Ashley Akunna: On Lynching, Police Brutality, and Anti-Black Terrorism

Now This Opinions feature short but provocative videos offering real deal perspectives on controversial issues. I often appreciate them. But in the effort to make one clear point, the speaker sometimes has to leave out the broader context. And this frustrates me. I know that only so much can get said in a few short minutes (which is, unfortunately, all many viewers in the U.S. will give a topic, no matter how complicated or crucial). Yet, in my opinion, to leave out the context is to weaken the argument.

I am sharing the op-ed above because Ashley Akunna's voice is one that needs to be heard on lynching, police brutality, and anti-Black terrorism. But after watching it the first time, I broke into tears. Not because of what was said, but because expecting cops to have and demonstrate empathy for Black people sidesteps the point that most cops are not rogues operating individually or exceptionally.

Federal Judge Goes On the Record About Lynching in Mississippi

Re-posted from National Public Radio:

Here's an astonishing speech by U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, who in 2010 became the second African-American appointed as federal judge in Mississippi. He read it to three young white men [on Tuesday, February 10th,] before sentencing them for the death of a 48-year-old black man named James Craig Anderson in a parking lot in Jackson, Miss., one night in 2011. They were part of a group that beat Anderson and then killed him by running over his body with a truck, yelling "white power" as they drove off.

The speech is long; Reeves asked the young men to sit down while he read it aloud in the courtroom. And it's breathtaking, in both the moral force of its arguments and the palpable sadness with which they are delivered...A warning to readers: He uses the word "nigger" 11 times.

Credit Where Credit Is Due*

While browsing my usual blog-reads this week-end, I stopped by Hysterical Blackness, as I often do (here) and read an account of a U.S. Senate resolution a year ago that apologized for that body's failure to enact federal anti-lynching legislation even when seven Presidents requested specifically that they do so (see this site.) Apparently, the good Senators of previous decades preferred to filibuster rather than risk their constituents not having the freedom to attack and even murder African-Americans (and most particularly African-American men) at will without risk of legal consequences. I would most certainly have known about this when the resolution passed had I not been seriously ill and awaiting surgery last June, but even a year later, I'm grateful to find out about it now.

On the surface, it might not be immediately apparent to some folks why lynching needed to be prosecuted as a federal crime. But the fact is that, as long as states got to decide whether or not a "crime" had been committed, they seemed to keep deciding that it had not. And it wasn't just in the South either. One photograph most of us have seen, for example, was taken at a lynching in Marion, Indiana (remember?). It seems bizarre to most of us now, but it was often standard practice to take photos, turn them into postcards, and mail them out to all your relatives and friends to brag about your presence at the event in question, scrawling across the back of the card statements like "we know how to treat 'em here!"

So you can see how inconvenient it would have been for ordinary White folks to have to worry about some big time federal agents nosing around what just wasn't any of their business.

When Harry T. and Harriette Moore died in their beds as a result of their house in central Florida being bombed on Christmas eve in 1951, everybody knew the Klan did it in retaliation for Harry's work with the NAACP. And everybody knew who the Klan members were. Susan Carol McCarthy, who spent her girlhood around many of the principals, including Moore, recently authored a very intriguing novel about the occurrence entitled "Lay That Trumpet In Our Hands." Still, while the feds were chomping at the bit to do something about it, they couldn't--because murder isn't a federal crime and the state just didn't feel it could make an adequate case against the very important (and very powerful) "gentlemen" who formed the leadership of the local Klan implicated. You get the picture.

Anyway, so the Senate's long-standing unwillingness to intervene in this process on behalf of their constituents of color finally became more or less moot with the establishment of the concept of the "hate crime," but not before thousands and thousands of African-American men were horrifically and sometimes publically tortured to death, generally without any repercussions of any kind for the perpetrators. The official statistics are more than 4700 between 1882 and 1968 (keeping in mind that where no body was found, no lynching could be declared; lynchings are still occurring; and sometimes, such as in the case of Malcolm X's father, the death might be called a "suicide" in spite of the fact that his head had been bashed in and his body placed on a railroad track). Still, using even the very conservative figure of 4700, it averages out to about one per week for 86 years, with incidents appearing in all but four of the states in the union.

So an apology--at the least--was overdue and in order. And while many of the Senators didn't care enough to be present for the voice vote, for which there are no records as to who voted how, 89 out of the 100 of them eventually decided to go on record as co-sponsoring the resolution with Republican Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. I thought it only appropriate that the ten who decided not to go on record as co-sponsoring the resolution, under those circumstances, ought to get recognition for their...um...shall we say "oversight?"

It is true, of course, that it was a voice vote (and how very convenient of the Senators to give their brothers the option of an "out"--something the victims of lynchings did not receive). Consequently, we can't prove the following Senators voted against the resolution, which passed, in any case. But we know for a fact (thanks to this site.) that they were the only ones out of 100 that chose not to co-sponsor the Senate resolution apologizing to lynching victims and their descendents for not enacting legislation that might have saved at least some of their lives by establishing a clear expectation of sanctions for the egregious crimes committed against them. In alphabetical order, then, the Senators who do not appear on the list of co-sponsors are Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Robert Bennett (R-UT), Thad Cochran (R-MS), John Cornyn (R-TX), Michael Enzi (R-WY), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Trent Lott (R-MS), Richard Shelby (R-AL), John E. Sununu (R-NH), and Craig Thomas (R-WY). Just thought you should know.

*This post is dedicated to the memory of those unfortunate souls of color who died in terror at the hands of White murderers and to the victims' descendents who will ever bear the sorrow of that horrifying experience.