Postcard art

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STRANGE FRUIT

Lyrics by: Lewis Anderson

Originally sung by: Billie Holiday

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Southern trees bear strange fruit

Blood on the leaves

Blood at the root

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant south

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth

The scent of magnolia sweet and fresh

Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck

for the rain to gather

for the wind to suck

for the sun to rot

for the tree to drop

Here is a strange and bitter crop

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Without Sanctuary---photographs and postcards of lynching in America

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 01, 2001

Answers

"Without Sanctuary" exhibit opening in Atlanta after 2 years in NYC--

LIN K

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 01, 2001.


Washington was a mentally retarded seventeen-year-old boy. On May 8, 1916, lucy Fryer, a white woman, was murdered in Robinson, seven miles from Waco. Washington, a laborer on her farm, confessed to the murder. in a brief trial on May 15, the prosecution had only to present a murder weapon and Washington's confession. The jury deliberated for four minutes, and the guilty verdict was read to shouts of, "Get that Nigger!"

The boy was beaten and dragged to the suspension bridge spanning the Brazos River. Thousands roared, "Burn him!" Bonfire preparations were already under way in the public square, where Washington was beaten with shovels and bricks. Fifteen thousand men, women, and children packed the square. They climbed up poles and onto the tops of cars, hung from windows, and sat on each other's shoulders. Children were lifted by their parents into the air. Washington was castrated, and his ears were cut off. A tree supported the iron chain that lifted him above the fire of boxes and sticks. Wailing, the boy attempted to climb the skillet-hot chain. For this the men cut off his fingers. The executioners repeatedly lowered the boy into the flames and hoisted him out again. With each repetition, a mighty shout was raised.

Lynchers often paraded their victim down the main street, through black neighborhoods, and in front of "colored schools" that were in session. Jesse Washington, seventeen years old, was the chief suspect in the May 8, 1916, murder of Lucy Fryer of Robinson, Texas, on whose farm he worked as a laborer. After the lynching, Washington's corpse was placed in a burlap bag and dragged around City Hall Plaza, through the main streets of Waco, and seven miles to Robinson, where a large black population resided. His charred corpse was hung for public display in front of a blacksmith shop. The sender of this card, Joe Meyers, an oiler at the Bellmead car department and a Waco resident, marked his photo with a cross (now an ink smudge to left of victim). ******************

**************

The lynching of nineteen-year-old Elias Clayton, nineteen-year-old Elmer Jackson, and twenty-year-old Isaac McGhie. June 15, 1920, Duluth, Minnesota.

Etched (in error) into the negative: "Three Negroes lynched at Duluth, Minn. for rape. Oct, 1919 by mps"

Six black circus workers, alleged to have assaulted a young white girl on the circus grounds, were dragged from their cells in a Duluth, Minnesota, jail by a mob of five thousand people. Twelve policemen were injured during the attack. In an impromptu trial, orchestrated by the mob leaders, three of the suspects were "found not guilty." The three "found guilty" were hanged. A subsequent investigation by the civic authorities proved that none of the murdered men could have participated in the assault.

The New York Times remarked that the "Lynching of Negroes in Duluth is far from the first that occurred in the North. Human nature is much the same in both sections of the country."

Gelatin silver print. Composite real photo postcard. 5 1/2 x 3 1/2"

****************** The lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, a large gathering of lynchers. August 7, 1930, Marion, Indiana.

Gelatin silver print. 9 1/2 x 7 1/2"

Etched in the negative: "Marion, Ind. Aug. 1930."

The following account is drawn from James Cameron's book, A Time of Terror:

Thousands of Indianans carrying picks, bats, ax handles, crowbars, torches, and firearms attacked the Grant County Courthouse, determined to "get those goddamn Niggers." A barrage of rocks shattered the jailhouse windows, sending dozens of frantic inmates in search of cover. A sixteen-year-old boy, James Cameron, one of the three intended victims, paralyzed by fear and incomprehension, recognized familiar faces in the crowd-schoolmates, and customers whose lawns he had mowed and whose shoes he had polished-as they tried to break down the jailhouse door with sledgehammers. Many police officers milled outside with the crowd, joking. Inside, fifty guards with guns waited downstairs.

