By Ja’han Jones, Huff Post — In 1955, after the nation’s most infamous lynching ― of her son, Emmett ― Mamie Till-Mobley sent a telegram to President Dwight Eisenhower. In it, she pleaded with Eisenhower to “see that justice [was] meted out to all persons involved” in her son’s murder, which took place in Money, Mississippi. She received nothing in response — not correspondence from the White House and not…
Vantage Point Articles and Essays by Dr. Ron Daniels — With the attempted assassination of a series of Democratic leaders and the savage murder of 11 worshipers in the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in the past week, the American people are witnessing one of the most horrific seasons of hate and terror in recent memory. And, while there is debate about the link between rhetoric and the actions…
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, The Hutchinson Report — Trump talked about peace, harmony and all sides coming together but did not once mention the two words that if ever applied to sending suspected mail bomb packages to leading Democrats. The words are “domestic terrorism.” Trump didn’t use those words and he was called on the carpet by a few for not using them. However, this is not just a case…
Sundiata Cha-Jua, The News Gazette — In recent years, the U.S. government has demonstrated a commitment to passing largely meaningless symbolic legislation designed to sanitize the country’s history of racial wrongs. The recent introduction of bills in the House and Senate apologizing for lynchings continues this timorous tradition. In 1997, President Bill Clinton apologized for the Tuskegee Experiment, the U.S. Public Health Service’s Nazi-like study of the effects of syphilis…
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, The Hutchinson Report — The news that the Justice Department will take another look at the Emmett Till case stirred the never-ending memory I have of that September day in 1955. That was the day of Till’s funeral at Roberts Temple Church of God on Chicago’s Southside. Then I lived only a few blocks from the church. The elementary school I attended was also close to the…
By Vanessa Romo, NPR — Congress’s three African-American senators introduced a bipartisan bill Friday to make lynching a federal crime. Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Tim Scott, R-S.C., drafted the bipartisan legislation, which defines the crime as “the willful act of murder by a collection of people assembled with the intention of committing an act of violence upon any person.” It also classifies lynching as a hate…
The white Southern press played a role in the racial terrorism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which saw thousands of African-Americans hanged, burned, drowned or beaten to death by white mobs. By Brent Staples — The Arkansas lynch mob that burned a black tenant farmer at the stake in 1921 observed common practice when it advertised the killing in advance so spectators could mark the grisly event…
By A.T. McWilliams — While visiting the newly opened National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama — a hallowed and harrowing enshrinement bearing the names of over 4,000 black people lynched in the Jim Crow South — I was reminded of stories my grandparents told me as a child. Stories of my great-grandfather, once chased by Ku Klux Klan members on horseback before swimming to safety, preferring possible death by drowning…
How white Americans used lynchings to terrorize and control black people. By Ed Pilkington in Montgomery, Alabama — Vanessa Croft was driving home after work in Gadsden, Alabama, last month when she noticed something strange in her rear-view mirror. There were two huge flags bearing the starred cross of the Confederacy fluttering angrily behind her from the back of a menacing black pickup truck. She had seen plenty of Confederate flags…
A new museum and lynching memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, constitute a watershed moment in the way America remembers its racist past. By Caleb Gayle — When it comes to the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, there are two kinds of monuments in America. There are memorials that seek to honor this country’s fitful march toward civil rights. Then there are the statues of generals and politicians—as well as the…
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