Lynch by Lynch

They weren't ashamed? I am

I realize, Subscribers, that I have been remiss. For these reasons:

1. The semi-annual migration, from home to home; this time of year, from Berkshires to New Orleans. Delayed this year by one thing and another. Unplugging everything and getting it in the car and making room for the cat and driving longer than usual to beat the horrible weather and doing Christmas warmly with family in Chapel Hill . . .

2. And we get to NOLA and the banana trees are down all over the courtyard and the invasive weeds (my struggles with which you may have read about in my column in Garden and Gun) are growing back in, and it appears that the neighborhood orange cat, with which our cat Jimmy has a long violent history, may have grown more feral as Jimmy has grown more fat. Try telling Jimmy that.

3. In Montgomery, Alabama, on the way to New Orleans, we took in (tried to take in) the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration and the associated memorial to the victims of lynching, and I have been trying to figure how to write about that. Here's what I will say now: if you haven't taken in (tried to take in) that museum and memorial, you don't know shit about American history. You think you do. I thought I did.

Let's go to the limerick bank!  Maybe we can learn something by following the thread of deplorable men!

A fellow named Owen says, "No,

I do not believe that I owe

            Anyone anything" --

            Wearing a menacing

Scowl to establish it so.

A butt-headed fellow named Clyde

Does have a sensitive side,

            But that's not the side

            To get on with Clyde.

That side feels justified.

Now Jimmy is poised next to the door to the courtyard and Orange Cat is lurking out there and I know Jimmy's sensitive side wants to fight that god damn orange --   

Unless you have woken up in the night to break up a serious catfight, you don't know what caterwauling means. And Jimmy isn't in shape for it.

You want to know the truth? The whole time I was trying to take in the museum and the monument in Montgomery I was thinking, "Well! Can't linger longer, got to get on through this oh my God here are four lynchings in my home county -- not my home town though --  because Jimmy's in the car, needs air!"

I was the one who needed air. Needed to get away from a headline in the New Oreleans States, in 1919:

            "3,000 Will Burn Negro."

And, also on the front page:

            Negro Jerky

            And Sullen

            As Burning

            Hour Nears

And another headline from another town:

            Greenville Is Satisfied

            With Burning of Negro

And a program note: "The cries and groans of the Negro were agonizing, and those who heard them almost shed tears."

Almost downright sympathetic. Yet not even almost unashamed? Did the horror buff the lynchers' feelings of no shame? Were the people-burners thinking:

How dare these old different-colored things have the power to make us feel wrong! They don't! They don't! We are the ones who lost a glorious war! Over them! In our own back yard!

Incidentally, the first state to legalize slavery was Massachusetts. Not a lot of lynching in that state, though. (Witch-burning, sure.)

In Palm Beach, Florida, there wasn't much lynching. But some. I didn't write down the name of the Palm Beach victims. Here are some names of lynched individuals that I did write down:

                        ELMER CURL

                        NIMROD CROSS

                        BOOTJACK MCDANIELS

                        BENNIE THOMPSON

                        RICHARD BURTON

                        GENERAL LEE

                        LESS SMITH

                        POE HIBBLER

                        ELLA FANT 

                        EBB CALHOUN

                        JOHN DANCES

                        JOE LEADS

                        JERICO SHIVERS

                        ----- SHORT

                        BUSH WITHERS

                        JIM SPEAKS

What's the good of dwelling on those bad old days? They lead us into bad nowa9days. The Equal Justice Initiative, which created the museum and memorial, is still digging into cases of racial terror both historic and contemporary. The EJI reported last year that "Black Americans are seven times more likely than white Americans to be falsely convicted of serious crime." They're in court over some of these cases. The EJI can use support.