In addition to the approximate 4,000 number of lynchings that were supported and performed by white communities, there were an equal number of lynching threats advertised in newspapers - a terrorist tactic used to force people of color to abandon their property so it could be confiscated by avaricious whites in power.
Here's an information educational tool re; lynching
https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/report/
4
It's great to see the research and teaching of these tragic events. The problem has been that for too long there had been a code of silence by many whites that swept these events under the rug. Amazing that students are unaware of what a lynching is. Education and acceptance of this terrible history is the only way we are going to become a better society.
3
I remember in another life someone I worked with had a picture in their "cubicle" of a lynching: the black man hanging from the tree-limb, the white folks standing around smiling. It made me ill to look at. And when I read articles like this or about the new "lynching" museum in Birmingham, that is what I recall. Or the uproar over the Emmit Till painting at the Whitney Biennial last year. Or watching the Shape of Water.
My father and his mother escaped the Mississippi Delta after the Lynching of his father in Sledge MS. The anger and mutual hostility in my hometown reminds me that Memphis sits at the threshold of the Delta. Is it any surprise about the actions which ultimately brought Dr. King he Really?
2
Berlin has also a memorial to the gay victims of the holocaust. I assume that was inadvertent on Stevenson's part
This and stories like it are what we all need to read. We need movies, television specials, articles, books, more and more and more so we can all learn our history. Every drop of documentation should be unearthed, the search should go on indefinitely, there will always be more to find. I have never understood why the civil rights era seems to have overshadowed slavery and the years afterwards in the popular culture. I'd like to go back and learn about how it was before the 60s. Thank you for this piece!
3
Land of the free, home of the brave.
2
Thank you for sharing this. I lived in North Carolina for a bit, then Atlanta. I was always amazed at the phenomenon of barely submerged black/white history there-locals would tell of 'negroes only' entrances to a park in Raleigh, now no more, for instance. But the old folks recall, both black and white.
But not to forget! We native Northerners (I was from Wisconsin) have our own shameful histories, from the Mankato hangings of 38 Dakota Native Americans in 1862 (the largest mass lynching in US History) to the lynching of three young black men in Duluth in 1920. This is a timely conversation, and a great piece of writing. Thank you.
5
I am a distant cousin of Glen Roberts. I learned of this lynching about twenty years ago from an aunt, who would have been in the third grade or so at the time. In her version of the story, Glen Roberts intruded into Mr. Higginbotham's house to collect a debt, and was shot. Her version omitted the terror of Glen Roberts's behavior.
After the lynching, the schoolchidren were taken to the mortuary and marched around the body of Mr. Higginbotham. My aunt described being able to see the rope burn marks on his neck. She ended her story, chillingly, with the statement, "Back then we knew the difference between right and wrong." Her tone suggested she still believed the lynching was just, and that the school field trip had been intended as a perverse moral lesson to the children about "right and wrong."
It hasn't been many years since my aunt passed away. Her story was for me a reminder that these cruel perverse ideas about racial "justice" weren't a thing of the past, but rather a living, breathing thing, barely contained among a generation of people who were taught this--and who taught it to their children, many of whom are in power today.
The only antidote I know is to keep telling the stories--the true stories, not the rationalized and sanitized myths--until people really hear them. And to hold people to account when they act on these perverse ideas. We're kidding ourselves if we don't think those hatreds are still alive.
21
God bless you! You told the hard, brutal truth about your family's past! Now the healing can start in your family and in your community.
3
When will Yankel Rosenbaum's lynching be called that? The same people who never try and justify similar violence towards blacks or Muslims are always so quick to make a list of wrongs Jews did which "provoked the violence". Any reason these same people never say the same for similar violence towards blacks?
Please send this to Sheldon Adelson.
3
And the President would find fine people in that lynch mob.
These well crafted lynching articles today tear at one's soul.
5
Certainly edifying language.
In the ny times excerpt, the last line in the article tells you all you need to know. "none in the mob has been identified". None, out of at least 100 people. None.
4
I would like to know the evidence on which the lynching victim may have a Communist labor organizer. A Southern Tenant Farmers Union was organized in the 1930s.
"Now, at 39, she asked different questions but mostly to herself. Would her father have gone to college if his daddy had lived? What did her granddaddy look like? What sparked his murder? Who were his people? She had no photos. Nothing."
So like my non-memories, and those of many others in my neighborhood growing up. Only we were wondering about all our missing Jewish relatives in Europe, when the gentile mobs came for them.
Then again, I've wondered about the paucity of news about the millions of black Sudanese Christians who wonder about their relatives when the Arab junjaweed mobs came for their relatives just a few short years ago. And hardly an article appears anywhere today about those people.
Seems that human beings never learn. We just keep waiting to find our missing memories. And many of us never get a reporter assigned to follow up on the crimes. They just seem to disappear into the mist of time.
9
Very powerful.
2
Am I the only white male to notice that modern day "lynching" is still with us? Have we all not seen the on-camera videos of police murdering black victims as the cops routinely "walk" free of either prosecution or conviction?
6
Black Americans have suffered a steady beating from whites in this country for centuries, and even if the whip and noose has been replaced by rubber hoses the accumulated damage will never be fully acknowledged by us white folk- there's just too much shame in it.
But without full acknowledgement and some form of compensation, (even if it is only assuring black children as a whole receive the highest level of education from pre-school forward) we will remain a white supremacist nation whether we acknowledge it or not.
7
This breaks my heart. We remember the past. We try to reconcile the past, but, we never quite get there. We live in a world where African-Americans are killed while not armed & Nazi's can burn swastikas openly & with venom. No one is safe while hatred is blatant & condoned by our politicians. Cross burnings are next.
5
Thank you for an excellent story documenting white terrorism against Americans. May God rest his, and all the others, souls.
5
We are the best of countries, we are the worst of countries.
