Lynching, Fatherhood, and George Clooney

            When I think of lynching, the scene from the end of the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? comes to mind starring George Clooney.  In it, three fugitives in southern Mississippi find themselves standing on a box awaiting the nooses that hang from a tree (for the clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsrIYleq2KY).  Ironically, in comparison to the readings on Ida B. Wells, these three men were white, guilty of their crimes, and three black men stood before them digging their graves.  Fortunately for the movie’s protagonists a great flood came and washed through the valley saving them by a stroke of God from impending death.  Not so fortunately in real life, Wells, Watkins, and Royster frequently cite the unjust and untried lynching of 3 prominent black businessmen in Memphis on March 9, 1892.

Both Watkins and Royster condone the “Killing at the Curve” on the grounds of jealousy and fear of black power—though not to be confused with Malcolm X’s mid-20^th century Black Power movement.  A white store owner nearby felt threatened by the successful “People’s Grocery” to the point that he put matters into his own hands, violent hands at that.  As discussed in class last week, history textbooks often gloss over the experiences of blacks between Reconstruction and the “Civil Rights Movement.”  Perhaps an advanced textbook, like my AP American History book, will have a paragraph and a half about the lynchings and the Jim Crow laws that oppressed Blacks for decades.  That’s 60 years compartmentalized to about the length of this post while single days, like the Boston Tea Party, get pages and plenty of images.  Clearly our “standard” textbooks are the victim of bias and are instead a history Whiteness with intentional omissions to the times when the power of Whiteness was not so civil. 

Indeed Ida B. Wells was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement just as much as Rosa Parks and other more heralded figures were leaders in the Civil Rights Movement.  Wells was a Southerner, and proud of her Southern roots as they “set the stage for a life of committed revolutionary activism.” (Watkin 123).  Wells may not have been successful in changing statutory laws, but her efforts emblazoned the embers of activism on a national and international scale.  Her exile from Memphis in 1892 proved fortunate and empowering in the people she would meet, but if Wells had not been exiled, Memphis African-Americans may have overcome many more of the injustices raised against them.  Wells’ leadership and her dexterity with words combined to both enfranchise blacks with the tools to withstand oppression and irate whites to the point of frivolous mob violence. 

As a counter to the perspective of the readings, perhaps some violence was warranted.  Of the 241 lynchings in 1892, nearly one-sixth were charged on accounts or allegations of murder (Wells, Red Record, 86).  Surely some of the 58 lynched were guilty of murder and under the historical and contextual premise of “an eye for an eye,” death may have been an appropriate punishment.  However, the dehumanization and ritualization of the lynching process certainly gives Wells and other plenty of reason for outcry.  As if hanging was not enough, Wells explains that many bodies were also shot and then burned.  Last time I checked, You can Only Die Once.  As such, Wells is not over-reaching to say “the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning” (Wells Southern Horrors, 50).

Finally, I cannot let one of Watkins’ statements stand unaddressed.  She writes: “In chapter thirty of Iola Leroy, the protagonist delivers a stirring speech, ‘Education of Mothers,’ arguing the fate of the race depends on the development of ‘enlightened’ mothers” (Watkins 121).  I immediately was struck at the transformation from an urgent need for developing mothers a century ago to the pressing need for developing fathers in African-American communities today.  In Wells’ day, were black fathers a consistent part of the home?  What made women fall short?  On the other hand, the development of mothers paid off as many impoverished African-American communities encountered an epidemic of fatherlessness in the last half of the 20^th century.  I would appeal, now in 2014, that the fate of not just the African-American race, but all races currently depend on the development of “enlightened” fathers capable of empowering and strengthening the family unit just like Wells and others empowered and strengthened their families at the turn of the 20^th century.