The lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith (August 7th 1930), pictured above, took place on this summer night 85 years ago in Marion, Indiana, USA. This is the lynching that gave us Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” (1939).
The night before, Shipp, 18, Smith, 19 and James Cameron, 16, all three Black, were arrested for shooting Claude Deeter, 23, and raping Mary Ball, 19, at the lover’s lane outside of town. Deeter and Ball were both White.
The next afternoon, Deeter died. His blood-stained shirt with bullet holes was hung “to dry” from the front window of the Marion City building. People began to gather in front of the jail.
By nightfall there were at least a thousand people.
They began throwing rocks, breaking windows.
“Turn them damn niggers over to us! We know how to treat them! We’re going to hang every damn one of them!”
The police used tear gas. That did not work. The sheriff ordered not to shoot: there were women and children in the crowd.
The crowd broke through the masonry beside the jail door. After that there were two steel doors to break through, but they were – unlocked.
At about 10.00pm, they brought out Tommy Shipp. When they tried to hang him, he held onto the rope to protect his neck. They brought him back down. Shipp fought for his life. The lynch leaders drove a knife through his heart and crushed in his head with a crowbar.
They went to get Abe Smith. They knocked him out and hanged him from a maple tree in the courthouse square.
Then they stopped to take pictures. The famous one by Lawrence Beitler shows ordinary White people having a good time.
Then came Cameron’s turn. On the way to the maple tree, a half block away, Whites were beating him up, tearing him apart, using clubs, fists, spitting on him, kicking him, cussing him out, calling him names. One young woman was jumping up and down on a car saying,
“Kill all the niggers! Kill all the niggers! Kill all the niggers!”
The lynch leaders were dressed in robes with open-faced hoods. The police were helping them.
When Cameron was under the tree, with the rope round his neck, he prayed. Then he heard a voice:
“Take this boy back. He had nothing to do with any killing or raping.”
It was Mary Ball’s uncle. Cameron lived.
The next morning the bodies were still hanging from the maple tree – “as a warning to other negroes.”
The Indiana National Guard was brought in to “patrol the negro district to guard against property damage.”
The NAACP helped to bring two lynch leaders to trial, but they got off.
James Cameron, meanwhile, served five years in prison as an accessory to murder. He went on to found the Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee.
Some city officials said the lynching had nothing to do with race – yet the White murderer in jail was not lynched, one who had cut off the head, arms and legs of his victim.
– Abagond, 2015.
Sources: AP (1930), James Cameron/ABC (2005), NPR (2010).
See also:
- Billie Holiday: Strange Fruit
- The 1920 Duluth lynching
- Phantom Caucasian Justice
- “Whites are individuals”
- The Pure White Woman stereotype
- The N-word
- The word “terrorist”
- Ida B. Wells
541
Oh yeah…get angry! @ > : o O ) >
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I highly doubt that any Black man 50 plus years ago accused of a crime, especially in the South, was guilty of anything but being Black. Did Black men and women commit crimes 50 years ago, sure they did but not the amount the “white man” said he did and not for any specific crime the “white man” said he did. A large portion of the system is a corrupt, racist, railroading evil for profit shit pool run by Nazis and
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You’ve got to be one sick mofo to take pics of murdered people. I remember seeing this souvenir photo and it struck me how callous and cold these white folks were. You see the white faces with their smiles and even pointing towards the bodies as if it were some normal thing. Ugh. I will never understand.
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Mirkwood, are you out of your tree?
First you throw your toys out of the cot, when a commenter dares criticize the Queen of England. Then you liken another Black commentator , when he was expressing his anger, to Hitler. Then you criticize and dismiss Steve Biko ‘s efforts to bring down one of the world’s worst systems ever by saying his thinking was racist. Then you get all maudlin and sentimental over a lion in Africa, expressing on your website how underwhelmed you were at the death of Sandra Bland and how it was nothing compared to the pain you felt for ‘Cecil’. And your unwavering admiration for Napoleon.
Another now, you are making a Nazi salute when Abagond has posted a most serious and sensitive and extremely painful subject where one can barely make sense of man’ s inhumanity to man.
In your own perceived cleverness, you employed, whether for irony, or to undermine Sondis’ s comment, or that you think the Klu Klux Klan were the perpetrators, the Nazi salute- you expose yourself at the minimum as a callous human being.
Your perverse humour is noted. I, for on e, do not find it humorous or ironic at all.
Imagine what one would think of anyone who made such a ‘funny salute’ to a photograph of the Jewish victims of the Nazis.
You are are in the same continuum of those ‘individuals’ above.