We will never truly blossom until we come fully face to face with the bloody inhumanity woven through our history. White America is awash in horrific immoral violence and bloodshed and not to recognize it keeps us from moving forward as does having a racist president who does not care the slightest about righting wrongs, about treating all people with respect and dignity, only about enriching himself.
Teach your kids about US history, sins and all, and vote in every election.
37
And will we ever learn??
2
There is no doubt that other groups faced oppression in America. But our continued and deep seated animosity toward African-Americans remains unique and largely unaddressed. No other people were attacked, forced into ships and sold as property to amoral men. We systematically built a nation on the backs of these kidnapped men and women, splitting their families apart by selling their children as if they were livestock. To defend or hold the rebellion of the southern states as anything but treason is false. They chose to separate with no provocation other than the election of Lincoln, notably after the constitutional inhibition on modifying the institution of slavery had expired.
Today we watch every day as young African-American men are murdered by police officers. We show extraordinary callousness and deep racism as professional football players and others peacefully and respectfully demand justice. America needs truth and reconciliation but white American cannot even accept the truth of lynching, segregation, and mass incarceration. America has not been "great" as it systematicaly killed Native Americans because it wanted their land, nor has it ever been good to the African-Americans on whose backs it was built.
White America will never redeem itself if we cannot summon the empathy to imagine how we would feel if we were African Americans. Should we recover from the deserved guilt and shame we might ask forgivenness.
10
I am an 82 year old white man who was raised in Southern California, but my father's side of the family came out of Georgia and Texas. I clearly remember the overt racist attitudes and comments of these relatives.
I couldn't understand their racist ad hominem vitriol at the time, but have subsequently read enough history to realize that we have ALWAYS been a racist nation. First against the Native Americans, then African slaves when they first arrived in the early 1600s. Then the Chinese, with the Oriental Exclusion Act in the 1800s, the Japanese, with their incarceration during WWII. Next in line were the Mexicans, and now it's Moslems.
There has always been an "other" to hate and vilify, and race isn't the only criteria. Catholics, Irish, Italians, Poles, atheists, feminists, the LGBTQ community, etc.
This nation was racist from the beginning, with the three-fifths compromise written into the Constitution to mollify southern slaveholders. Racism, not "states rights," was responsible for the Civil War (excuse me if you're a Southern racist: "The War of Northern Aggression.") It continues to tear our country apart, and the processes has accelerated under Donald Trump.
9
I heard my own family's stories about men having been run out of town due to conflict with the whites in the towns they were living in when I was a child. It was a scary warning to me but one that seemed so distant until at 15 I was attacked by white male, while my white "friends" stood around, for dating a white person.
I've learned never to get too close, to trust too much or have too big a disagreement with another white, especially a male. As proven by the news, day after day, I might not be physically lynched, but my reputation in the public eye could be.
I've read that to take a life, self-defense or intentionally, that experience never leaves the person involved so, I've also wondered about the effects of the lynchings on the participants. How have their lives fared under such a weight. There has to have been some spiritual, emotional even mental breakdown of destroying another life. Would the NYT be willing to write that side of the story?
10
The real pity is that we cannot name and shame all the perpetrators. Just as the victims' relatives have had to live with the weight of their loss, so should the relatives of the men and women who perpetrated these crimes should live with the weight of their guilt.
38
I was wondering about that too. Were any of the perpetrators ever identified? What about Glen Roberts' descendants? He started it.
1
A very poignant story. There is so much dirt hidden under the American carpet that it will take years, decades & maybe a century or more to uncover it, and such uncovering will no doubt bring more atrocities in an attempt to keep it hidden. This story can not be completely told in truth until the lynchings "up North" are also exposed. In the town of Coatesville Pa, just 40 miles West of Philadelphia Zacharia Walker, an African American man was lynched in one of the most horrific lynchings in American history in 1911. He was burned alive while the perpetrators pitchforked him back into the fire every time he tried to escape it. The mob decided to attack Walker while he was in Coatesville Hospital, on a Sunday night, as they were returning from church services. Lynchings such as this & many others in Northern States should not be forgotten just because they did not occur in the deep South.
7
At at time when the US is rapidly spinning apart into mutually hostile tribes, the current obsession with dredging up historical racist horrors serves only to further whip up racial anger and white guilt. We are all intensely aware of historical injustices, our own and those of every other human society. Tribalization of our once revered melting pot gave us Trump - haven't progressives learned anything from our current disaster? For every young Democrat 'woke' by these horror stories, several more whites are driven to the Republican right, fed up with being flogged for ancient wrongs. We need to calm racial tensions, not inflame them with gruesome stories from over eight decades ago.
1
Tell you what, hop a flight to Memphis and look that man and his prodginey in their face and tell them that.
4
This is so incredibly great! Hats of to Mr. Stevenson whose work I've followed since a 60 Minutes episode in the early 90s....
I saw this project profiled by Oprah on 60 Minutes 2 weeks ago and there was no mention of who paid for this important memorial, but it made me wonder if Oprah paid for all of this ???
Always interesting to read about the dark and normally hidden away pieces of our history. One point that confronts my ignorance - why in the world would a federal law be needed against lynching? Seems like a murder charge would be enough to pursue such a case. Or kidnapping... and all the rest. Maybe a lynching law would be a way to get the federal government involved in a case that would otherwise languish
Statistics can work both ways. Try looking at it this way, if you can. In 2016, approximately 230 African-American people were killed by whites and approximately 500 white people killed by blacks. Given that there are 6 times as many whites as blacks in the US, I'd say the chances of being a *victim* of interracial killing are significantly higher if one is African-American.
I want to thank your for your massive coverage of this late-breaking news story. What could be more relevant to American life in 2018 than an 83-year-old event? As George Orwell might have said if he were alive today, he who owns the Megaphone determines which bits of the past are not allowed to be past.
