Scholar Writes Introduction to New Edition of Powerful Study of Lynching Library: LIF-SOC Keywords: LYNCHING SOUTH AFRICAN-AMERICAN Description: During the deadly 1906 Atlanta race riots -- when future NAACP leader and writer Walter White was just 13 years old -- an angry white mob marched on his home and would have destroyed it if some of his family's black neighbors had not armed themselves with guns and dispersed the rioters.
For immediate use May 7, 2002 -- No. 258
UNC scholar writes introduction to new edition of powerful study of lynching, 'Rope and Faggot'
By DAVID WILLIAMSON UNC News Services
CHAPEL HILL -- During the deadly 1906 Atlanta race riots -- when future NAACP leader and writer Walter White was just 13 years old -- an angry white mob marched on his home and would have destroyed it if some of his family's black neighbors had not armed themselves with guns and dispersed the rioters.
"At that moment, young Walter decided he would continue to live his life as an African-American and not live it as a white," said Dr. Kenneth Janken, associate professor of African and Afro-American studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "White was what in his day was called a 'voluntary Negro.' Even though his parents were born in slavery, his fair complexion, blond hair and blue eyes afforded him a choice. He could have 'passed' over to the dominant race but decided not to."
White's deceptive features served him well as a young man because, without being detected by racists who would have killed him, he passed for white and investigated first hand more than three dozen lynchings and eight race riots, mainly but not exclusively in the South, Janken said. Later, he wrote a book about his discoveries titled "Rope and Faggot," which became something of a classic of both U.S. history and journalism but has been largely forgotten in the past 30 years. The author subtitled it "A Biography of Judge Lynch."
The University of Notre Dame Press recently re-issued White's startling book, and Janken wrote its new introduction.
Most lynchings occurred between the end of the Civil War and the Depression, especially in the 1860s, the late 1800s and the early 1900s, the UNC professor said. In 1868, for example, soon after the Civil War, whites murdered some 2,000 Louisiana blacks within a few weeks. Other Southern states posted similarly gruesome figures. With cheap train fares and the advent of the telephone and increasing automobile ownership, some impending lynchings attracted thousands of eager spectators and spawned souvenir sales such as horrific photographs.
Taken together, these heinous crimes represent perhaps the darkest single chapter in U.S. history, one that is either unknown or little known by most Americans, he said.
"In 1918, White had recently been hired as assistant secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and lived in Harlem when he read a story that shocked him," Janken said. "On Lincoln's birthday, a black man in Estill Springs, Tenn., named Jim McIlherron was castrated, doused with oil, thrown on a pile of logs and set on fire until he died. Within a week, White was in Estill Springs pretending to be a traveling salesman and persuading the local whites to tell him the whole story."
The young writer found out that white youths started an altercation by throwing rocks at McIlherron. They and others resented him because not only did he and his family own land, but he also had spent time living in the North where segregation was not as oppressive. In other words, the mob murdered a man trying to defend himself in the most brutal way they could think of because he might 'poison' the minds of others who had never experienced even moderate political freedom.
"Before writing 'Rope and Foggot' in the late 1920s, White built his career on his undercover investigations," Janken said. "Among the things he either discovered or reinforced were that resentment of blacks usually stemmed from economic competition rather than crime, that whites feared they were losing control of crucial cheap black labor and that the often-stated goal of 'protecting white womanhood' was false. Fewer than 30 percent of black men lynched in South had even been accused of rape or offending white women."
One investigation the crusader conducted in Aiken, S.C., caused something of a national sensation after the New York World newspaper published his findings, he said. A mob that murdered three members of the same family, Bertha, Dedmon and Clarence Lowman, on trumped-up charges included local politicians, law enforcement, businessmen and even two relatives of the governor, who did nothing about the crimes despite promises to catch the culprits.
In another, White found that a mob near Valdosta, Ga., murdered about a dozen innocent blacks, including Hays Turner, whom they strung up for three days and left to rot. When his pregnant wife Mary said she would find out who did it and turn them in to the authorities, thugs doused her with gasoline, hung her upside down from a tree and set her on fire. Later, they slit open her womb so that her baby fell out alive. Then they stomped on the baby's skull and shot to death both mother and child.
Eventually, White returned north above what he called "the Smith & Wesson line" and took a leave of absence from the NAACP to begin his book, Janken said. One of the most disturbing and earliest books ever written about lynching, White's work remains important because it had an enormous impact on social scientists and reformers, if not authorities.
"'Rope and Faggot' retains its significance, too, because its represents the perspective of African-Americans in the fight against mob justice," he wrote. "White insisted on African-Americans' humanity, equality and potential. And neither the book nor its author shrank in the face of hostile white public opinion or shaded a conclusion to gain that public's acceptance.
"In presenting the harsh truth about lynching, Walter White showed himself to be a passionate, consistent and articulate pursuer of racial justice."
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Note: Janken can be reached at (919) 962-1519 or krjanken at email.unc.edu.
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