Wall Street Journal editorial board member Jason Riley argued that black people saw faster progress “when whites were still lynching blacks” in a recent op-ed.

In his column on the video of University of Oklahoma students singing a racist song, Riley claimed that “the reaction among some black liberals was closer to glee” than disgust. Riley went on to criticize the “Democratic Party's belief that there is a federal solution to every black problem” and claimed blacks were in fact progressing faster in an era when many were being lynched (emphasis added):  

History shows that faster black progress was occurring at a time when whites were still lynching blacks, not merely singing about it. Liberals want blacks to ignore the lessons of this pre-Civil Rights era, which threaten the current relevance of groups like the NAACP and call into question the Democratic Party's belief that there is a federal solution to every black problem.

He went on to decry a “post-Civil Rights era social pathology and misguided government interventions,” which Riley sees as the cause of not just a lack of progress but a “retrogression” among black Americans. Riley argued that “the problem isn't the attitudes and behaviors of the boys on the bus so much as those of the boys in the 'hood.” The “boys on the bus” Riley refers to are the group of Oklahoma fraternity members who were filmed chanting, “There will never be a nigger in SAE. You can hang them from a tree, but they'll never sign with me.” 

An analysis by the Equal Justice Initiative from February revealed that almost 4,000 African Americans were lynched -- murdered as a form of extra-legal vigilante justice, often with public spectators -- between 1877 and 1950. 

The language in this post has been updated for accuracy.