1
Thank you for this article. We white people need more stories like this, provided it does not cause too much anguish for the families.
This entire history, as I read and learn more (visited the African American museum in D.C. recently) leaves me as wrung out as I get when learning about the holocaust. This is different but the same.
I've asked myself inumerable times WHY when reading or learning about the holocaust. I ask myself the same questions when learning about black history. Why? With the holocaust, I know who, some of the why (Nazi and collaborators warped thoughts and horrific actions, to put it mildly). This "history" is still alive, just goes on in a different guise. WHY. Who decided white was good, black was bad, brown too. Here too is no logic, no understanding, just a profound sickness of the mind and soul.
We white people need to listen with respect to things that strike us as unimaginable, to resist the urge to say "this must be an exaggeration." I've read that this was a reaction people had when they learned about the camps, the millions murdered, unimaginable...until they saw the photos, heard the testiminy. We need to bear witness to this too.
5
While almost all victims of lynchings in this country have been Blacks, it should be noted that the lynching mentality is a much more broad-based human phenomenon, as demonstrated by the lynching of Leo Frank, a white Jew, in Georgia.
I think it also appropriate to consider the terrorist murders of Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Matthew Shepard, and so many others as lynchings. Lynchings and terrorism, though they are not the same thing, do overlap to the extent that they are intended to send a message: do not mess with us, even symbolically by your identity, because the government cannot (and in some cases simply will not) protect you.
There is also an overlap between some lynchings and some legally sanctioned executions to the degree that, throughout history, -- and not just in America -- executions have been public spectacles.
The evilness of lynchings, as well as ongoing discrimination and race-based violence against Blacks, can stand on its own. It does not need the categorically incorrect equation with the Holocaust made by several of the Most Recommended comments to others of today's Times articles on lynchings. The Holocaust (as such) was not an effort to take their land, put them in "their place", terrorize, or enslave them but, rather, the industrialized attempt to expunge Jews and Roma from the face of the earth.
2
Extreme, unconstrained violence developed during times of slavery, both as a means of control, and as personal release or sport by slaveowner families, and patrollers who were authorized to intimidate the slaves. When enslaved persons committed crimes against whites, large events were held as a means of making anti-black feelings cohesive. See Charles Ball, "Slavery in the United States" (1836), which describes an event attended by 15,000 whites, during which two slaves were executed and another slave beaten 500 strokes with hickory sticks, over the murder of a white man who insisted on keeping one of them as a sex slave.
5
the memory of the massacres in california and other parts of the west of the native people, as well as chinese immigrants, is fading fast. once forgotten, nobody has to face that brutality either.
1
I am not surprised by this story, having had a whole world of hidden untold American history open up to me in my adult years. Yet, I am sickened at not only the injustice but the brutality of this racist seeping wound on the American experience.
The insidious blot of white supremacy and bigotry toward African American people have been present since the founding and foment an uprising in every generation.
Mr. Higgenbotham is a hero in my book and deviant to the last bite on the vigilante rope. We too need to never give up until this curse is exorcised from society and beaten down in the public square.
1
Is it possible to feel free in a country that is democratic in name only? Are our court's really too anemic to give an equal, ungerrymandered crack at voting to all? If we lose the reins on democracy and give it a chance to run, pride in a rejuevinated state could replace the current angst of the priviledged and of the disinfranchised.
1
I can't help but think that witnessing that kind of terrorism - knowing with profound understanding the kind of atrocity humans are capable of - had devastating impact on white Americans as well. An impact that's just as everlasting as it's been for black Americans. And every other kind of American. No one is really safe, are they?
1
What has always struck me about photos of lynchings were the number of young kids present, almost as like a picnic. I also remember reading that sometimes after the murder was done, people in the crowd would take fingers or ears from the victims as souvenirs. Rap Brown once said violence was as American as Cherry pie. He was right.
3
Thanks for this. It’s well done.
I would have liked to hear from or about the descendants of the people who did the lynching. I’ve no doubt they are known.
That the city still has statues of Civil War soldiers is unthinkable. And the university’s athletic teams are called the Rebels, disgusting.
I have no need for the South, I visited Gulfport, Mississippi for work in the late ‘80s, the segregation I saw was striking and structural.
My father was stationed in Mobile Bay, Alabama during his Army service in WW2, he told me horrific stories of the discrimination he saw.
2
I’m writing this with the sting of tears and a tightness in my throat, almost feeling a noose. The cruelty and barbarism to celebrate being white shames me. I have some Southern ancestors that I now have to question. Were they there at a lynching? I do not excuse being passive observers any more than I would excuse an ancestor providing the rope.
Rage at injustice for the stupidest of reasons for hate and grief for the pain and terror of the victim as well as the hole in families caused by despair leave me conflicted. This family has more compassion than I can summon. They are better humans.
Outstanding writing. This story touched me.
2
I lived and studied at Ole Miss and never heard this story before. In a place like Oxford, redolent with history, how can so much history be smothered and lost? With Faulkner, and the heavy echoes of Faulkner, comes our memories of reading about Joe Christmas and the many other black and mixed race characters in his novels who are dehumanized and destroyed, but we never heard about Higginbotham and his extrajudicial slaying. Maybe these memories are so painful that filtering through fiction is the only way to muffle the hammerblows on our consciences. There are old trees all over Mississippi which bear the scars of lynching ropes -- and the unseen scars of people who have lived under terror that cannot be spoken of. We have much to repent!
29
Thank you for writing this story.
It should be part of the curriculum in American History in HS.
It might "just might" produce more open minded adults out of children. It should be "especially" implemented all over the South of the US.
21
The number of lynchings that occurred outside of the South is not insignificant and should be emphasized to contradict the myth that lynching was confined to one part of the country.
