For example, the lynching rampage of 1918 in which numerous slaves were killed in the death of a white plantation owner who did not pay one of his slaves. Among the deceased was Mary Turner, eight months pregnant. The reason the plantation owner didn't pay his slave was because the slave didn't work while he was sick; furthermore, the Great Depression was slowly approaching and the plantation owner was trying to recover all the money he could to survive in the following years (Remembering Mary Turner). In addition to the goal of white supremacy in the South, African Americans were blamed for financial hardship, the Great Depression, because “the United States had never faced a financial problem as terrible as that before and the people of the South wanted someone to blame.” However, once the Depression was over, Jim Crow laws slowly disappeared as the United States entered World War II (Gibson). It was then that fewer and fewer lynchings were necessary because all hands were needed to defeat a common enemy, Hitler, and restore the damage done (Gibson). African Americans lived difficult lives, always in fear and never knowing if they would be killed next; however, lynching decreased when the United States entered the war because they needed as many people as possible