America apologises for the horrors of lynching (The Observer)

[Up2Late]

America apologises for the horrors of lynching

Senate admits failing to stop 'holocaust' of public executions

Avis Thomas-Lester and Mark Townsend
Sunday June 12, 2005
The Observer

Anna Holmes remembers hearing about the bridge when she was a little girl. It stood near where the Collington and Western branches of the Patuxent river met, less than a quarter of a mile from the Marlboro jail. "I used to hear them talking about the lynchings," said Holmes, 79, who spent her childhood in the area, Prince George's County, Maryland.

Stephen Williams, a black man accused of manhandling a white woman, was beaten and hanged on the bridge in the early hours of 20 October, 1894. A masked mob snatched him from his cell and dragged him away as he pleaded for his life. "When the Marlboro bridge was reached, the rope was quickly tied to the railing and amid piteous groans Williams was hurled into eternity," the Washington Post reported.

There was no federal law against lynching and most states refused to prosecute whites for killing black people. The House of Representatives three times agreed to make lynching a federal offence. Each time, the measure died in the Senate at the hands of southern members.

Tomorrow, too late for Williams and the 4,742 others murdered by lynch mobs between 1882 and 1968, the Senate will vote on a motion apologising for the failure to enact an anti-lynching law first proposed 105 years ago. "The apology is long overdue," said Republican Senator George Allen, sponsoring the resolution with Democrat Mary Landrieu.

(more at link above)

[mark414]

1. about fucking time

although this is no more than window dressing...perhaps they will start to take some serious action to right the wrongs of the past???

doubt it...

[HEyHEY]

2. Such wrongs can never be righted

Physical pain can never be taken back.

[jobycom]

6. True, but it's not really about righting wrongs

as much as admitting that we now recognize those wrongs and the suffering they caused, hopefully with the committment to avoid such wrongs in the future.

[saigon68]

41. HELL LYNCHING USED TO BE A SPORT ( GRAPHIC VIOLENT PHOTO)

http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0309/lm18.html




Lynching 1930

A mob of 10,000 whites took sledgehammers to the county jailhouse doors to get at these two young blacks accused of raping a white girl; the girl’s uncle saved the life of a third by proclaiming the man’s innocence. Although this was Marion, Ind., most of the nearly 5,000 lynchings documented between Reconstruction and the late 1960s were perpetrated in the South. (Hangings, beatings and mutilations were called the sentence of “Judge Lynch.”) Some lynching photos were made into postcards designed to boost white supremacy, but the tortured bodies and grotesquely happy crowds ended up revolting as many as they scared.

LOOK AT THE HAPPY "SPORTSMEN AND WOMEN"

[jobycom]

44. If we taught more about lynchings in schools

we might have more liberals.

You're right, it was a sport to some, and just family entertainment to others. People were lynched in town squares with the police chief looking on, people were lynched in playhouses where tickets were sold. Pictures were taken and sold as souvenirs. Yet no one could ever figure out who was involved. One lynching in Waco drew a crowd of 15,000.

They still debate in Waco how to memorialize that lynching. Whites want to pretend it didn't happen, to, as they so gratiously put it, "move on." But Texas is a state that refuses to pass strict hate crime legislation, despite being a state where it is needed the most. (I'm not bashing Texas, I live here.)

We don't need to forget. That's the worst thing we could do.

http://www.prisonpotpourri.com/EXECUTED/HoustonChronicle_com%20-%20Notorious%20Waco%20lynching%20won't%20be%20forgotten.html

[icymist]

52. Those people really look as if they're enjoying themselves!

Kind of similar to the prison abuses we're seeing now, isn't it?

[saigon68]

55. You are absolutely correct.

Put a crowd of ignorant white rustic Crackers together and they will love seeing some black or brown man getting the shit kicked out or his head bashed in.

They are having a good time

Look at the men on the left and their "dates". Hell, these people are in a state of bliss and happiness at seeing a black man beaten to death and then "strung up".

