On an inspiring voice
from one of our darkest periods.
Since the phrase was first coined
by historian
Rayford Logan in the 1950s, historians have consistently described the
period between the end of Reconstruction (around 1877) and the early 20th
century (at least until the Great Migration and the 1920s, and sometimes well
beyond) as “the nadir” of African American life and experience (at least since
the abolition of slavery). There are all sorts of reasons for that designation,
beginning with the rise of Jim Crow and its systems of legal and social segregation,
but extending into virtually every aspect of African American existence in
these decades. And of all those extensions, none is anywhere near as
horrific—and perhaps none as unfortunately missing from our dominant national
narratives and histories—as the
lynching epidemic, the wave of brutal mob murders of (mostly) African
American men that rose in the last few decades of the 19th century
and continued (if with slightly less frequency) until the era of Civil Rights. Historian
Leon Litwack has documented that at least 4700 African Americans were
lynched between 1882 and 1968, and the actual numbers (including those prior to
1882 and thus that were not reported) are thus likely well above 5000.
The numbers don’t begin to tell
the real story about lynching, though. As the Without Sanctuary site documents—and this is one case
where images are most definitely worth thousands of words, although I’ll
certainly do what I can with the latter—most lynchings were a kind of communal
carnival of graphic brutality and violence: they tended to happen with enough
advance warning and preparation that large numbers of local (and sometimes
distant) residents would come out, often bringing their children and families
and turning the event into a party (including in many cases postcards that
could be sent to those not fortunate enough to attend); and despite the
association of “lynching” with hanging, the actual murders often also included
castration, burning (usually while the victim was still alive), and assorted other
mutilations. Even if the victim had indeed committed the crime of which he was
accused—and most of the time, as the author to whom I’ll turn in a moment amply
demonstrated, the accusations were entirely non-credible, blatant fronts for
situations like consensual relationships between white women and black men,
excuses to rid local businessmen of African American competitors, and the
like—lynching as a practice went so far beyond capital punishment as to exist
entirely outside of any justice system, even the most barbaric or cruel ones.
These were orgies of collective fear and rage and racism, and I can’t sum them
up any better than did Charles
Chesnutt in The Marrow of Tradition:
“our boasted civilization is but a thin veneer, which cracks and scales off at
the first impact of primal passions.”
Just as Chesnutt’s extraordinary
novel emerged out of the Wilmington Massacre, so too did the lynching epidemic
draw out one of America’s most extraordinarily brave and impressive
journalistic voices. Ida
B. Wells (later Wells Barnett) was the daughter of slaves and had already
by the 1880s (when she was just in her 20s) established herself
as not only a teacher at Nashville’s Fisk University and a journalist in her
home city of Memphis but also as a vocal and aggressive opponent of Jim Crow:
in 1884 she refused to give up her seat on a Tennessee train car and brought
her case all the way to the state’s Supreme Court. But it was her first truly
personal experience with lynching that truly galvanized Wells—in 1891 three
friends of hers who owned a successful African American grocery store in
Memphis were lynched on extremely and overtly trumped-up charges, and Wells
responded with the first of her many, many blunt and eloquent and powerful
condemnations of lynching. Far from simply editorializing about the subject,
Wells became a model researcher and journalist in response to it, producing books
like Southern Horrors and A Red Record in which (for example)
she used the words and statistics of local white newspapers to highlight all of
the hypocrises and lies at the heart of the practice of lynching. Unwavering in
the face of numerous threats and terrors of her own, she became a hugely vocal
and successful advocate for the anti-lynching movement, traveling around
the country and world to make her case, and made it impossible for the nation
(and especially the North) to pretend that this issue was not one of
significance or deep concern.
Slavery is, it seems to me,
possible for us to include in our national narratives in ways that are benign
enough or systemic enough that we don’t have to confront the real horrors, or
can pretend that they were the exceptions or at least the minority of
situations. Not so with lynching—to remember it at all is to come face to face
with some of the very darkest stories in our national past, and the very worst
of which humans are capable. And as inspiring as Wells’ life and career were,
reading her not only doesn’t mitigate the horrors—it delineates them with
particular clarity and eloquence. And sometimes, that’s the most important and
inspiring thing a voice can do.
Next nominee tomorrow,
Ben
PS.
What do you think? Someone you’d nominate for the Hall?
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