@ all
I might post a more coherent comment at a later stage, when I am more composed and can give this most tragic and awful part of history my full attention.
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The British did the same thing here. They had this creepy obsession with chopping off black men’s genitals. Then like psychopaths the called themselves classy and civilized and blamed their victims for being tortured and killed. The fruit never really falls that far away from the tree.
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Another young black man killed by an inexperienced police officer.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/christiantaylor-texas-police-shoot-dead-unarmed-college-football-player-n406396
It will never stop until there is a revolution.
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Its absolutely horrible.
To build upon what taotesan mentioned these white people weren’t “Nazis” or “republicans” but regular apple pie eating Americans. They are your neighbors, church goers, the postman and your barber.
But white people don’t won’t to look at their own history so deflect, deflect deflect …
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I feel so sad to see the smiles on the peoples faces, it sickens me.
As to LOM, I don’t want to derail, but I must say, I have been reading this blog for a long time, and have seen many fools come and go, (who almost always implode here), but LOM? Every time I read one of his comments, an image of a Court Jester or Buffoon come into my mind. The level of emotional intelligence he displays would be off the scales if plotted on a continuum and his twisted lens of history is so pompous,arrogant and blinded that no amount of reasoned rebuttal would even register in his mind.It all goes over his head, which might be amusing except that he is the kind of person who has money and connections and may be able to influence the future. That is a scary thought. I find him laughable many times but he also makes me realize just how stupid so many of us white people really are. And maybe that is how we got to where we are in this country.
I am disgusted and appalled.
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Because you blame all of us for the actions of a few we didn’t know about.
Because you won’t forgive us if we admit we’ve fucked up, even though few had any sway over the killings.
Because you want our lives to just be about working with poc and nothing else, nope, you don’t deserve yourself.
Because it’s fee-fees to dare to want acceptance from anyone who isn’t a murderer, rapist, thief, terrorist, or anyone supporting the above acts.
Because you see as nothing but atrocity.
And most importantly, you think the only way to not be white (i.e. be good) is to suffer immensely for shit you don’t control.
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Forgot my @Michael Jon Barker.
Also, how’m i responsible for this? I benefit, but i can’t ever control that. How is seeing my as an individual so painful?
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Also, i mean NOT being white means being good, as in being white doesn’t mean being good before anyone is confused.
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Before anyone says i’m making it about me, remember white people were mentioned as evil before i commented.
Also,if i tried to disassociate from whiteness, you’d say i’m being dishonest about “my” history.
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@Uriel:
“I benefit.” After a fashion you acknowledge your privilege. If you are aware and do nothing to fight it then you share blame.
It is difficult to reject privilege. It is especially difficult as we are so steeped in it that we don’t even recognise all the privilege we have.
When a person of colour commits a crime, whites, en masse, tend to judge all POC as sharing the tendency. When crimes of the magnitude of slavery and mass lynching were committed by whites then, and are ignored or dismissed by whites now, how the fcuk can you be surprised when POC tend to perceive all whites as heartless, soulless animals?
Again, if you don’t fight racism you are complicit and guilty. You can whine here or you can get on-side and join the fight.
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@Uriel
Who said white people are evil? There is no three dimensional object or living thing that can encapsulate the concept of evil. The word evil usually doesn’t fix anything and only makes people smeared with it defensive and unrepentant. White people are not evil and anyone who says that is a fool. The problem here is that the good white people in that picture did not protest when those black men were lynched and most of the good white people today started #alllivesmatter hashtag to counteract #blacklivesmatter. I believe that that very night when those two innocent humans were lynched, a white family went back home and talked about how good they were because they did not actively participate in the lynchings; then the next morning they lived their lives as usual.
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That photo looks like a scene from a George Romero movie. White zombies.
I don’t understand how any white person can see that and not feel ashamed.
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In retrospect, this is getting off topic, i posted some more in Suey Park and Kil Ja Kim’s thread.
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@Uriel
You just realized it was getting off topic after whining over and over again like a little child.
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With everthing going on in America I am just too tired to react. But i will say this, these beast who participated in this atrocity are burning in hell. They were animals.
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In 1915, a hundred years ago, the year “Birth of a Nation” came out, 56 Blacks were lynched in the US. That is also the number of unarmed Blacks killed by police in the US so far this year, 2015.
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the annoying thing about this is ,its not the only example or type of humans being being cruel and vicious to other humans ,
just two examples in the news I heard ,2 females dragged out of their house by a mob and killed – because it was said they where witches;4 Pakistani blogger hacked to death because he was an atheist or secular.