3
Thank you, Ms. Gregory and the NY Times, for writing and publishing Mr. Elwood Higginbotham's story. His story and countless other African Americans' life stories and murders must be shared with the public via news oultets and classroom textbooks. It is important for our country to understand the long reach of racism and its negative psychological and socio-economic impacts on African American families and communities. Mr. Higginbotham was a brave man murdered for the color of his skin, for protecting his family, and for organizing. His family deserved to know his story to heal and to have a stronger sense of their roots. I am so grateful for the existence of organizations who are researching and sharing the truth. We need more like them.
28
I just thought that this song, Strange Fruit, sung here by Nina Simone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8Lq_yasEgo
11
I have been struggling to learn ( via oral history from AfricanAmerican elders in my community ) about the 1900s to 1950s Wave of Terror ( as James Baldwin called it).
It is horrifying. At times, I do think I need to stop digging into this history especially in the dark of night after awakening from another Klansmen nightmare, but the dead want to be remembered.
The children of the victims and the perpetrators deserve to know the real story.
A young relative of mine would have been--- if not for the Civil War--- the direct heir to the largest plantation (by number of enslaved people) in our state. After the War, his great-grandparents owned timber and farm plantations, where in the 20th century, hundreds of men, women and children prisoners were worked to death or killed by overseer Ca'pns. The people who were enslaved and imprisoned on his family's land for the last 300 years need to be remembered.
33
Thanks, NYT, for sharing this beautifully written story. My high school history teacher had this quote taped to his podium "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." He definitely invoked that when teaching about the Holocaust. This is another holocaust that the US chooses to not teach about, to ignore, to cover-up, and this country needs to hear these stories. I used to teach classes at a university, and once played Strange Fruit for my class. Many of the students did not even know about lynching. I hope this museum will invoke the dialogues that need to happen.
60
Once most decent people have seen pictures of lynchings and red the stories, they will never forget them. This history should be commonplace in the national curriculum. Past crimes, and current attitudes must be confronted by every citizen.
52
Occasionally the NYTs hits us squarely in the face with the kind of truth that rarely surfaces in the media, our schools, our universities, our dinner tables. Surely there is space in this memory/contemporary space for kinship between Black men/children/women killed by the police today and their brutalized fore-bearers.
39
Attached to these stories of lynchings should also be the stories of how lynchings were used to terrify black Americans to run them off their property. Often the property was seized by thieves with the backing of law enforcement and the collusion of other entities such as the media. One of the greatest thefts of land that is still under reported and for which victims have never received compensation.
60
There are pictures of lynchings scattered all over the internet. The most revealing thing about them to me is the large number of children who were permitted to attend these events, many of whom seemed to be enjoying themselves.
24
Lots of southern families have photograph collections of lynchings, many of them showing hangings and burnings while whites, males and females, were having nice picnics under the trees. My family had collections of these photos, I am sorry to say. And it always seemed to me that the family members who enjoyed these photos were the ones who bragged the most about being the most devout Christians--does this sound familiar?
4
You are absolutely right...nurture or nature? I’ve never believed it’s nature, but how do bad parents overcome the innate decency of children?
1
The culture of racism and hate is passed down from generation to generation. It starts out early with the parents pouring all of it into young children's minds and hearts. That's why those postcards show children attending.
2
Thank you for this. Beautifully written and brings humanity to those ugly numbers and our ugly history. I have never been to Alabama but plan to visit the new museum when I get the opportunity.
I hope that we can somehow bring about a Truth and Reconciliation project as South Africa did - it certainly didn't fix all of their problems, but it was a solid first step. There is healing for the perpetrators, too, in being honest about their own misdeeds.
21
So important and powerful. Thank you... And thank you for making critical connections between the past and the present...
22
I have seen "post cards" made out lynching scenes, sort of a "family affair" with the murderers and their families posing in front of the hanging corpse. They were mailed more or less like post cards. The most recent one I have seen was taken somewhere in Michigan, I just can't remember where, in 1965.
13
check out Without Sanctuary
1
"You can't get to reconciliation until you first get to truth." This is why the Confederate statues must come down. The don't represent heritage as much as they represent a lie about a country that never existed.
52
Magnificent, powerfully-written story, important then, important now. In places like Charlottesville, where huge monuments to the Confederacy still stand near the Court House where slaves were sold, these stories revisiting our history must be told and told again. Never forget!
40
The South was and is a race-based aristocracy. As in medieval days, the Knights pledged their loyalty to the Pure-blooded nobility and White run corporations who owned the land and the debts of the serfs/sharecroppers/prisoners.
In the 1930s, the most powerful Knight Klan was the Southern White Knights lawmen Klan. They used terror to carry out the land confiscation, rape and torture campaigns---- all to enrich themselves and the Country Club elites and corporations such as Birmingham Steel.
Klanning had always been good for the corporate bottom line.
We Southerners, who call ourselves white, know exactly who is responsible for Mr. Higginbotham's brutal public torture and death.
We older, white people are all guilty of complicity---- whether our crime was simply not telling the truth about a lynching we witnessed or heard about or an enriched family inheritence from the stolen wealth of families like the Higginbotham's.
125
People like you I'm glad to call fellow Americans.
Pray for me. The hellhounds are sniffing around on my trail.
I have been running my big mouth too much in my neighborhood where a lot of older people are the children of SWK Klanswomen and men.
A young black man stopped me when I was doing my shopping and said that he thought a white man was following me. He was right. The white man looked at me with such hate.
And I made some local white cops mad when I told their black colleagues that our local police force was run for decades by the Venable SWK family who also ran horrendous prison granite quarries. Judge Venable was head of the NKKKK, and his father and mother were high officials in the SWK.
2
Quite sobering to read this on the heels of reading about the current Alabama governor's defense of Confederate statues. She warns about the outside agitators from the North...what a familiar ring that has.