[Tomee450]

31. I couldn't agree with you more.

Nothing but window dressing. Even as this apology is issued racial tensions are rising partly because of the tactics employed by the Republicans. George Allen of Virginia? I think it was he who in the nineties signed a confederate month proclamation and called the NAACP an extremist organization. He also hung a noose from a tree in his office and the Confederate flag at his home. He claimed the flag was just part of a flag collection. He also opposed one of the civil rights acts and when a state senator was opposed to the Martin Luther King holiday. I just cannot believe a man with that kind of recent history has changed.

The apology is due but I wonder why Allen is involved.

[montana_hazeleyes]

3. I bet

if it was up before the senate we have right now they'd do the same damn thing.

[evlbstrd]

4. I used to drive over that bridge all the time.

No wonder it always - ALWAYS - gave me a creepy feeling.

[noiretextatique]

5. gee, thanks a lot...take a look at this passage from the article

further down in the article....
Lynching touched all races and religions. Immigrants were frequent targets, so much so that at the start of the 20th century the State Department paid nearly $500,000 to China, Italy and Mexico on behalf of lynching victims.

fascinating...would these payments be considered <gasp> reparations?
:sarcasm:

But the killings were mainly in the South and four out of five victims were black, according to statistics compiled by Tuskegee University in Alabama. Many had not been accused of anything more than answering back a white man or looking at a white woman. Black landowners were frequent targets.

no mention of any payments for these killings. perhaps they couldn't figure out which african country to pay :shrug:

[Solly Mack]

9. Sounds like reparations to me

[noiretextatique]

10. but no reparations for the black victims who were americans

they paid the governments of italy, china and mexico...but the families of black lynching victims got: a few more decades jim crow with and more lynching...and an apology some 100 years after later.
thanks, american legislators...thanks a lot.

[wellst0nev0ter]

11. I Say Black People Need To GET OVER IT

At least that's what the people of Oklahoma said recently:

Members of the Tulsa Reparations Coalition had hoped they wouldn't be at this place again--square one. After all, the State of Oklahoma had put together a commission to study the matter nearly five years before, and in 2001 it recommended that the state make reparations to the 130 survivors of what some call the worst race riot in US history--the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. More than 300 blacks were killed and 10,000 left homeless after a mob of white deputies and Oklahoma National Guardsmen descended on the all-black Greenwood section of Tulsa, burning everything in sight. "Reparations were promised by civic and city leaders of the time but did not come through," says State Representative Don Ross, whose district encompasses Greenwood.

Instead, last spring the state decided to establish committees to establish a race riot memorial, as well as a scholarship and a community development fund for this underdeveloped, mostly black area known as North Tulsa. "Those were the concepts that were politically possible," Ross says. But the state didn't put any money into any of the committees, Ross confirms, adding that "some private funds have been raised."

:eyes: :eyes:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020318&s=brune

[noiretextatique]

13. i think black people could get over it...if

anything ever changed. the tulsa government needs to hand over LAND AND MONEY since that's what was lost (in addition to lives) in that riot. they can shove that memorial up the same place i'd put this apology.

[Solly Mack]

12. Protecting your image abroad counts for more than protecting your

own citizens, or your image at home, is the message. Sounds like Bush thinking doesn't it?...but then Bush-league thinking has been a part of America for a long, long time.

America is big on band-aids and token gestures...I honestly don't see this apology as anything other than just another token gesture.

Sometimes, sorry just doesn't cut it.

[noiretextatique]

15. yes, it is the same old story

and they can shove that apology as far as i'm concerned. the only good that might come out of it is the fact that reparations were in fact paid...elsewhere.

[Solly Mack]

16. Yep...it's an established precedent

[MzShellG]

35. What logical reasoning...

Do you suppose is behind black people being excluded from receiving reparations, whereas, every other ethnic group has been granted some sort of financial settlement? I wonder why there such controversy regarding black people and reparations, even amongst the democrats.

[SemperEadem]

46. One word answer: Hatred

Hate is their reasoning. Who is the author of hate, for that is who they worship?