Abagond has some interesting views on some subjects but obviously just like most other humans he has a narrow vision and focus .
Somethings I hate coming to this site because I have to ask the same question ,you mean thier is nothing good happening in the world,in history ,to some black people somewhere??
The answer is obvious – so whats wrong with me and /or this site , oh yeah tunnel vision ,narrow focus ,negative conformation bias etc etc
And i might get completely ignored and I’m not always connected to the net and someone might respond but I miss it and take too long to respond…..
all I can say is there is a lot of bad and good in my life just like the world
but maybe we will reach a place eventually where its all good and little to no bad like we appear to be advancing/evolving.
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Just the casualness of which the people in that photo are watching these men hang is sickening. To do that to fellow man with such indifference.
@taotesan /vanishingpoint: Your posts to LOM were brilliant. Thanks for saying exactly how I feel so eloquently.
@Uriel.. You make every post about you instead of the topic. It’s become tiring and I would caution that if you keep going down this path you will become nothing but ignored by many. I for one no longer have the patience to read your “woe is me” posts that appear on EVERY topic. You keep internalizing things and then make blatantly obtuse statements. I’m beginning to think you’re a troll…
You have been provided enough guidance, context and perspective from others on here to better understand abagond’s posts. Rather than even try to gain understanding, you have basically ignored everyone and continued being disruptive to seek attention. I don’t see this changing any time soon so from here on out, you’re on my ignore list. This will be the only time you get my time and attention. Good luck to you.
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Evil did triumph in Marion, Indiana because the good white people did nothing. And when the good white people of this nation do nothing to stop white supremacy then they too are not doing anything to uproot the evil of white supremacy.
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@bygodsloveandgrace: We feel the same way.
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@Vanishingpoint: I concur.
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typo: When the good white people of this nation to uproot the evil system of white supremacy they too are complicit.
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@taotesan: I too find LOM’s post tasteless and disconcerting.
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@Michael Jon Barker
I do believe deflection is now the name of the game. Then in the end just say the POC are crazy or acting irrational and you win. I ran into this type of mindset so much it is astonishing.
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Okay, i’ll stop. Please just like me when i do.
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@Mary Burrell
Very much on point. I have found that trying to explain to certain whites their role in upholding the system is like talking to a brick wall. Whites seem to be all for fighting the system, but do not want to acknowledge how the system is in place because of them and not that top 1%. One lady talked me in circles about any and everything, but was unable to address just that. Deflection and Denial.
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@Buddhuu
From your experience how do the British react to white supremacy and the roles they play in it or do they deny and deflect like Americans?
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James Cameron June 11th 2006 at the age of 92.
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The horrible faces of those people in that photo are nightmarish.
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Doesn’t the man with the moustache pointing at those poor, young men kind of resembles Hitler?
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@leigh204: Yes he does.
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@Lord of Mirkwood
because I am tired of explaining to certain people certain information, I will simply do this.
Quote where I said the system was not in place as a result of the 1%? And I hate to burst your bubble but racism fuels that system and it is average whites providing the fuel and not the 1% boogie man that whites like to blame when they don’t want to own up to their part.
The post is a prime example of the cruel acts of the average whites.
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@Lord of Mirkwood
Learn your history because it goes farther back than Jim crow. It started during slavery times. A time where a system was put in place that allowed those poor whites to believe they were better because they were white and if they work hard they can succeed. That mindset carries on today. Jim crow was another part of a system already in place.
I know you said that but you also tried to claim it is fueled by class as well, but it is not fueled by it as much as it is racism.
I know it hurts you to hear, but that mob was not on anyones payroll. They were doing what poor whites with a white supremacy mindset do best. Terrorize black people. You can blame the elite all day, but at some point white people are going to have to take responsibility for what they do and not that elite boogie man.
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Sharinalr
“Whites seem to be all for fighting the system, but do not want to acknowledge how the system is in place because of them and not that top 1%.”
“The post is a prime example of the cruel acts of the average whites.”
Agree 100%
Those weren’t poor Appalachian whites in the picture. They were middle class whites with nice dresses and some with white shirts and ties.
The original progressives pushed Jim Crow. It’s true that the early progressives targeted millionaires and corporations thus the current income tax we have today. But they also targeted black communities, created the minimum wage specifically to favor white workers as well as introduced licensing and accreditation which regulated black workers, businesses and colleges. The early progressives were all about favoring the white race and pushed eugenics.
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@sharinalr:
As in so many things, we seem to take our lead from the USA. If we are less spectacularly racist it is only because a) there are fewer Brits that Americans and b) being the students of the US teachers we’re still learning, so are a little behind.
