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Remembering the Harrowing Machine
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20141 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
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2 / 1992 |
2,114 Words |
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Gordon D. Marino
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Some ethicist ought to address the question as to whether or not it is morally permissible to hoard books in order to calm your nerves. There is something despicable about collecting, and yet I have to report that when I am really feeling under the knife, I often indulge in piling up old tomes. Now and again, however, something good is born of something less than good. Take, for instance, my recent trip to the used bookstore. Had it not been for trying to quell the feeling that I was going under, I would never have stumbled upon a piece of history that most Americans, culturally literate and otherwise, are dead asleep to. The awakening came in the form of an out-of-print paperback called Lynchings (New York: Lancer Books, 1962), named after the phenomenon the editor, Ralph Ginzburg, calls us to look into.
Up until the illuminations of last week, I thought I knew what went down, down South, so I never sought to understand just what that odd phrase "Jim Crow law" meant. Simply a compilation of newspaper reports of organized racial murders, with a forgettable 1.5-page introduction, Lynchings spells out its definition loud and bell clear. Ask Jim Crow-it wasn't only for jobs that blacks came north in the droves they did. You get strong scenes and intimations of blood and fear in Faulkner, Baldwin, and others, but there is something more riveting, more difficult to slough off in the beast of facts. And the beast of the truth is that the levels of violence and intimidation that blacks have been subjected to outstrips the white imagination. According to Tuskegee Institute's lynching figures, from 1892 to 1955 almost five thousand blacks were strung up and either cut up, burned, or otherwise brutalized unto death. That's right--five thousand (4,733 to be exact)! And that is never minding the ritual beatings and killings that are not counted under the category of lynching. "I didn't realize it happened that often," gasped this hoarder of books. I am not the only one who didn't know. Of the twenty-odd white colleagues and friends that I canvassed, none came even close to the right figure. Not surprisingly, blacks were less surprised and more accurate. Numbers, however, are not the only facts revealed in this paperback.
Accounts
Legend has it that lynchings were initiated and carried off by bumpkins in sheets. Now and again they were, but more often than not the invitations to the blood feasts came from the merchant class. And in the stories Hollywood has taught us to tell ourselves about the past, we generally stage our race murders out in a grove with anywhere from a handful to a hundred maniacs circled round.
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