[noiretextatique]

47. easy...most don't believe reparations are due

what's behind it? deep, impenatrable, almost genetic racism. that racism justitified not paying reparations directly to former slaves or the families of black lynching victims...or the living victims of the theft at the core of the tulsa riot. the truth of american history is never taught...what is taught is the white-washed version...about indians, about africans, about the chinese, the mexicans, italians, irish, and so on, so many are ignorant about the history. if you are ignorant about the history, you are more inclined to believe it's all equal now...it wasn't a big deal...or it was a long time ago, or blah, blah, blah.
someone recently told me that a person she knew in college...get this...had never, ever heard about american slavery...not ever. she literally did not know it had existed. and the more she learned about it, to her credit, the more horrified and upset she became. she's an anti-racism activist today.

on a side note: today, a big part of the issue is money. in tulsa, for example, black people owned what is now prime real estate, and the city of tulsa is not about to part with it, nor are its "rightful" owners. nor will they pay the victims, as they said they would. instead...they want to waste money on building a damn monument commemorating the riot...or its victims...or whatthefuckever. about as meaningful as this apology :hurts:

[jobycom]

7. This is why hate crime legislation should be passed.

"There was no federal law against lynching and most states refused to prosecute whites for killing black people. The House of Representatives three times agreed to make lynching a federal offence. Each time, the measure died in the Senate at the hands of southern members."

Every time I hear arguments against passing federal or state hate crime legislation, I think of this whole era of our history. The same arguments are still used. It amazes me how we can understand something in the past but not in the present.

[alphafemale]

8. Strange Fruit

What's horrifying is how casual it all was. The website "Without Sanctuary" is no longer up. But I did find the following piece describing the exihibit.


"Perhaps even more chilling than the images of dangling bodies are the hundreds of white faces gathered to watch the ritual killings, their rapt, expectant faces frozen forever on film. Men, women, even children of barely two generations ago point and smile as if they’re watching a hog tie at the county fair, not a human life ending in degradation and agony. “Their beaming faces,” wrote Tucker, “bear witness to their depraved souls.”

Just as African Americans now must experience the pain that comes of identifying with the victims, so must whites endure the sting of recognition, says Smith. But the potential for progress is great.

“This exhibition could provide the catalyst for a kind of breakthrough on race awareness in the U.S. like nothing else has been able to do,” Smith says. “As white Americans have reported to me, they see themselves in those photographs in a way they never have before. They look at those bystanders and see their aunts, uncles, people who could have been their own family members, and say, how could we have been party to this kind of violence?”

from:
http://www.emory.edu/EMORY_MAGAZINE/summer2002/without_sanctuary.html

[KansDem]

54. "The website "Without Sanctuary" is no longer up..."

Try these:
http://www.southernpicker.com/WS/main.html

http://www.withoutsanctuary.org/

[0007]

14. When are we gonna get to the 2000 voting rights for the blacks

in the State of Florida? Another 105 fucking years?

[sweetheart]

17. Racism is now

It figures the senate would be up to excusing themselves for CURRENT
laws and issues related to racism that still today have most persons
in prison overwhelmingly black, still have jim crow laws and black
voter disenfranchisement in elections, STILL... and there is no
apology if they keep doing it!

These same senators are supporting a race-war in iraq where americans
shoot brown asians with impunity, pushing through court appointees who
deem racism ok in the workplace and so many other areas of endemic
racism. It seems the GOP is all about making gestures so that the
reality is undiscovered. Oh, they're apologizing for lynchings 100
years ago whilst fucking over another generation of minorities.

It is so totally unimpressive and landreau is a vichy dem, as much
as all lynchings are deplorable, this is giving the white racist
party some feel-good PR so they can feel better at the next lynching.

[malaise]

22. That's why

nothing they do will move me. African descendants across the globe won't even get reparations. I hate the leaders of this planet and more than a few of their followers.

[teryang]

18. Maybe they should apologize for what they're doing now

...in Iraq.

[Solly Mack]

25. That doesn't come for another 2-3 hundred years

Apologizing many years down the road prevents a real solution.... and real solutions require people to take a real stand against the wrongs that are currently being committed.

It's kind of like keeping MLK up on the shelf all year, then bringing him down for that one day, dusting him off, and pretending to adhere to his teachings and example. It's a feel good kind of thing...