All in all, I don’t think things are very different. I used to think that we weren’t as bad, but I think that perception was skewed the facts that we have fewer guns and so fewer shootings (both by civilians and police) and that our black population is mostly immigrant rather than descendants of slaves.
If one adjusts for those differences I think white British attitudes are as ignorant, blinkered and bigoted as those of our US counterparts. The majority of British whites still laugh at racist jokes, and recite and believe racist stereotypes. We have a resurgence of far-right racist/fascist groups (our small-scale KKK analogues).
Paradoxically, white Brits, while actually being racist, are oblivious to the problem of racism. They are certainly in denial. They trivialise it and refuse to believe that it is still a real, substantial issue that hurts people. They are certainly, in the main, oblivious to white supremacy and how it is a part of who and what we are and have been.
Call a white Brit racist and (s)he will either nod proudly, laugh it off, or display the same butt hurt that US whites do at the accusation.
I keep referring to white Brits as “they” and “(s)he”. Third person. As if I weren’t one myself. I don’t know quite what to make of that.
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*there are fewer Brits than Americans
*that perception was skewed by the facts
Apologies for typos.
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@ Mbeti
That is why I did a post on Misty Copeland right after news of Sandra Bland hit. Likewise, I am doing one now on Issa Rae. When I first heard about Michael Brown, I decided NOT to do a post on him because it was too soon after Eric Garner, but then with Ferguson in flames I could not NOT do the post.
What Sandra Bland and Sam Dubose have kept me from writing about is Donald Trump. Their deaths make him seem so – I cannot even put it into words.
Of the 56 unarmed Black people killed by US police so far this year, I have done posts on only four – the tip of the iceberg. For every Sandra Bland I write about, there are 13 others I do not write about!!! It is not like I do not know who they are. As narrow and negative as you think I am, I am trying not to get sucked into the abyss.
I did this post because I have used the picture several times before in different forms and because, with all the police killings in the news, it is useful to see it against the backdrop of the history of lynching. That is why I made it my masthead picture.
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@Buddhuu
I don’t view you as like them so I understand you need to refer to them in the third person. Plus have you heard me speak on Americans? I do the same thing. lol.
I asks because I recently go into a debate with a British female. It was amazing to me that she could not in good faith see her own racism. It was as if she was oblivious to it. On one hand she was screaming fight the system, but had a complete refusal to acknowledge that racism played a part in the system. Even stated that it was a class issue. When I told her she was not considering race as a component or her white supremacy mindset she complete was oblivious to what I was talking about. Atleast that is how she acted, but I got the sense she knew very well what I was talking about and wanted to deflect.
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To anyone who wants to blame things like this on an economic system or some manipulative elite, I would suggest they look up the concept of “free will”. It just isn’t logical to point to each individual’s actions as a means to absolve them of guilt while at the same time claiming that the same individuals were powerless in choosing whether or not to act. but then logic isn’t the goal of that argument anyway.
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When people talk about the War on Terror, I think back to scenes like these and shake my head at how hypocritical white Americans can be. The KKK was our nation’s homegrown ISIS, with the state largely looking the other way so long as they stuck to terrorizing black souls.
And those groups got material support from people like the fine, upstanding apple pie-eating American citizens in those pictures. This was normal for them. It was perfectly acceptable to stab, cut up and hang a black person on Saturday and then sing church hymns on Sunday like it never happened.
That sort of evil should never go unaddressed.
It’s also interesting how Uriel and Lord of Mirkwood have managed to semi-derail the topic. When confronted with an evil like that laid bare, the only thing you can do is try to change the subject.
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@Anne and Mack Lyons
Exactly.
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I made a typo in a previous post upthread James Cameron died June 11th in 2006 at the age of 92 years of age.
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@Uriel. If you were 30 I wouldn’t bother responding but since your 18 years old and clueless my paternal instincts have gotten the better of me.
Uriel asks “Also, how’m i responsible for this? I benefit, but i can’t ever control that. How is seeing my as an individual so painful?”
You are only responsible for your actions that impact other people or their property.
We have no control over how we are born into this world, no control over our race or the circumstance we are born into. How you relate to people determines your human value.
We live in a world where human value is determined by a State centric justice system viewed through the lens of race and class. We live in a world where arbitrary lines drawn on a map determine human value. We as individuals don’t have any power over that. What we can do is ignore the lines and treat people as individuals and value them based on their character and their actions.
