 The frequency of black men being labeled in such negative terms accentuated the perception among whites of their very presence as a threat, a perception in which blackness, vice, and crime were conflated.In 1907, the year before the attacks in Springfield, this perceived threat was addressed on the floor of the U.S. Senate when Senator Ben Tillman delivered a rousing speech advocating the economic and political protection of white men from black men by nullifying the 14th Amendment, and the social protection of white women from black men by means of lynching