[fasttense]

19. Yeah, they are sorry? Well, than put your money where your mouth is.

Give the victim's families something back like we did in 9/11.

[malaise]

20. 100 years from now

they'll apologize for invading Iraq and murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens in their own homeland. These meaningless apologies mean zilch to me.

[Mr.Green93]

21. Now

about those reparations.

[bunkerbuster1]

23. somewhere, Jesse Helms is fuming

"If it wuzzint fer them OUTSIDE ajeetaters, everthin woulda been awlrat..."

[MountainLaurel]

43. And Strom Thurmond

Is spinning in his grave like a rotisserie chicken on that Ron Popeil machine.

[candy331]

24. And so here is the rub, the repubs of today.

"Each time, the measure died in the Senate at the hands of southern members".

[Toots]

26. Would I object if the Cabal was hauled out and lynched?

:shrug: Justice would be served but I would turn away in shame.

[bemildred]

27. "Senate to vote on apologizing for the horrors of lynching".

More like. They ain't done nothing yet, and if they do, it still
won't be much.

[sweetheart]

28. It's reverse PR for being branded with "white christian party"

The dems should refuse to cooperate with a GOP PR exercise... landreau
is an ass.

[bemildred]

30. That had occurred to me too.

At least, it is a large coincidence that it suddenly
dawned on the leaders of the Senate that lynching urgently
needed to be apologized for now.

[mccoyn]

42. I agree.

I agree, they are doing this so that a republican controlled senate has evidence to argue against the claim that they racists. Strategically it sucks for the democrats. They shouldn't stop it though. First its just something that shouldn't be stopped. Second it would be a bad move strategically.

Instead the democrats should be pushing for something more. Push the rhetoric that empty statements are nothing and they should be voting on reparations for the families of lynching victims. Either the republican controlled senate refuses it or the reparations go through. Both are considerablly better than rubber stamping an empty jesture for the republicans.

[Twillig]

29. Isn't this more about killing filibusters than

being sorry about lynching? They want to create the sentiment that 'filibusters are bad, see?'

Hey Landrieu, this bunch of fascist bastards in the senate do not have good intentions.

Like the cabal of murderers in the white house (and John Wayne) they see an apology as a sign of weakness. They will turn your good intentions back around on you as a weapon.

[AirAmFan]

34. The TIMING and sponsorhip of this "apology" sure are suspect,

aren't they?

I wonder whether the wording of the "apology" will amount to a "sense of the Senate" resolution that the filibuster is an archaic practice which must now end.

Someone should ask Senator Allen (R-VA) whether he's going to do anything about a legacy of slavery that continues in full force in his state and other southern states: lifetime "felon disfranchisement".

This practice began at the end of Reconstruction, when Union soldiers pulled out of the former Confederate states, with legislation whose racist intent was expressed openly. Together with a current criminal "justice" system that incarcerates blacks at rates 7 or more times white incarceration rates, these laws take voting rights away from up to a third of Southern black men in states where they're still on the books. Would Allen even be in the Senate without Virginia's racist voting laws? His sponsoring this."apology" is the utmost in hypocrisy.

[Zerex71]

32. When's it going to apologize about IRAQNAM?

[noiretextatique]

33. considering this precedent

we can expect those apologies in another hundred years, give or take a decade or two.

[NVMojo]

36. Senate plans lynching apology

Wonder who the 9 are who won't sign on as sponsors?? How can we find out?

Jun. 13, 2005 12:00 AM

The U.S. Senate plans today to officially apologize to the victims of lynchings and the descendants of those victims for its failure to ever pass anti-lynching legislation.

A voice vote will be taken on a non-binding "sense of the Senate" resolution (Senate Resolution 39), sponsored by Sens. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and George Allen, R-Va., expressing remorse for the Senate's not helping to stop a crime that took the lives of at least 4,742 people, mostly Blacks, in at least 46 states between 1882 and 1968.

A lynching is a type of group violence that leads to someone being killed without a legal trial, usually by hanging. The exact number of lynchings that occurred across the nation is unknown.

