White-on-black lynchings were traumatic events for black Americans because of the pain and suffering associated with losing friends and family to terrorist violence. The remembrance of a lynching ensured that the trauma would be a recurring phenomenon. Memories of lynchings or near lynchings could be so traumatic that black Southerners sometimes chose not to talk about them. For example, in an oral history interview in 2002, Carol Mosely Braun, the first female African American U.S. senator, recalled,

Echoing the same sentiments, Willye B. White, a black five-time Olympian and longtime Chicago resident, remembered,

The memories of Braun and White suggest that in some cases, black people opted not to talk about lynchings because it was too difficult or painful to discuss those horrific experiences – even with other family members. But whereas some black Southerners chose not to remember lynching due to trauma, others found ways to remember lynching in spite of it, and sometimes did so by creating less traumatic versions of those memories. These memories are connected with the tradition of consoling narratives of the lynched black body. Like black writers who emphasized the heroism of black lynch victims, black Southerners who constructed alternative memories of lynching acknowledged the trauma of lynching but chose not to dwell upon it.