The door was ripped from the wall, and a mob of fifty men beat Thomas Shipp senseless and dragged him into the street. The waiting crowd "came to life." It seemed to Cameron that "all of those ten to fifteen thousand people were trying to hit him all at once." The dead Shipp was dragged with a rope up to the window bars of the second victim, Abram Smith. For twenty minutes, citizens pushed and shoved for a closer look at the "dead nigger." By the time Abe Smith was hauled out he was equally mutilated. " Those who were not close enough to hit him threw rocks and bricks. Somebody rammed a crowbar through his chest several times in great satisfaction." Smith was dead by the time the mob dragged him "like a horse" to the courthouse square and hung him from a tree. The lynchers posed for photos under the limb that held the bodies of the two dead men.

Then the mob headed back for James Cameron and "mauled him all the way to the courthouse square," shoving and kicking him to the tree, where the lynchers put a hanging rope around his neck. Cameron credited an unidentified woman's voice with silencing the mob (Cameron, a devout Roman Catholic, believes that it was the voice of the Virgin Mary) and opening a path for his retreat to the county jail and, ultimately, for saving his life. Mr. Cameron has committed his life to retelling the horrors of his experience and "the Black Holocaust" in his capacity as director and founder of the museum with the same name in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Under magnification, one can see the girls in this photo clutching ragged swatches of dark cloth.

After souvenir hunters divvied up the bloodied pants of Abram Smith, his naked lower body was clothed in a Klansman's robe-not unlike the loincloth in traditional depictions of Christ on the cross. Lawrence Beitler, a studio photographer, took this photo. For ten days and nights he printed thousands of copies, which sold for fifty cents apiece.

The lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, a large gathering of lynchers. August 7, 1930, Marion, Indiana.

Gelatin silver print. Copy photo. Frame, 11 x 9", photo, 3 7/8 x 2 3/4" inscribed in pencil on the inner, gray matte: "Bo pointn to his niga." On the yellowed outer matte: "klan 4th Joplin, Mo. 33." Flattened between the glass and double mattes are locks of the victim's hair."

A short man with a Hitler moustache points to the body of Abram Smith. On his inner arm is tattooed the bust of an Indian woman.

Indiana historians and researchers are interviewing the reluctant Marion citizens old enough to remember the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. One of their goals is to identify the individuals in this disturbing photo, not to demonize them, but to better understand the factors that produced such a violent and tyrannical era. No one knows who Bo was.

*********************

The lynching of Leo Frank. August 17, 1915, Marietta, Georgia.

Gelatin silver print. Real photo postcard. 5 1/2 x 3 1/2"

As celebrated as any court battle in the twentieth century, the trial of the "jew," Leo Frank, for the murder of "little Mary Phagan" pitted Jews against Christians, industrialists against workers, northerners against southerners, and city against country folk. It launched political careers and destroyed others, prompted the formation of the AntiDefamation league, and set the stage for the resurrection of a more sinister and brutal Ku Klux Klan.

Leo Max Frank was arrested on April 27, 1913, the morning after Confederate Memorial Day.

A grotesquely engineered trial led to Frank's conviction and a sentence of death by hanging. After Governor John Slaton's commutation of the death sentence, Frank was transferred, for his own safety, to a prison farm in Milledgeville, Georgia. On the night of August 16, 1915 at 11 p.m., a gang of twenty-five men, some of Marietta, Georgia's "best citizens," wearing goggles and hats pulled down low, pulled Frank from a hospital bed (he had been hospitalized for a near fatal, seven-inch knife wound to his throat.) They placed him, feeble, undressed, and handcuffed, in one of four waiting cars and departed for Marietta, intending to hang him over the monument of Mary Phagan. Frank, often described as stoic, sufficiently impressed two of the lynchers with his sincerity and innocence that they advocated his return to the prison farm. The mob, minus the few who "mutinied," drove into a grove just outside Marietta, selected a mature oak, swung the rope over a limb, stood Frank on a table, and kicked it out from beneath him.

Postcards of the lynched Leo Frank were sold outside the undertaking establishment where his corpse was taken, at retail stores, and by mail order for years. The owner of the property where the lynching occurred refused repeated offers to buy the tree from which Leo Frank was hung. The dean of the Atlanta Theological Seminary praised the murderers as "a sifted band of men, sober, intelligent, of established good name and character - good American citizens." The mob included two former Superior Court justices, one ex-sheriff, and at least one clergyman.