In Arizona, there were 31 known lynchings from 1882 to 1968, according to Landrieu's spokesman, Adam Sharp.

U.S. Senate filibusters and other procedural delays blocked more than 200 anti-lynching bills over the first half of the 20th century.


more...

http://www.azcentral.com/php-bin/clicktrack/print.php?referer=http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0613AZinDC13.html

[Onlooker]

37. But they won't apologize for slavery

At any rate, I suppose one could say they're faster than that Catholic Church that took something like 500 years to apologize for the Inquisitiion.

[saigon68]

56. or burning astonomers at the STAKE.

Catholic Criminals now led by Rat-Man.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

38. Apology? Shit they've paid reparations to other cultures for less!

[merwin]

39. They're really broadening the definition of filibuster.

Yes, technically it means simply to delay via procedures. However, it's never been used in that way in reference to our government.

[AuntiBush]

40. Claiming "7 Presidents" have tried this before but Congress

ruled against it, I read about this, this morning and the 1st thing that came to mind was "it's just another ploy to make the GOP/Repuke/Bush Adm look wonderful to the African American public."

I don't think they're going to buy it anytime soon. They're not stupid by any means.

[SemperEadem]

45. Thanks for the apology, now pass the goddamn measure

from the article: "Seven Presidents argued for making it a federal offence. None of this swayed the Senate, where southerners insisted a federal law would intrude on states' rights."

States right to do what? Sanction murder by civilians? When did having murder festivals become a right in any of the states in the Union?

[insane_cratic_gal]

48. Senate to Atone for Lynching Ban Delays

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050613/ap_on_go_co/lynching_apology;_ylt=Aqw7QegZ3mpM8FWKh4zAGVWs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2MTQ3MTFjBHNlYwN0cw--

The Senate resolution is sponsored by Sens. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and George Allen, R-Va. The bill, likely to be subject to a voice vote, states that nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in the first half of the 20th century but that nothing got through.

The nonbinding measure apologizes for this failure and expresses "most solemn regrets of the Senate to the descendants of victims of lynching."

Landrieu's spokesman, Adam Sharp, said that Johnson was expected to be joined in the Senate by other descendants of victims, including a cousin of Emmett Till, the black teenager killed in Mississippi 50 years ago, reportedly for whistling at a white woman. The FBI earlier this month exhumed Till's body to search for clues to his slaying.

Landrieu called lynching and mob violence were "an American form of terrorism" documented in at least 46 states





you think they are trying to rebuke Dean's remarks?

[barbaraann]

49. Is this to demonstrate that the filibuster is evil?

I'm suspicious whenever Republicans appear to be doing the right thing.

[oly]

50. FDR and Truman couldn't get them through congress.

FDR and Truman couldn't get them through congress. At the time, of course, the South was full up of Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmon, Trent Lott kind of guys. They were mostly Dems at the time -- George Wallace Dems. FDR needed them to support the war effort and New Deal reforms. Threats of stalling congressional business were made if FDR pushed anti-lynching laws. Sad days in American history. Of course, Wallace Dems have morphed into the Repug base. I'm betting the wingnuts will be blaming southern Dems for not passing the laws, knowing full well that this entire group moved to the Repug party after the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And, of course, Repugs don't support any of the anti-hate laws supported by Dems today.

[candy331]

51. Republicans are so pathetic, really thinking that the majority of

African Americans would even sign on to this nonsense. What about the unequal sentencing for crack cocaine vs powder where so many young blacks are in prison for less crack than whites for powder. This want stop the White Christian party. When I look at pictures of the lynchings and see women and children there to watch, it just brings tears to my eyes. America is a nation that refuses to believe that she is and has been as bad as some other nations. The shame of it all no apology can ever right.

[Orsino]

53. So when are they closing Abu Ghraib?

And committing to due process for everyone accused of a crime?

[burrowowl]

57. Go to BuzzFlash

or here and now we know! maybe, but logical:

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/06/senate-offices-intentionally-lying.html

Same on those in other posts who castigated Byrd!

[burrowowl]

58. Kick!

One ND-D voted against, the rest were Repukes!