It's not just the South. Some in my Yankee family still use the N word in casual conversation. This country has a long way to go.
47
These lynchings have been suppressed, hidden, as have the murders, rapes, and genocide against native Americans, slaves, and indentured servants in America. The perpetrators were mostly WASPS. Go figure. Who else had the power to do such evil?
27
Lynching was/is one aspect of a larger calamity - white terrorism against African Americans. So-called white supremacists, neo-nazis, as well as their apologists, are the modern descendants of the "very fine folks" who murdered Mr. Higginbotham and many others. They pose a greater threat to our people and our country than any foreign terrorist organization we now fear.
41
Yesterday the nytimes ran a bit about women's inequality reqarding who holds more CEO positions. It appears men named John did. Maybe I missed something but none of those men named John were black. Where's the out cry? There's the systemic belief when women sit on the board somehow trickle down social and financial justice will take place for all women but what about blacks where's their seat?
Where does articles leave blacks? Back on the plantation or Jim Crow south?Maybe this knowledge will inspire young people to pursue a degree in black studies but there's only so many jobs in that. As for the board room according to the nytimes privileged white women go to the head of the line first and justice will follow. The rest of have to wait.
6
JoeG--Gee, I thought this article was about the lynching/murder of innocent black citizens, as a way to frighten, and control the black population, and disenfranchise them. One issue at a time. Please make comments when your point becomes the topic of the article.
16
The question should be not what oppressed blacks in the past but what oppresses us all in the present.
By coincidence, I just returned from a trip to Mississippi. I stood in front of the confederate statue in the square in Oxford, mentioned in this piece. The statue commemorates the confederate war dead. Everything surrounding the statue, services the white affluent inhabitants of this university town. While shopping and eating in this upscale area, I saw not one person of color eating or even waiting in our large restaurant. The only black people I saw, were men outside the back of the restaurants/shops who were doing manual labor,,food prep, etc.. I saw not one person of color as a patron, anywhere. The white people were noticeably polite. But it felt like an episode of The Twilight Zone. I could not believe I was in America.
Take a trip, out of your comfort zone. You will never be the same.
86
I saw that, exactly, in a visit to Missippi in the late 1980’s. Sad to hear it continues, but not surprised.
I had the same feeling working in Rockefeller center.
2
Matches my experience in Oxford in 1975. Slow to change, the rural South was no place for an East Coast liberal and even today it is not much changed.
2
A powerful story masterly written.
13
There is NO statute of Limitation to murder as far as I can recall. Certainly the perps are likely dead, but justice in the light of acknowledgement and public awareness should never die.
32
Interesting when gun activists proclaim their right to guns is self protection, everyone is supposed to agree. But when Higginbotham used his gun for self protection, he got lynched, with no ramifications.
Maybe no more lynching, but isn’t this still the story? Isn’t this Black Lives Matter in 2018? Doesn’t it still depend on your color? Isn’t that still the bottom line? Who are we kidding?
We will be visiting this site next month. I’m afraid the emotional aftermath, but need to recognize this reality.
Truth is, the lynchers and those that turned their backs were probably the hearty Christians praising God on Sunday mornings. That’s still going on, too.
104
The past and present seems to rest in a fog of misdeeds and half truths more times than not. Knowledge of the crooked past should remind us to be cautious when navigating the future.
There's a very good reason humans invented Gods to worship.
Thank you
{Stating the obvious, once again.}
10
Education.
History.
Truth.
Reconciliation.
Justice.
Human Dignity.
These are the things that will Make America Great Again....and you won't find any champions for them on the regressive side of the political aisle.
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
- Theodore Parker (and used later by MLK Jr.)
65
thank you for publishing such a compelling narrative about the ways that history continues to be felt in the present. the deep roots to systemic inequality and the need to know one's history really comes out in this piece.
25
This country was built on the backs of African slave labor, continuing long after the 'Civil' War and Jim Crow ended. I hope that Ms. Gregory continues to write about racial and racist crimes.
Reparations are long overdue. We can spend trillions on idiotic wars but we can't do what is right here? Unforgivable.
56
No, this country was not built on the backs of slave labor. While widespread initially, the horrific institution of slavery was regionally contained and its economic value was limited (mostly) to agriculture, not high-value manufacturing where real wealth is created.
6
Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: "They [the American colonists] desperately needed the assistance of other countries, especially France, and their their single most valuable product with which to purchase assistance was tobacco, produced mainly by slave labor. So largely did tobacco figure in American foreign relations that one historian has referred to the activities of France in supporting the Americans as 'King Tobacco Diplomacy,' a reminder that the position of the United States in the world depended not only in 1776 but during the span of a long lifetime thereafter on slave labor. To a large degree it may be said that Americans bought their independence with slave labor." Or Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: "Cotton growing dominated the U.S. economy throughout much of the nineteenth century. It was in cottons that new modes of manufacturing first came about. The factory itself was an invention of the cotton industry. So was the connection between slave agriculture in the Americas and manufacturing across Europe. Because for many decades cotton was the most important European industry, it was the source of huge profits the eventually fed into other segments of the European economy. Cotton was also the cradle of industrialization in virtually every other part of the world--the United States and Egypt, Mexico and Brazil, Japan and China."
13
This is inaccurate. Slavery created the free labor that was essential for independent nationhood, and it was not regionally contained. The slave trade helped build the New England economy, for example, as well as institutions such as Brown University and Georgetown University. Slavery, lynching and their legacies are not regionally contained. They are part of our national inheritance.
11
This is all ancient history, the New York Times attempt in these two articles is to continue to stir the pot of racism and racial animosity. Make no mistake, there's lots of money to be made by keeping whites and blacks opposed to one another, think of the political money alone.