The people in the picture are both directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of two people. Non tried to stop it and many participated in it. As whites we are a part of that collective history. We can’t as anti-racists detach ourselves from that. As Anne pointed out, we humans have free will, we can choose between good and evil.
What we can do as white people is OWN our history. And that means understanding and accepting the truth. That means not making excuses for the actions of those within history as well as those who live today. Whites don’t want to deal with the truth so they deflect, moralize, point fingers at others and pretend that being called out is offensive.
Racism is like child abuse in the sense that its taught and handed down through generations and like child abuse has similar affects on how we think and act. Racism is also more macro then child abuse as it affects all facets of society.
Being white and being born into a white world means your brain gets hard wired to accept certain things from a young age. So even though I accept the world as being white supremist that doesn’t mean I have stopped thinking like a racist. I’m self aware and I try my best.
Similarly I suspect many non whites eternalize racism and even if they are made self aware that doesn’t mean their able to change what was hardwired into their heads from a young age either.
Teaching your kids about racism and class theory can be challenging for white middle class families since its an abstraction that may have little to do with their life experiences. I’m a contractor whose workers are made up of immigrants. I hired my sons to work with them and that teaches them a work ethic, a trade and most importantly human value. My boys would ask me at the end of the day if my workers “respected how they worked”. By that I mean it was important to my sons that they pulled their own weight and were worthy enough to work along side them. It taught my sons to respect manual labor and to view workers as individuals regardless of ethnicity.
If you were to ask my sons who would deserve more respect, a police officer or an illegal alien they would answer the illegal alien. If you were to ask them who was the parasite in society, the illegal or the police officer, they would answer the police officer.
My greatest fear is that what I’m teaching them might get them in serious trouble some day.
And now Uriel some fatherly advise. I think some cultural appropriation would be good for you. Go to a home depot and work as a day labor alongside day workers. You might learn a trade but most importantly you will learn how to work with non whites. You will have a common goal (to make money) and you will find that if you work hard you will gain their respect and friendship. You may even experience some discrimination as white contractors are pretty paranoid about hiring white workers. White workers can be slothful, whine a lot and sue you over imaginary back problems.
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@Michael Jon Baker…………..
Thank you for your post, it was great to hear from another white person who is aware of his learned racism and is working hard to acknowledge it and change it and more importantly is passing it along to his kids. Abagond has taught me so much about myself and believe it or not I have recognized my learned racism quite a lot since coming here. Actually I have been working hard to strip myself of my learned racist ways for a long time but my mistake was that I thought I was finished and that I was 100% racist free. Once I came here people were nice enough to enlighten me on just how deep our racism is embedded in our culture and ourselves.
Anyway thanks for sharing and I think what you said was perfect in regards to how and what young white people need to do or be so as not to continue our arrogant superior race crap!!!
I do have one disagreement……you said;
“If you were to ask my sons who would deserve more respect, a police officer or an illegal alien they would answer the illegal alien. If you were to ask them who was the parasite in society, the illegal or the police officer, they would answer the police officer.”
Shouldn’t each one of these people be judged as individuals or by their actions. There are lazy illegal aliens and hard working cops and the reverse is true as well. You can’t make or teach huge generalizations like this. There are police officers out there risking their lives who deserve respect and there are illegal aliens who are dead beat dads or wife beaters…so to prejudge anyone is wrong…but again thank you for the rest of your post..
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@sharinalr
Firstly, a little clarification on a point in my earlier reply to you.
I said:
That was poorly put. Although a lot of our POC are immigrants from Africa, a large number are from the West Indies and thus are indeed often descended from enslaved people. What I meant really was that where (I guess) the majority of African American people can probably trace ancestry back to people who were slaves right there in the USA, in the UK fewer will be descended from people who were slaves within the British Isles. Neither our white or black people have that same historical context that you have in the USA – at least, not on a remotely comparable scale. I think it probably makes some difference.
I find your experience with the British woman frustrating. I recently commented on another of abagond’s posts and kind of summarised my position on the race/class thing. I hope I can be excused for reproducing that here.
That is horrendously oversimplified. The intersectional relationships between systems of oppression is something I have studied in great depth over the last couple of years. It’s complex but, once one gets the bigger picture, the truth of it is evident all around us.
White, left-wing class warriors are amongst the most inexcusably blinkered to the truths of racism. They (third person again, even though I am engaged in class struggle and am as far left as it gets, and then some) generally claim to support face, sex and gender struggles, but are completely blind to their own privilege and innate (often subconscious) biases. It’s a shame. Many of them would embrace the job of changing their heads and hearts if only they could get that essential moment of objective insight that exposes the flaws in oneself. As it is, they simply cannot believe that they share, to some degree, the privilege and the pre-conditioned attitudes of the racists they claim to oppose. I know left radical class warriors who won’t walk through areas with high concentrations of black or Muslim residents. They would never recognise the prejudice this shows – they would simply consider it caution.
