The “Willie Lynch Speech” is not mentioned by any 18th or 19th century slave masters or anti-slavery activists. There is a large body of written materials from the slavery era; yet there is not one reference to a William Lynch speech given in 1712. This is very curious because both free and enslaved African Americans wrote and spoke about the tactics and practices of white slave masters. Frederick Douglass, Nat Turner, Olaudah Equino, David Walker, Maria Stewart, Martin Delaney, Henry Highland Garnet, Richard Allen, Absolom Jones, Frances Harper, William Wells Brown, and Robert Purvis were African Americans who initiated various efforts to rise up against the slave system; yet none cited the alleged Lynch speech. Also, there is not a single reference to the Lynch speech by any white abolitionists, including John Brown, William Lloyd Garrison, and Wendell Phillips. Similarly, there has been no evidence found of slave masters or pro-slavery advocates referring to (not to mention utilizing) the specific divide and rule information given in the Lynch speech.

Likewise, none of the most credible historians on the enslave­ment of African Americans have ever mentioned the Lynch speech in any of their writings. A reference to the Lynch speech, and its alleged divide and rule tactics, is completely missing in the works of Benjamin Quarles, John Hope Frank­lin, John Henrik Clarke, W.E.B. Du Bois, Herbert Aptheker, Kenneth Stampp, John Blassingame, Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, Darlene Clark-Hine, and Lerone Bennett. These authors have studied the details and dynamics of Black social life and rela­tions during slavery, as well as the “machinery of control” by the slave masters; yet none made a single reference to a Lynch speech.

Since the Willie Lynch speech was not mentioned by any slave masters, pro-slavery advocates, abolitionists, or historians studying the slavery era, the question of course is when did it appear?

From the text.

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