If we let our modern, progressive and intelligent citizens of every color simply live our lives without the constant echo of 100 years ago, things would be fine, nobody's getting lynched anymore, quite the contrary, we sit side-by-side with each other in Starbucks, open the door for each other and go about our day.
We cannot move forward if the chains of the past all wrapped around us.
Shame on you New York Times, what you do is counter to what you proclaim
14
Did you really write "we sit side-by-side with each other in Starbucks" after what just happened in Philadelphia? The Philadelphia Starbucks story is EXACTLY why we need to have stories like this.
"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana
22
I am appalled by your response. Your truth to the fact that there is much money made in the effort to keep white and people of color apart is, I have always believed the greatest American tragedy of my lifetime. This is also in keeping with the increasing economic disparity of the "rich getting richer" a phrase which has been in our lexicon for generations.
I sense the authors seek to foster decreased racial tensions by bringing to light this history. One of the family members, a teacher, mentions her students had no knowledge of lynchings. Just as other mass murders/genocides throughout the world must be acknowledged - so must this.
To suppress this is also to foster the suppression of all non-elites and continue their dominance by the venal rich ( not to categorize all rich people) - whose corrupt ways can only be controlled by the rule of law and our votes.
19
This is NOT ancient history, as discrimination and racial killings continue. As a southerner, I am proud of my city for engaging in remembrance of these unspeakable crimes against human beings. And thank you, New York Times, for recognizing my city's courage in holding our past in front of us, so that we have a chance to learn from it.
26
It's pieces like this that remind us that our history isn't entirely "the land of the free and the home of the brave." In the 30's in the South black people were commonly lunched. Today, we see white cops murdering unarmed black people all over the country, due to their prejudiced views—and still we cannot come to terms with that reality. Not one cop has ever stood trial for killing an unarmed black man, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
We are a deeply flawed people and we must confront the truths of our history forthrightly in order to become what we have always desired to be in our own mythology.
Most all Americans of color—Native Americans, Asian-Americans, Afro-Americans—see our story much differently than the one white people like to believe.
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The clip of the cop in Toronto holstering his pistol as the man who just killed ten people with his van threatens him with motions implying he is drawing a weapon is one of the most powerful pieces of video I’ve ever seen. He then used the threat of his baton, not even striking the guy once, to subdue him. That guy should get the Nobel Peace Prize.
Celebrate the people doing the right thing.
1
Excellent
1
This is why I cringe every time I hear about the “Greatest Generation” bandied about by Tom Brokow and others. That generation fought tooth and nail to keep African Americans subjugated.
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The armed forces desegregated, I believe mostly after the war, and were ahead of the rest of society, in my understanding. Events like the ammunition ship explosion in the SF Bay Area, the treatment of the blacks involved both before and after are examples of institutional racism, but that was the beginning of the end.
Laws follow public opinion, change that or nothing changes. Look at gay marriage or marijuana, that’s how it’s done.
This is simply fantastic. A wonderful account of a harrowing event that continues to impact the lives of this man’s descendants. Thank you!
27
Our children and grandchildren need to know the truth about the history of our nation so that they can make educated decisions about this country's future. The glossing over of how this country was founded and the genocide of the native Americans along with the abusive history of slavery is part of this country's past. The industrial revolution and the expansion of this country fueled by the labor of immigrants needs also to taught. The faults and attributes of our founding fathers need also be openly discussed.
The history that we teach our children in their formative years needs to be truthful and unsanitized. America is a great country for many reason, but It's time we revised our history books and replaced the myths with the truth.
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Its White people that need to be telling the truth to their White children because clearly White children no NOTHING about the atrocities their parents, grandparents, great and great parents have inflicted on African Americans. They still think Christopher Columbus discovered America. He did NOT. You cannot discover someplace that was already inhabited by other human beings, the "American" Indians. As bad as African American were treated, I cringed and my African American heart breaks for the American Indian.
28
Years ago I was driving thru land out west that had been set aside as "reservations" where the Native Americans had been Forced to live on.
The land was barren, depressing, and appalling. Truly a soul crushing experience. Along with slavery,its one of our country's original sins and we have never overcome its barbaric legacies.
This is why I finally subscribed to the Times - this one horrifying story should be required reading for all Americans. To make the horror individual and personal underscores what so many people suffered - and the constant fear and intimidation of those who weren't murdered, too: having to live with the perpetual threat of being dragged off and killed for no reason at all. We should study African-American life the same way we study the Holocaust.
But will the harassment and death threats ever end? We've only replaced lynchings with shootings.
150
The horrific history of lynching in America is not something that is taught in school. It needs to be.
126
When I think of this I see Mitch McConnell’s and Jefferson Buregard Sessions. Old white men of power in the South. Fighting to preserve their control at any cost.
4
Lynching consists not only of the physical act of extralegal mob violence, but also of the shadow of cultural deprivation.
The United States is a country which is locked in a state of arrested development as long as embrace of history is resisted.
Wake up everybody!!
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Beautifully written.
The problem with great writing is that it brings us inside, into the moment - we hear and see and feel the things the writer is telling us about - and these are moments I do not want to experience.
That does not mean that I will not read, and listen and hear - and be outraged and hurt and grief stricken and heart sick.
And I agree that we cannot turn our heads away if we are to understand America truly and deeply and correctly, and understand the pain and fear that haunts us still.
Oh, how I wish I could change the past, and take away the grief, and the murderous atrocities. But I cannot. What can I do?
I'm listening, I vote my conscience in Every election from school board to county commissioner to State House/Senate to Federal House/Senate to President. And I know the credentials of those I'm voting for.
I march - I take it to the streets - have since the 60's - I sit in, and down, I write and call, I donate as I can.
And still - still - racism is rampant.
What can I do?