One cannot dismiss racism as being merely a symptom of class inequality. They are related, but discrete. They need to fought together and individually.
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Dammit… * “generally claim to support race, sex and gender struggles”
Apologies for my rubbish typing and proof reading.
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in the UK fewer will be descended from people who were slaves within the British Isles.
I would also put in here that due to colonialism that many PoC in the UK have more than their fair share of European ancestry. There is a lack of acknowledgment of this, and many whites will deny this could ever be the case because the person in front of them does not have any discernible European features but it was widely prevalent.
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@Omnipresent:
Acknowledged.
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Michael Jon Barker & William The Conqueror & Buddhuu & V8 Driver: I appreciate you gentlemen i feel you guys have been commenting on this blog for a good while so i don’t see you as the clueless and obtuse white centric posters. I feel that there is a great number of whites that fit this description. There are few whites who aren’t racist but i do appreciate you as a commenter, and not some of the racist trolls who come to the blog site who are part of the problem of white supremacy.
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William asks;
“Shouldn’t each one of these people be judged as individuals or by their actions. There are lazy illegal aliens and hard working cops and the reverse is true as well.”
Yes people should be judged as individuals. But the difference is if you asked the average American they would think the Illegal to be the parasite and the police to be the outstanding citizen.
Mexicans clean toilets (Osborn), are criminals (Trump), or steal jobs and welfare (Americans). The “lazy illegal alien” is a stereotype that presumes you can just walk over the boarder to get here. It costs a lot of money and requires a lot of strenuous activity to get here illegally. A small percentage of immigrants are criminals and they come here because they have been ostracized from wherever they came from.
The police are part of a protected class who have privileges that don’t apply to the citizens they police. The DOJ report touches upon how the police function as parasites within a community.
When I said “How you relate to people determines your human value” I want you to think about the monopoly of violence the police have and how readily they use it.
In the 60’s the FBI worked with the KKK and helped spread their terror. Today the FBI sets up potential “terrorists” and then claim to have foiled a terrorist plot.
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@Mack Lyons
“When people talk about the War on Terror, I think back to scenes like these and shake my head at how hypocritical white Americans can be. The KKK was our nation’s homegrown ISIS, with the state largely looking the other way so long as they stuck to terrorizing black souls.”
Reminds me of a Fox news video clip I just watched in which someone brought up the bombing of black Tulsa from the air (in the 1920s) and compared it to 9/11 in terms of how many Americans are aware of it.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIfv9ua-yiU)
@Mack Lyons
“It’s also interesting how Uriel and Lord of Mirkwood have managed to semi-derail the topic. When confronted with an evil like that laid bare, the only thing you can do is try to change the subject.”
Yup. This was terrible lynching was one of thousands. They often burned people alive and cut off (and sold!) genitals, ears, fingers, and toes to keep as souvenirs. Sure, capitalists caused it.
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@ Mary:
Thank you very much for that, it means a lot to be accepted without suspicion getting in the way of the conversation. I consider this community very educational and beneficial. I’ve learned a lot here. I particularly appreciate those people, like you and Sharina and others, who are prepared to engage with us. I know there are come here who choose not to engage with white commenters and in light of the number of trolls we see here I totally understand that.
Time spent reading here is never wasted.
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@Buddhuu
Thank you very much for such detail.
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@Buddhuu: Thank you for that.
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idk i’m kinda confused about the 1% thing going on this thread, this town marion IN is literally in the midle of nowhere and apparently the town just got the sheriff to release the prisoners? so the mob was working against the 1% in this case of grass-roots racism in a so-called ‘northern’ or union state?
in 1930? probably not a lot of rich people, mostly farmers i would expect
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@v8driver
I saw more pictures like the one above; some had black people being burnt alive while white people looked on with their children like they were barbequing chicken. I have shed tears over those pictures and to think that people still tolerate such things it breaks my heart.
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Thank you Mary….it is very much appreciated.
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@miss mary b 🙂
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i live in a black town, philadelphia, and there has been a couple mentions within like 1degree ear shot it’s getting alittle ugly people are scared and it is not even addressing nuclear war etc
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i think them bloggers was in bangladesh ie e pakistan not pakistan
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They also took the photos of the lynchings and had post cards made. I have read that many would have picnics while black people were being lynched. I read the word picnic came from the abhorrent phrase “pick a n-word.” Ida B. Wells is a heroine in doing her investigative work and being an activist in regards to lynching in America.
