The Gibbet

   A while back I wrote about a lynching. It was the last lynching that occurred in the state of Maryland and it happened in 1933. It is an example of what is now described as a "racial terror lynching" and I will say no more about it. All the information you need for this subject is found at The National Memorial for Peace and Justice. 

   Around the time I wrote about "The Last Lynching", I happened to run across a description of one in a book I was reading. It was written by a white man, but he was a Welshman not a white southerner. His reaction to what he saw is curious, to say the least. The event happened around 1900 in Tennessee. Here it is:

Some days after leaving Memphis, I arrived at a small town, where I was surprised to see an unusual amount of bustle, the surrounding country for miles having sent in all its able bodied men. Every man was armed with a gun, and they stood in small groups talking outside the various stores. It seemed as though there had been rumours of an invasion, and that these men were organising to defend their homes and country, but I had not the least idea of what had really happened. The small groups now began to join together into larger ones, and the larger groups joined until they became one large body of men. This one body then shouldered guns and moved quickly along the main street, the men's faces being drawn and pale. I followed on, perhaps the one unarmed man among them, curious to know the meaning of it all. They came at last to a halt, and, to see the reason for this, I stepped across the way, and saw that they had halted before a large building, which, by its barred windows, I had no difficulty in recognising as the jail. One man had curled around his shoulders a long rope, and this man with two others knocked loudly with the butt ends of their guns on the prison door. Almost in an instant the door was flung wide open, and the sheriff stood in the open way to know their wants. The men must have demanded the prison keys, for I saw the sheriff at once produce them, which he handed to these men without the least show of resistance. This man with the rope and several others then entered the jail, and the silent crowd without cast their eyes in that direction. Up to the present time I had not heard a distinct voice, nothing but the buzz of low whispering. But suddenly from the jail's interior there came a loud shriek and a voice crying for mercy. Men now appeared in the open doorway, dragging after them a negro at the end of a rope. This unfortunate wretch was possessed of a terror that is seldom seen in a human being. He fell on his knees to pray, but was jerked to his feet ere he could murmur the first words, O Lord. He staggered to and fro and sideways, at the same time howling and jabbering, foaming at the mouth, and showing the horrible white of his eyes. I can well understand a man screaming, trembling and crying for mercy, when actually enduring bodily pain, but that one should show such a terror at the thought of it, filled me more with disgust than pity. That this prisoner should have been so brutal and unfeeling in inflicting pain on another, and should now show so much cowardice in anticipation of receiving punishment inadequate to his offence, dried in me the milk of human kindness, and banished my first thoughts, which had been to escape this horrible scene without witnessing its end. For it was now I remembered reading of this man's offence, and it was of the most brutal kind, being much like the work of a wild beast. They now marched him from the jail, their strong arms supporting his terror stricken limbs, but no man reviled him with his tongue, and I saw no cowardly hand strike him. Soon they came to a group of trees on the outskirts of the town, and, choosing the largest of these, they threw the rope's end over its strongest branch, the prisoner at the same time crying for mercy, and trying to throw his body full on the ground. When this was done a dozen hands caught the rope's end, made one quick jerk, and the prisoner's body was struggling in the air. Then all these men shouldered their guns, fired one volley, and in a second the body was hanging lifeless with a hundred shots. In five minutes after this, nothing but the corpse remained to tell of what had occurred, the men having quietly scattered towards their homes.

I will also say nothing more about this episode.

   I gather that Steven Pinker argues in The Better Angels of Our Nature, that the world is gradually becoming a better place and we are growing less violent. Maybe so. I ran across another execution in Maryland, but this one was earlier and happened in 1781.  The sentence of the men found guilty:
That they be carried to the Jail, of Frederick County, that they be drawn from thence, to the Gallows of Frederick Town, and be hanged thereon, that they be cut down on the Earth alive, that their Entrails be taken out, and burnt, while they are yet alive, that their heads be cut off, that their bodies be divided into four Parts, and that their Quarters be placed where his Excellency the Governor shall direct and appoint.

Sources:

    The lynching account is from: The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, by W.H. Davies. I also wrote about the book in my post about "Jails as Hostels."

    The image chosen for this post is a fairly benign one, I think you will agree. If you would like something more graphic you can find lots of photos of black men hanging above a crowd of people, containing some children and many who are smiling see: Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, by James Allen.

    My abruptness above is in reaction to the current issue of 'cultural appropriation'. Apparently it is easy to be seen as insensitive if one writes about such things and is white. 

    See for example:

"Emmett Till’s Coffin, a Hangman’s Scaffold and a Debate Over Cultural Appropriation,” Hillary M. Sheets, NYT May 31, 2017

"Protests over Sam Durant’s sculpture “Scaffold,” installed in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden of the Walker Art Center, have drawn immediate parallels to the controversy this year over Dana Schutz’s painting “Open Casket” in the Whitney Biennial.

Both works, made by artists who are white, recall historical acts of racial violence and have been viewed by many as painful and insensitive to communities that have suffered directly from those injustices.

Central to both cases are issues of cultural appropriation and artistic freedom. Should white artists, no matter how well intentioned, represent harrowing stories that are not their own to tell? Conversely, should any subject matter be off-limits to artists because of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or other life experiences?"

  And:

"Thank God for Cultural Appropriation," Richard Cohen, Washington Post, June 5, 2017.

"The great jazz singer Billie Holiday recorded “Strange Fruit” on April 20, 1939. It is a song about lynchings, inspired by the 1930 murder of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, who were photographed, like in the words of the song, “hanging from the poplar trees.” Holiday sang the song so often and it meant so much to her that she apparently came to believe she co-wrote it. She didn’t. Abel Meeropol wrote it. He was a Bronx high school teacher — white, Jewish and, not uncommon at the time, a communist. Now, maybe, he would be called a “cultural appropriator.”

Bonus Material

   There is a huge and hugely interesting book by John Sutherland which contains short essays on 287 novelists. 287 of them! If you are interested in the subject of  hangings in literature, Sutherland is your man. For example, he discusses Thackeray's On Going to See a Man Hanged, and the many hangings that are found in the works of Dickens and Hardy. The book is: Lives of the Novelists: A History of Fiction in 287 Lives. 

   For hanging histories in our very own London see: "Hanging Days" by the late Christopher Doty.