I was privileged to attend the opening ceremony of the new exhibition at the Chicago Historical Society. The exhibit itself is of picture post cards of lynchings from the mid 1800s to the mid 1900s. They read the names of a few hundred of the lynching victims. It was very moving.
One of the most moving speeches, however, was given by Philip Blackwell, a minister at the Chicago Temple.
I asked him to forward me a copy of his speech, and here it is, in its entirety, for your reading pleasure.
"Without Sanctuary"
The Chicago Historical Society
June 4, 2005
They say that when Billie Holiday sang "Strange Fruit" she sang without affect. No emotion, no gestures, no interpretation, no artistic nuances, just the stark, ugly truth.
"Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root.
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop."
That is what we see when we look at the picture postcards of this exhibition entitled, "Without Sanctuary," truth about us in all the violent vulgarity that hatred, arrogance, bigotry, and evil can produce. Look at the postcards closely; force yourselves to stay with them. For there you will see not only the way we were but also why we are the way we are today. This is not a history lesson; it is a social commentary on today.
Look at the photographs. There are the victims - mutilated, carved, sliced, burned, and then as the climax of a well-planned ritual, lynched. Some were innocent, others guilty of crimes. By far most of the victims in this collection, as was the case historically, are African-American men. There is a woman or two, a white man, a few Hispanics. But it is clear whom America feared most.
Look again; look at the others in the photographs, the spectators, the bystanders, the perpetrators, the thrill-seekers. Look at them for they are looking directly at you. They are not obscuring their identity, ducking down not to be recognized. No, they are standing tall and posing, proud to be there. No remorse. No shame.
Look, there is the village librarian. The grocer, the Sunday School teacher, the doctor, the judge. Over there under the tree, there is the bank president, the farmer, the preacher, the mother with her children on a holiday from school to see the lynching. And there . . . could that be you? Maybe so, maybe not. Might that be me? Perhaps.
One of the extraordinary facts about these postcards is that they show ordinary people committing sins of the most reprehensible kind. And the question must be - What does it take for average people to do this? What breakdown of the rule of law must occur so that people believe that they know better than the judges and the courts? Sound at all familiar? We hear the same cry today from many of the self-righteous.
What disfiguration of our American democracy must happen that leads the majority to assume that it has a right to exert its will against the minority without regard for justice? We can see it now in the houses of government, but that is not what our Constitution guarantees. The Constitution exists to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. It exists to submit majority rule to a series of checks and balances.
Justice is defined by what we do with, and for, the most threatened and most vulnerable in our society. A humane justice, the only kind that is worth seeking, bends toward mercy.
And a parochial word, if you would allow me, as a Christian minister, as the senior pastor of the First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple: I am astounded that people who could call themselves "Christians," who could claim as their Lord and Savior a man who was convicted by a mob of ridiculous charges and was hung on a tree to die, how such "true believers" could participate in these lynchings. It betrays every tenet of the Christian faith. And yet, they did, happily they did. It is an abomination that puts God's grace to the test.
In this collection of postcard horrors we have a graphic portrayal of America's gravest sin, racism - virulent, obscene, blasphemous racism, primarily white-on-black racism. Yes, it can exist in other shades and hues, but our history tells us where our peculiar fault line lies. These photographs show us. Racism has kept us from being a truly great nation, and it may yet destroy us. The legacy of this epoch of lynching is that there still is no absolutely safe place for African-Americans in our society, especially African-American men, especially African-American young men.
I take it that is, at least in part, what the title of the exhibition means. "Without Sanctuary." No safe place. There is on the north door of Durham Cathedral in England a sanctuary doorknocker. It is in the shape of a lion's head with a handle looped from ear-to-ear. The story has it that if you are being chased by a mob, or even by the sheriff, and you grab hold of that doorknocker before they grab hold of you, you are protected by the clergy of the cathedral. You have "sanctuary." You are safe.
When you look at these photographs you can imagine that there was no safe place for these victims, including those who were being housed in the local jail. The mobs broke down the doors, and the jailors stood by and watched.
Many of the photographs look old and of a bygone era. Photography has made huge advances over the century; human nature has not. The postcards disturb us precisely because the images refuse to stay in the past; they grab our hearts here and now and give them an awful twist.
I grew up in Danville, downstate between Champaign-Urbana and Terre Haute. I did not hear of any lynchings there in the 1940's; I pray that there were none. But then, as a small child I did not know that there were African-American children living in Danville. I did not know about the other side of town across the bridge.
Then one summer the circus came to town, the Clyde Beatty Circus. And our family went to the Armory to see it. What an eyeful I had as a four-year-old - the elephants and lions, the band, the clowns, the ropes and nets and the people doing amazing things on the trapeze. But the one thing that stays with me most to this day is the setting with all the African-American kids and their parents sitting up in the balcony and all the white kids with their parents sitting on the main floor. Clear segregation by race, absolute division, no explanation, perhaps not even any second thoughts. I did not know then what I was seeing, but today I do - the evil of racism.
A few years ago I went back to Danville, found the old Armory with a door unlocked, walked in, and discovered that the place was tiny! Not much bigger than a school gym. The balcony, this great divide from the main floor, hung so low that as I stood on my tiptoes I almost could touch it by reaching up. The difference was only from here to there, a few feet, but it made all the difference in the world back then. I still can see it; I am certain that the kids in the balcony still can feel it.
Progress over the decades? Sure, some. But we have a long way to go, and why it has been so hard for us is right here before our very eyes to see. The picture postcards, with victims hanging as strange fruit from the poplar trees, with the crowds looking pleased with themselves, some cards with self-congratulatory messages written on the back ("Yes, that's me standing over on the left under the tree."), tell us a sad and horrifying story about ourselves. To be other than that, to be better than that, to be a merciful society relying upon a system of justice for all we must look ourselves straight in the eye and not blink. Look at the postcards and imagine fashioning a safe place where we all can live together.
Philip L. Blackwell