Lynching In America

In “Lynching in America,” a recently released study making extensive use of local newspaper records, historical archives, as well as interviews with witnesses and victims’ descendents, the Equal Justice Commission has concluded that there were over 800 lynching victims, of the over 4,000 known, that had been previously unaccounted for, whether because of the covering up of the crime, a lack of documentation caused by municipal support of the murders, or by the more insidious systematic erasure of memory of the incident—at least among whites, at least in public conversation. In the English photographer Oliver Clasper’s project documenting various locations throughout the South that were lynching sites but now stand unmarked, with their history forgotten. These photos—eerie in their daytime mundaneness—highlight the degree to which lynching has passed the way of slavery and indigenous genocide into the nation’s “epistomology of ignorance,” its open secrets.  Though many survivors of these murdered men, women, and children are alive today—Emmett Till’s mother was alive until 2003—their grief goes largely untalked about, in many ways sacrificed at the altar of American comfort with our own history. And it is telling that these are the stories that have been erased, because as everything we’ve seen with African American activism, so much of what is emphasized and what is excluded in the construction of a narrative is a question of control, with the most powerful shaping the narrative to their benefit. I was struck by the profound injustice of the fact that mothers of murdered little boys have to see their child's life erased again every day, with each day that passes in which the nation forgets them again, simply becuase murdering little boys isn't part of how the nation wants to think of itself. It never was, in fact--while lynchings were still occuring they were excluded from the larger American narrative as unfortunate but unrepresentative isolated  incidents, and we do the victims and their families the same injustice and indiginty today when we refuse to fully acknowledge, atone for, and mourn them. The same when we refuse to learn from their deaths, which we now claim to abhor--when we hear of the extrajudicial killing of 14 year old boys today and think "they must have done something to deserve it."

Thoughts on Sexism within White Supremacy

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the role of sexism and its attendant understanding of women in the structures of white supremacy. This has been an issue nagging me sinceour first discussions of lynching justified on the basis of “protecting our women” (the possessive phrasing is really important here, I think) from the mythical spectre of the marauding, fiendish black man. Something about the idea that these murders were motivated in large part by a genuine desire to protect wives and sisters and daughters from the pain of sexual violence, particclarly that inflicted at the hands of black men, just didn’t ring true to me—there seemed to me to be an element of the dehumization fo white women as well, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I realized, however, that this professed motivation seems hollow precisely because white women often weren’t protected from sexual violence—as long as it was by a white man. I wondered how many members of lynch mobs or witnesses of spectacle killings had themsleves raped a white woman and whether this contradiction would have ever given them pause or even occurred to them. But I realized that if you view it through this lens, that the fundamental issue wasn’t the rape of a white woman, but the rape of a white woman by a black man—something of a theft of what rightfully belongs to white men—it casts the structures of white supremacy as a struggle between black and white men, with women (both black and white) as merely objects to be weilded as pawns. It becomes an issue of ownership—ownership, I think, of birthright, in which women functioned merely as incubators of that birthright, objects themselves. The rape of a white woman, then, is a usurpation of the white male right to white offspring—the theft of an object to be put to use by the “other side” (this seems consistent with the complete social acceptibilty of sexual violence toward black women and girls, because white men “owned” them as well). This dynamic is best illusitrated for me in the scene in To Kill A Mockingbird in where, rather than having been raped by Tom Robinson as was alleged, it became clear that Mayella Ewell had instead made sexual advances toward Tom and her father, catching her, had severely beaten her. It was never about Mayella’s protection from violence—her advances were entirely consensual, and it was her father who responded by beating her. Rather, this (at least in the mind of Bob Ewell) was a struggle between Bob Ewell and Tom, by white man against black men, played out on the bodies of women.

Prison Song

Cold chills, prison cells
Locked in, bars of steel
Leave my woman tonight
Just ain't feeling right
Cold chills, prison cells

Oh my Lord, praise him be
Cold chills, prison cells
Set your, people free
Locked in, bars of steel
Be merciful to our abusers
Leave my woman tonight
They don't know what they do
Just ain't feeling right

Thinking you lost your senses
Oh my Lord, praise him be
Cold chills, prison cells
What can you do when they...?
Set your, people free
Locked in, bars of steel
Ooh, you better collect your pieces
Be merciful to our abusers
Leave my woman tonight
Freedom, it waits out here
They don't know what they do
Just ain't feeling right

You don't have to go to prison
Oh my Lord, praise him be
Cold chills, prison cells
But will it accomplish you?
Set your, people free
Locked in, bars of steel
Ku Klux Klan, they're laughing
Be merciful to our abusers
Leave my woman tonight
Damning the thought of you
They don't know what they do
Just ain't feeling right

Condemning you to your suffering
Oh my Lord, praise him be
Cold chills, prison cells
Is that what you really want?
Set your, people free
Locked in, bars of steel
Prison, it's all a prison
Be merciful to our abusers
Leave my woman tonight
Marking your time on walls
They don't know what they do
Just ain't feeling right

Think you better change your motto
Oh my Lord, praise him be
Cold chills, prison cells
Wiping away the mourn
Set your, people free
Locked in, bars of steel
There in the bars, let's follow
Be merciful to our abusers
Leave my woman tonight
Tell me your days aren't done
They don't know what they do
Just ain't feeling right

"Vengeance is mine," said the Lord

“Prison Song,” written by playwright Tommy Butler for his 1978 musical Selma, a retelling of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is a song of strength and resilience and faith in the face of senseless and dehumanizing abuse. The song has no clear narrative, and it’s not even entirely clear how the individual lines fit together to form a specific cohesive message. But as with poetry or jazz, the different strains and voices come together to create a meaning that you feel rather than hear. It’s a song about being bone weary and wronged beyond belief and continuing to stand, and it dras on the faith that played such an important role in black activism, not only as a space for organzing but also as a source of strength to carry on. The singers embody the suffering of the crucified Christ who, a blameless victim of the rage of a mob, asked God for mercy for those who persuctued him, for they knew not what they did. The song ends with a powerful statement, made all the more so in the finality of its brevity in contrast to the repetion of the verses, both an encouragement of restraint and an assurance of justice. Vengeance belongs to the Lord alone, but the Lord is on our side and vengeance will come.

