Many critics believe that Johnson wrote this scene to heighten awareness of and opposition to lynchings. The turn of the century was the peak of lynchings conducted against blacks, mostly in the South, in the period when southern states disfranchised blacks through new constitutions and practices such as poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses and white primaries. Michael Berube writes, "there is no question that Johnson wrote the book, in large part, to try to stem the tide of lynchings sweeping the nation."