43
I will admit Nancy...that it is so god-awful puzzling why this scourge will not go away. It's so stupid when you really think about it. People live their lives hating and being mad and angry and afraid day in and day out. Why? what and where does it ever get you....what has it ever gotten you? You hate hate hate...and then you die. what did you really accomplish? what good did it bring? what progress was made? we never move forward....we continue to be stuck on stupid. It's crazy.
14
I don't know of many decent people who were ever in favor of lynching. In the heyday of lynching as in America right now, responsibility for outrages in our politics and government -- like the scheming still going on to deny blacks the vote -- rests primarily with people who are not decent. If Trump were to issue a tweet today hinting that, under some circumstances, lynching might be O.K., would Sean Hannity and Fox News support him. The question answers itself.
32
... rests primarily with the minority of people who are not decent.
2
And with the sizeable segment of "polite" society who sits by, watches, but says and does nothing.
12
Lynching in America represented an entire extra-judicial system that operated parallel to the law, while outside the law. This is not to extoll the virtue of the Southern judiciary, for Blacks there were few.
But lynching was at the extreme end of a system of control that was pervasive. Race controlled labor, housing, education, medical services, all basic municipal services like water, sewage, paved roads. Virtually every aspect of the lives of African Americans was determined by race.
Social control was particularly prevalent. One had to learn how to "talk to white folk". A mistake could earn anything from a scolding to an arrest, and if it was a white woman, a beating or a lynching.
Segregation is mistakenly seen as the object of this "Jim Crow" system. But segregation was one of many means, the goal was a total racial caste system where the productive capacity of an entire people was harnessed to a white political/economic machine. It was slavery modified.
Many whites see segregation as separate water fountains and schools. It was much more. In lynching photos, it was common to see young white boys as they were initiated into this system of control.
As this article points out the long shadow of slavery and Jim Crow castes darkness on the American soul to this day. The number of victims far greater when those that simply "disappeared" are added.
The new lynching museum will help, as will education. Let's hope that America is open to its real history.
93
One of the Oscar nominated short films this year, My Cousin Emmet, is a very well done and moving look at the murder of Emmet Till. The Times should put that into its video section.
1
Outstanding journalism, and great work by the Northeastern Law students. Hank Klibanoff, author of "The Race Beat", has done similar work with journalism students at Emory University in Atlanta. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and knowledge is power. We all need to look more clearly and honestly at our nation's history. This is a story of white supremacist terrorism. Yesterday and today, it must be named truthfully, and rejected by all of us.
27
Thanks for bringing this long-ago crime to light. It is horrible to consider how many similar crimes occurred but helps to understand the trauma and intimidation that crimes like this inflicted upon African-Americans who lived in these communities and survived these atrocities.
17
We still have so much to overcome, both in the present and the past, to achieve justice in this country.
120
This article and Campbell Robertson's excellent article on the lynching memorial are well written articles that shows the strength of the NYT. These articles shed light on the horrible events that took place in our history. These articles along with many others in the world news section are also constant reminders that each of us is responsible for getting information from reliable sources to guard against the repetition of these evil events. Extrajudicial killings and mob violence is based is unfortunately still with us.
18
I am reminded of Billy Holiday's "Strange Fruit", and of how there are many who were hanged out of hatred and fear by those who could not and would not see that a person has natural rights, the most basic of which is not to be murdered by an angry mob.
America's lynching period has a long shadow, both for families of those hanged, and for the country as a whole. There s a need to look at it squarely in the eye, acknowledge the brutality and injustice of it, and never, ever do it again.
The thing is, white supremacist movements and fears of "the other" have never gone away. They receded, but they did not die, and this is evident in many places today. It is evident in the over incarceration of black men, in the number of police killings of black men, and in the emergence of neo-Nazi groups into public view.
To end this requires a confrontation with the past and looking deeply into the cultural mirror to reflect and stand for what is right.
May we all find peace in reconciliation, but first the hard work of an honest apprehension is required.
142
To end this injustice to Black America we must elect a president who does not support White Supremacist!
4
Let me tell you something Nicholas, these nazi people running around idolizing a lose,r and his ilk is an abomination . Men ,& woman died to keep this country, & others free during WWII. Germany was going the way of oblivion until an artist saw that the German people need a carnival barker,& rest is history. Now these nazi tribe is running around against immigration, blacks ,muslims, etc. The point is how many of this crowd are of immigrants themselves? Their ancestors came to this country like anyone else.Stole from the real Americans ,& setup shop like they have been here before Columbus.There is only one word that is the reason ,& it is money.
2
One of the best reminders is the frightening postcards that were circulated of the various lynchings from roughly 1900 into the 1930s. Display those pictures showing the approving crowds and the murdered ones literally hanging from a tree or bridge and you'll have a lot of people running for their "safe spaces".
29
Thank you to this family for sharing their experience, to all those involved in researching it, and the NYT. As a nation, we really must face our history and do more to reconcile this awful painful past which continues into the present.
38
This is a stain on our collective past that cannot and should not be bleached away by the passage of time. We all need remember so that we all act to protect whomever among us is threatened by mob rule.
25
This is one of thousands of stories like this that span decades.
17
Finally a long hidden truth is seeing the light of the day. Will there be ever any justice?
15
I am reading this and I am heartsick. I can't imagine the horror of the victim and the family. I can't imagine the callous indifference, and arrogance of the people who carried out this crime. I can't imagine their self-assured confidence in not only their supremacy but in their lack of fear of ever being prosecuted for murder. I can't imagine the smug satisfaction of those who openly approved of the hanging and then bragged about it. It is sickening.
While we remember the lynching of Elwood Higginbotham and other black men we must also remember the countless white men, Jews, who were also lynched in the South. There is a long and sordid history of racism, bigotry and torment of deeply hated minorities in the South that has been buried and forgotten for too long.
The racism and hatred is still live in the 12 states of the South. Every gated, white only community is a perpetuation of the injustices of inequality and segregation.
