Emmett Till
Emmett Till was a fourteen-year-old boy brutally and viciously lynched in Mississippi in 1955 for the alleged “crime” of whistling at a white woman. Of all the countless cases of lynching in America, the author singles out Till’s not because it was particularly unusual than any other, but because it was the one which changed the course of the written history of this abomination. The written history of lynching had been co-opted by white society which portrayed it in dramatic terms in Birth of a Nation and as justifiable carrying out of justice in multiple novels and historical account. Meanwhile, the perspective of the victimhood was silenced through intimidation, fear and shame. The graphic images of the aftermath of Till’s execution was the first actual photographs of a lynching ever seen by a vast swath of white America and had the effect of transforming the written history so that it accorded much more closely with the factual history.
Mary Turner
Mary Turner, by contrast, becomes a character worthy of her brief mention in the book specifically because her story of becoming a victim of lynch mob mentality is so relentlessly monstrous that one can only hope it is a unique case. She was the young pregnant wife of a man who had earlier been lynched only because the original target of the mob’s vengeance could not be located. When she dared to plead for some kind of justice, the result was an unspeakable violation of her body and her unborn child in full view of witnesses including children, none of whom did anything to stop it from occurring or bring anyone to justice afterward.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Niebuhr remains universally regarded as one of the five most influential figures in the history of American theology, and one of the chapters is characterized as a reflection upon his influence. Though highly regarded, the author calls into question not just Niebuhr’s commitment to black Christians on the subject of lynching, but his very understanding of how lynching in America is synonymous with Roman crucifixion. Although Niebuhr was in the minority of influential white Christian leaders to actively and openly support Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, he is ultimately castigated by the author for being intellectually sympathetic toward the plight of blacks, but incapable of genuine empathy.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
King is placed in juxtaposition to Niebuhr not on account of being black nor for having an obviously greater capacity for empathy toward victims of lynching, but rather as a contrast between the good man who doesn’t act and the good man who does. The author does not criticize Niebuhr for being a bad man or accomplice to white supremacists, but more for contributing to maintaining the written history of lynching as the official story. King, by contrast, is hailed not for being a better Christian, but for actively taking the risks involved in forcing white America to read the unwritten history of lynching.
Countee Cullen, Ida B. Wells, Billie Holiday, et. al
That “unwritten history” of lynching was, in fact, written down and recorded as an account throughout the entire historical record; it just never made into the official academic curriculum. What history textbooks left out of the story of American justice (or lack thereof) was filled in through the fiction and poetry of black writers, the lyrics sung by blues and jazz singers, investigative journalism published in black-owned periodicals and newspapers and the court briefs filed by black defense attorneys. As with textbooks, much of this history never made it into the larger American consciousness of white society, but the fact that it existed at all always carried with it the potential that just perhaps maybe done day, truths to ugly mention might one day become impossible to keep quiet.