Leo Frank was posthumously pardoned in 1985.

Gelatin silver print. Lithographed postcard. 3 1/2 x 5 1/2"

Superimposed over the image: "the end of leo frank hung by a mob at marietta. ga. aug. 17. 1915."

****************

The barefoot corpse of Laura Nelson. May 25, 1911, Okemah, Oklahoma.

Gelatin silver print. Real photo postcard. 3 1/2 x 5 1/2"

Etched in the negative:"copyright-1911-g.h.farnum, okemah. okla 2898." Stamp on reverse, "unmailable."

Grief and a haunting unreality permeate this photo. The corpse of Laura Nelson retains an indissoluble femininity despite the horror inflicted upon it. Specterlike, she seems to float - thistledown light and implausibly still.

For many African Americans, Oklahoma was a destination of hope, where they could prosper without the laws in southern states that codified racism and repression. What was to be a promised land proved to be a great disillusionment.

District Judge Caruthers convened a grand jury in June 1911 to investigate the lynching of the Negro woman and her son. In his instructions to the jury, he said, "The people of the state have said by recently adopted constitutional provision that the race to which the unfortunate victims belonged should in large measure be divorced from participation in our political contests, because of their known racial inferiority and their dependent credulity, which very characteristic made them the mere tool of the designing and cunning. It is well known that I heartily concur in this constitutional provision of the people's will. The more then does the duty devolve upon us of a superior race and of greater intelligence to protect this weaker race from unjustifiable and lawless attacks."

The lynching of Laura Nelson and her son, several dozen onlookers. May 25, 1911, Okemah, Oklahoma.

Gelatin silver print. Real photo postcard. 5 1/2 x 3 1/2"

Etched in the negative: "1911 copy right, g.h. farnum, okemah. okla\ 2897."

America's newspapers, while decrying the savage brutality of the lynch mobs, in general gave only loosely detailed, ultimately sympathetic reports that absolved the communities and officials of any collusion or guilt.

The following account of the lynching of Laura and L. W. Nelson was drawn from Oklahoma papers: A teenage boy, L. W. Nelson, shot and killed Deputy George Loney, whose posse was searching the Nelson cabin for stolen meat. Laura Nelson, trying to protect her son, claimed to have shot Loney. Her innocence was determined weeks before the lynching. The boy's father pled guilty to stealing cattle "and was taken to the pen, which probably saved his life."

Forty men rode into Okemah at night and entered the sheriff's office unimpeded (the door was "usually locked"). The jailer, a man named Payne, lied that the two prisoners had been moved somewhere else, but when a revolver was "pressed into his temple," he led the mob down a hall to the cell where L. W. Nelson was sleeping. Payne unlocked the cell, and they took the frightened boy, "fourteen and yellow and ignorant," and "stifled and gagged" him.

"Next they went up to the female jail (a cage in the courthouse) and took the woman out." She was "very small of stature, very black, about thirtyfive years old, and vicious." Mother and son were hauled by wagon six miles west of town to a new steel bridge crossing the Canadian River "in a negro settlement," where they were "gagged with tow sacks" and hung from the bridge. "The rope was halfinch hemp, and the loops were made in the regular hangman's knot. The woman's arms were swinging at her side, untied, while about twenty feet away swung the boy with his clothes partly torn off and his hands tied with a saddle string. The only marks on either body were those made by the ropes upon the necks. Gently swaying in the wind, the ghastly spectacle was discovered by a Negro boy taking his cow to water. Hundreds of people from Okemah and the western part of the country went to view the scene."

"Sheriff Dunagan thought at first that negro neighbors of Nelson's had come and turned them lose." "No attempt to follow the mob was made." "The work of the lynching party was executed with silent precision that makes it appear as a master piece of planning." "While the general sentiment is adverse to the method, it is generally thought that the Negroes got what would have been due them under process of law."

http://www.journale.com/withoutsanctuary/

-- Cherri (jessam6@home.com), September 01, 2001.


Thank goodness this process has been tidied up and these people now get killed in nice clean, sterile rooms by leathal injection.

-- Yup (things@arebetter.now), September 01, 2001.

them white-devil's is scary!!!!!

-- al-d. (dogs@zianet.com), September 01, 2001.