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About the word picnic being derived from the term pick a n-word to lynch is probably a urban myth.
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Part of the irony of it is that the black people had deeper roots in America than some of the whites who hated them. Some of their parents and grandparents had just arrived during 19th century waves of immigration.
For example Donald Trump’s, or should I say Drumpf’s, paternal grandparents were both born in Germany and his mother, who was Scottish, met his father on an American vacation. This guy has a lot to say about immigrants and Obama’s birth certificate yet his father was a first generation American and his mother wasn’t even American! By his own standards he’s just barely American, amirte?
African-Americans are America’s truth. Because there is something authentically American about AA culture due to the deep roots and also something “exotic” due to the African influence, white Americans often feel drawn to it. They will try to appropriate s*** and make s*** “mainstream” with white faces but they’ll still hate black people. Why? The truth hurts.
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Footnote: I am speaking here about “America” as the racist, genocidal colony and eventual world power. There were people living here before that history.
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..I am always haunted by these pictures (R.I.P. Thomas Shipp & Abram Smith), and the ugliness of this horrifying event and countless others-both in “olden times” and modern-day ones are a stark reminder of the cesspool of madness and stupidity that surrounds me and other (especially) POC in this hate-filled plantation/nation!!!
“The lynch leaders were dressed in robes with open-faced hoods. The police were helping them.” “The Indiana National Guard was brought in to “patrol the negro district to guard against property damage.” “The NAACP helped to bring two lynch leaders to trial, but they got off.” “Some city officials said the lynching had nothing to do with race”. @Abagond, Brilliant insight on the ways in which these methods of terror, and the types of folks involved in them have been making bullshi# excuses for “letting them off the hook” since day 1-and they Still Do..SMH
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@Mz.Nikita
“Brilliant insight on the ways in which these methods of terror, and the types of folks involved in them have been making bullshi# excuses for “letting them off the hook” since day 1-and they Still Do..SMH”
Racially, nothing has changed in America but the weather.” – Paul Mooney
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Those people who smile and posed in front the lynched men need to be ashamed of themselves. But, then again, they are the descendants of those people who condoned the police lynchings of Black men, women, and children today and blamed the victims. I’m sick and tired of America treating its Black citizens like we’re nothing. I’m sick of Faux News, I’m sick of white supremacist conservatives and liberals saying that race has nothing to do with it when it obviously does.
May Thomas Shipp, Abram Smith, Sandra Bland, and others rest in peace and in power.
S.B.
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@stephaniegirl
So, what are you going to do about it?
We talked this to death. Tried to reason with those who, in the end, can’t be reasoned with. Appeals to empathy, appeals to authority, appeals to humanity, etc.
Appeal to force hasn’t helped. We have neither the numbers nor the logistics to gain white America’s respect through fear. Groups like the Black Panther party are neutralized before they even hit the ground. Good luck creating a Palestine-like resistance in a country where many blacks aspire to peaceful coexistence with white America.
Peaceful coexistence with a people who wish you didn’t exist. Now that’s something.
Exodus? That was Marcus Garvey’s idea and it didn’t pan out. Besides, other black nations seem to be either in thrall or under foot of white dominion. I don’t think there’s a black-led nation out there that has access to nuclear arms, let alone a sizable army.
So, what do we do?
We do what oppressed people usually do when faced with oppression. We do our best to keep our heads down. We cope. We mourn our losses and bury our dead. We continue to procreate and bring new life into a harsh world that hates our existence. We pray and hope for a “better day” that may or may not come.
Meanwhile, the world turns and the oppressors oppress. Same as it ever was.
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Racism has been pervasive but there has been a lot of resistance too, both violent and non-violent. The people who came before me did things to make the world a little more tolerable for my generation. I thank them and promise to do what I can.
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@Mary Burell………..
“There are few whites who aren’t racist…”
Mary as much as I hate to admit it, sadly you are right. I have thought about each one of my family and friends who are white and I can say that all of them are racist. Do they use the N word or hate people of color, no, but they do have all the other learned white supremacist behavior.
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James Cameron’s book A Time of Terror still haunts.
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Malcolm ex was dealing with police brutality in the 60’s and now it is 2015. Its never going to change until you demand change:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zIGNkR62Mo)
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milesaway44105
Thanks for the book selection.