A Ruling for Segregation in Birmingham....Yesderday.

An Alabama judge ruled yesterday that a predominantly white suburb of Birmingham could separate itself from the larger Jefferson Country school district, which is seventy-four percent black. Though this has been a trend among Birmingham’s affluent suburbs in the past few years as the city’s school system has continued to struggle, no judge until now has delivered an opinion explicitly considering the racial connotations of the towns’ requests to leave the district. This judge, however, considered them thoroughly and found that the request was, indeed, motivated by racism and inequality, citing the “thinly-veiled racism” present in the Facebook page of a group supporting the split, as well as fliers that were distributed to suburban parents carrying “an unambiguous message of inferiority.” She noted, too, that the separation would have an adverse effect on the black students o the district, creating feelings of inferiority and depriving them of taxpayer funding from the more affluent suburb. She states that the split would set Birmingham back in its effort to desegregate its public schools, and that some of the circumstances surrounding the request were “deplorable”—but she ruled to allow the separation. On the basis that there were “practical difficulties” in keeping the district intact. The fact that “practical difficulties” should be weighted more heavily the lives and welfare of little black boys and girls, not to mention justice itself—or really, that it remains a sufficient excuse to active and intentionally re-impose segregation—shows how little America has changed in its investment in white supremacy. That the country puts itself through logical contortions to find something, anything, to call racism by any other name and ignore the fundamental inconsistencies within it is a fact that first made itself known with the Three Fifths Clause, and emerged again yesterday in Birmingham.

Jacob Lawrence's "Ironing" and the Black Experience

Jacob Lawrence’s 1943 painting “Ironing,” taken most simply, depicts three black women in watching white dresses and bonnets, ironing colorfully patterned clothing on a shared ironing board. This paining, arising out of the artistic tradition of the Harlem Renaissance, provides insights into how African Americans, specifically those associated with the Harlem Renaissance, perceived themselves and their relationship to the rest of America and the struggle for freedom. It is notable, first, that the three figures are quite literally black, with no discernable facial features, as are their irons, which look as though they could be attached, undifferentiated, to their bodies. It could be argued that Lawrence draws attention to this at least in part to comment on the nature of “black women’s work,” as their identity is reduced to their labor, to the services they perform—to cook or maid or nanny. Furthermore, Lawrence draws on the longstanding artistic trope of portraits of women ironing or doing laundry, but placing black women in that role—both asserting black people’s ability to be subjects of their own artistic tradition, and calling attention to the fact that, as indicated by their matching uniforms, the labor they’re performing is for someone else’s benefit. However, the genius of the painting lies in the tension presented in its depiction of the ironing women, contrasting this sense of oppression with a palpable vitality and even joy. The body language of the women indicates strength and vigor and enthusiasm, and the vibrancy of the clothing being ironed (matching that of the painting’s background) calls into question whether or not these are even white employers’ clothes in the first place. It evokes a sense of joy and pride and struggle undertaken with determination, all of which are sentiments familiar to the cross-generational body of black activism.

Curtis Mayfield: the Sound of Activism

Curtis Mayfield, in addition to being one of the 20^th century’s great musicians, was an influential figure in socially conscious soul music of the 1950’s, 1960’s, and 1970’s, first with his work with the Impressions during the Civil Rights movement and then later as a solo artist.  This political bent is apparent not least in 1070’s “Move On Up,” an anthem about progress and liberation which goes, in part: “Hush now child, and don't you cry/ Your folks might understand you, by and by/ Move on up, toward your destination/You may find from time to time/Complication/Bight your lip, and take a trip/Though there may be wet road ahead/ And you cannot slip/So move on up for peace will find/Into the steeple of beautiful people/Where there's only one kind.” It is an acknowledgement of incredible adversity, but simultaneously an upbeat song of confidence and resilience in the face of that adversity—he assuredly states that “the steeple of beautiful people” will once day be attained.  Interestingly, it also reflects a divide present in black activism in this era in which the younger generation was beginning to deviate from the previous generation’s approach to achieving equality primarily through “respectability.” This is an encouragement, in a music style that was at the time (and still is) distinctly associated with African-American culture, to persevere to a point at which “there’s only one kind” (which is not echoed by Kanye West when he samples it in “Touch the Sky”). This sense in Curtis Mayfield’s work, the tension of acknowledging difficulties and injustices and being simultaneously proud in who and what you are, which sometimes exposed generational differences, can also be seen in his soundtrack for Superfly. The enormously popular soundtrack for the 1972 Blaxploitation film that the NAACP responded to by saying “we must insist that our children are not exposed to a steady diet of so-called black movies that glorify black males as pimps, dope pushers, gangsters, and super males” (though the movie was also funded heavily by Harlem organizations), traffics heavily in themes of social issues and black empowerment. The music of Mayfield, who from the 1950s engaged in the work of making socially conscious, political music, underscores the point that “it takes all kinds,” and that the creation of the modes of thought and culture that foster and lead to activism is just as essential as the agitation itself.