How could anybody look at this without crying?

The lack of comments here is most curious. Have we become so accustomed to man's inhumanity to man that this does not provoke us?

Have we really stopped "lynching" people who are not like the superior white person?

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), September 02, 2001.



Futureshock, what comment can be made? I know things told by elders that are not in books or pictures. To history, these things never happened.

-- helen (not@coming.back.for.stuff.like.this), September 02, 2001.

helen

You are right. Some things are just so obvious they go without comment.

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), September 02, 2001.


Yeah, I thought about that when I posted this link. There have been (and still are) so many atrocities that pictures don't necessarily warrant discussion. The Holocaust, the Cambodian killing fields, Rwanda, Croatia, Nanking in the 30s, The Kulaks under Stalin, Mao's Cultural Revolution, etc, etc.

Still, denial runs deep. When available, photos and film are essential new dimensions to the historical record. I think that the History channel is excellent in some of its presentations.

At the same time, it's imperative to realize that pictures can lie, or at least deceive. They do not explain the context of what they show. They do not show what happened just before or just after the photo moment. They do not show what was going on just outside the photo boundary. They can be edited to maximize their impact. (In fact, now with digital photos and video, they can be totally faked). They appeal directly to the emotions and can therefore be over-inflammatory.

IMO the best history is well documented written research plus, when possible, photographs, film, written records/documents and the recorded words of those who were present. The letters home from many of the uneducated soldiers in the Civil War are as moving and informative as any picture.

Ultimately a good and honest historian is needed to interpret what happened and why.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), September 03, 2001.


Posting the pictures caused me intense personal grief. A link clearly marked as to content gives me the option of not clicking through. I have the memory of grieving faces and voices of the witnesses and victims, and I don't need the photos.

-- helen (links@are.good.enough), September 03, 2001.

History shows clearly that people become very much like the god they worship. When a society worships a god that is a menacing hypocrite, they become just like him. He says, "Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you" yet He will torture His enemies forever, or so the fundamentalists say. Their God has one standard for others and another for himself and so it is with those responsible for these atrocities. They will do their utmost to keep white folk from the fires of their make believe hell and speak of love while at the same time letting the black citizens burn alive in their courts. When we expose the fables inherited from the dark ages we will begin a long and difficult journey back to the One who loves all of His children and will severely discipline us white folk for the lies we have spread regarding Him. Furthermore, forgiveness does not nullify restitution, all of us will reap that which we have sown. My heart is crushed for what my race has done to its brothers of humanity. God help us.

-- Rick Arthur Wirtz (rickwirtz@qwest.net), October 06, 2001.


I'm from Duluth, Minnesota and have seen that photograph of the three circus workers many, many times. Every year, on the anniversary of this unspeakable event, we run the whole story again, in all the local papers here, with that very picture, just to remind ourselves again that it not only can happen, but it has - HERE, of all places.

People may traditionally think of the south when they think of racial lynchings. But Duluth is about as far north as you can get. We're geographically farther north than the northernmost tip of Maine. And what's really unique about us, up here, is that we have virtually NO "minorities" at all. None. Virtually zero, zilch, zip. Not back then, and not even now. Maybe it's just our cold weather; because the people here really are exceptionally nice and extremely friendly to minorities, since we have no reason not to be (I've traveled a lot and don't make this boast out of hand, it's true). Honestly, the last time I (personally) happened across a black, hispanic or oriental person here in Duluth was more than a month ago, and I get around town a lot. This area was settled by Scandanavian, German, French and English settlers and fur trappers and remains so to this very day a land of plain vanilla, blond, blue eyed people. That's as far as ethnic diversity goes here. The very first time in my entire life that I met a person of African, hispanic or oriental extraction was upon going into the service after high school - no lie, that's the honest to God truth.

So, how did it happen that we managed to lynch three innocent black men here, eighty years ago? Nobody these days is really sure, to be honest. It doesn't even seem possible to us these days - thus our yearly memorial in the papers. About all we can figure is that vigilaneism and the "angry mob" mentality just swept thru this town in a matter of hours one day, incited by a very vocal minority of brutal bigots, and it just happened, somehow. We remain deeply, deeply ashamed to this very day.

-- Zzzzz (asleep@the.wheel), October 06, 2001.


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