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http://www.snopes.com/language/offense/picnic.asp
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“African-Americans are America’s truth. Because there is something authentically American about AA culture due to the deep roots and also something “exotic” due to the African influence, white Americans often feel drawn to it. They will try to appropriate s*** and make s*** “mainstream” with white faces but they’ll still hate black people. Why? The truth hurts.
@Origin, wow that beautifully and precisely put!
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@V8driver: You did see up thread where i posted it was most likely an urban myth?
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I had been listening to Billie Holliday’s Strange Fruit on Sunday, with tears in my eyes. I wonder what it was like for her, singing that song.
Those poor men, what indescribable agony they had to endure! And all the thousands of innocent people that were lynched. Mr. Thomas Shipp’s and Mr Abram Smith’s only crime was they were Black in the eyes of their tormenters. By some serendipitous reprieve, Mr Cameron did not meet the same fate. He went on to dedicate his life to founding and maintaining the Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee till he died. What a human being!
@ Mack Lyons (@DDSSBlog)
“This was normal for them.” This is how understand the psyche of white people towards Others (Original peoples, Black people and all others who are not white). It is highly abnormal for white people to treat others with genuine respect, kindness and EMPATHY. Since apartheid ended, I asked many white people why they supported apartheid. (Of course, EVERYONE denied it). Many Black people can attest to hearing a similar answer. “We did not know it was wrong to hate Black people. You don’t understand, we were taught that Black people were not human.” Liberals and verkramptes (conservatives) alike.
I had first read about a roasting, I think, in a Toni Morrison novel, and it took all of me to go back to finishing it. I cried and had nightmares. My heart is very sore. Something changes inside one, hurting the psyche. One has to go into another part of one’s mind.
I do not agree that these people are animals. Animals do not behave like that. They are behaving just like normal white people behave towards Black people. Those depraved acardiac wicked men and women (all of them) mesmerized, indifferent to the excruciating suffering of their victims.
I had read that lynching was perpetrated in all but four of the states.
Enslavement and kidnapping and torture and profiteering of Africans, rape of enslaved women, enslaving ones’ own offspring, genocide of the First People, dispossession of a whole continent, feeding babies and children to crocodiles, human zoos, lynching and roasting, Jim Crow, medical experiments, manufactured poverty, cultural theft, mass incarceration of African Americans, fatal police shootings of unarmed Black and First Peoples, and many more crimes against humanity, that is normal for them. And that is only in the USA.
@ Mz Nikita
“letting them off the hook” since day 1. In total unanimity. For centuries till this day, they exonerate themselves of any wrongdoing.
Yes, they never have owned up to the truth.
Lesego Rampolokeng: “Truth is treason, liars rule the world”.
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@abagond
thanks for at least responding
listen its not that I don’t want or like you doing post on various aspects of racism among other topics ,Its just that I’m looking for balance.
You mentioned trump but not ta coates who has a new book out and who I’ve seen and heard all over the media.
I want to come here and in addition to articles about the various aspects of racism ,in which the are many informed and intelligent voices and discussions to be had,
I would also like articles about positive things that are happening to and by black people (even during those times like the picture above – not all black people where suffering or affected to the same degree.)
Also while racism is a big and pervasive problem ,its not the only problem or thing.
There are other things to think about and discuss ,I noticed this in some of your earlier postings – but alas those posting got few if any comments – as its seems sex race and pathology is way more popular.
final note ,this is your blog ,I’ve just one commenter with my views.
Thank you all the excellent work you’ve done over the years
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Did anyone read, hear about this?:
http://blackmainstreet.net/never-forget-americas-forgotten-mass-lynching-237-black-sharecroppers-murdered-arkansas/
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@Herneith
I was aware of the the Red Summer of 1919, but not of this specific incident. Unfortunately this was all too common; wanton theft and murder to suppress Black and inter-racial organizations.
There was also the post WW1 desire in the South and North to hammer Black folk down because Black soldiers had fought and “seen Paris”. They had been outside of the heavily controlled environment of White Supremacist America and their expectations of justice and equality were heightened as a result.
For a lot of returning Black WW1 veterans, wearing your Army uniform in public could result in a beating. In the South, uniform plus medals could get you lynched. Heck, uniform alone could get you lynched.
Thank you for sharing that link.
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[…] have a proud history. Here’s the smiling proud faces of Republicans attending the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Indiana in 1930, in which a cheerful typical American christian conservative can be seen […]
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Well if they raped someone oh well
Deserve it
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@ Karen
No investigation. No due process. Maybe they didn’t “deserve it”.
Their lynching only proved the hyperviolence of the White citizens of the town of Marion, IN.
Nothing more.
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