In Florida and elsewhere the gates proclaim, in large bold print, "Restricted Community" which really means "well to do whites only". Its not a secret. The population of The Villages in Florida is 98.2% white. The homes are affordable but not attainable. Too many other communities do the same. Black neighborhoods are starved of tax funds for schools, roads and infrastructure. Voting restrictions are enforced. Racism is alive and well. Police all too easily shoot and arrest blacks with impunity. Or expel kids from schools. Nothing changed.
22
I agree with almost everything you say, but historians and journalists have noted that the number of Jewish people lynched in the South was tiny -- though horrific in every way -- compared to the thousands of black Americans who were lynched, even accounting for killings that might not have been described before as lynchings. See http://atlantajewishtimes.timesofisrael.com/other-jewish-lynchings/. Other whites were lynched too, and not just in the South, but black Americans make up about 73% of all victims: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/01/a-comprehensive-map-of-american-l.... It is really important to agree on the facts about lynching, based on historic documentation and careful research. The facts are horrible enough.
13
Thank you Dean. I did not offer up the lynchings of others to diminish what has happened to our African American citizens. I mentioned it to point out that racism had many victims too many who have been overlooked and forgotten. The facts of lynchings across the South are not in dispute. We must never forget the 27% of the murders not even casually mentioned.
As a Jew, even into the early 1970s in PA and other states deeded exclusions to home owners was allowed by law. Even teaching jobs and job promotions were also off limits to Jews. Jews were excluded from practicing the law i.e. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
There is virulent, ongoing racism that bubbles just beneath the surface across America and ever more actively in the South. It is pervasive and extensive and unending.
Unless we remember all of the violent, hate-filled racism in our nation, we will never be able to finally confront it and end it. Even when its only 27%.
1
Why is it so hard for some people to allow the conversation to be about Black people?
This is a story about an African-American family finally discovering the circumstances of a lynching. Is it that most of the White people involved in this story are killers so some attempt has to be made to make White people victims too? Americans of Jewish descent faced a great deal of racism and, in some cases, violence and death. But Jewish Americans NEVER faced the institutionalized murder that African Americans suffered for CENTURIES.
Let this Black family have their story.
1
I was shocked to wordlessness when first I heard Nina Simone's haunted voice singing Billie Holliday's "Strange Fruit", a powerful indictment of the "New South"where burned and hanged and shot and beaten bodies hung from the trees like a bitter local fruit.
Later when I applied to universities as a professor with a thesis on Faulkner's novels, I could not try Southern schools. My anger at justice denied and truth perverted, my rage for brotherhood with all, my sense of betrayal by the America I loved -- no, in thunder, as Melville put it, I gave up on Mississippi and the Confederacy.
Now, after having researched in Oxford, I feel better about the future, though not the present. And never about the Past - which Faulkner said is never dead, why it's not even past. Thanks to this remarkable article and these strong people, black and white, and braver and more controlled than I was, hope persists. Tomorrow may be another day.
A better one.
21
After World War II it was deemed vital that reparations be made to the survivors of the concentration camps. They needed some recognition and compensation for the horrors they suffered. What has our country done To recognize and compensate African-Americans for the 250 years of horrors they suffered in this nation?
29
Catholics were discriminated in the early colonies. Shall their be reparations? The Mormons were chased West to Utah, shall there be reparations? In the early 1900s it was very common to see signs for jobs and rents that included 'Italians and Irish need not apply" particularly in NY and New England, shall there be reparations? Women have been treated as second class for most of our countries history and some say even today with attempting to control their reproductive activities by usually males. Shall there be reparations?
3
Because it seems impractical doesn't mean it shouldn't be talked about, or that the history it reminds us of shouldn't be taught in schools. America can be a great country and still be tough and honest about its flaws and crimes. Maybe "great" can include "honest" and even "humble"?
15
JD I understand your point on past illegal actions against other minorities. You surely must admit the complete subjugation of blacks throughout our history has been unequaled in the terror, loss of life and suppression they have endured compared to those you mention.
15
"Vanessa Gregory is a writer and a professor in Oxford, Miss. This is her first feature for the magazine."
I sincerely hope it won't be her last. This article is a very well written examination of a history that needs to be told again and again, expanded upon in this manner, in the continuing battle for truly equal justice.
115
The fact that the socially-tolerated custom of lynching was applied on a racially discriminatory basis isn't the scariest thing about it.
What is most disturbing is that popular ratifying conventions approved the proposed US Constitution without ever questioning the principle that human rights were completely the business of the States, leaving States free to violate any and all rights -- even those formerly protected by the centuries-old Common Law.
We ratified ourselves into an Age of Reason jungle that led to the carnage of Civil War, after which we judiciously attempted to restore the status quo ante -- an effort that is still underway today.
49
You are being a little hard on our forefathers, I think. Human rights, or natural rights as they were then called, were among the privileges and immunities referenced in Article IV of the original (i.e., unamended) Constitution. That the ratifying conventions believed that the states, rather than a newly strengthened national government, were the better guarantors of rights which existed at least since Magna Carta reflected the actual, lived experience of the colonists-turned-Americans.
3
MAGNA CARTA guaranteed rights? Tell that to the numerous non white colonies and countries under the British Empire long after the Magna Carta was written and agreed to by the British king. Slavery, non equality was a big part of British history long after Magna Carta.
9
You don't understand that if states hadn't been given those powers, the Constitution could not have been ratified?
2
Thank you for bringing this to light for healing. So devastating. We need to wake up as a nation and as humanity to heal.
59
Another reminder why due process and the rule of law; its equal application regardless of political influence, is so vital to uphold.
112
Due process, the rule of law, and their equal application can not be upheld until they exist. As the deaths of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Rekia Boyd, Sandra Bland, and so many others tell us, for black people in the US, they don't.
11