization? how could the web give it more value in the eyes of mainstream americans?

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