Class Synopsis 11/2/12

We started the class reminiscing on Ida B. Wells and the presentations on her life throughout the week. Surrounding the societal control that lynching provided, we expanded on the precedence lynching had in other eras, in other parts of the world. As economic expansion is experienced, there are folks who want to maintain the status quo of society. For example: the Salem Witch Trials and the Holocaust. Just like these significant instances in history, spectacle lynching was a product of a threatened population. There is the need for a scapegoat or a need to maintain social hierarchy; therefore, a specific population is dominated through violence. American lynching is a product of historical precedence as America modernizes. In essence, while a desired change is taking place (modernization), there are some facets of society that the dominant population want to keep dominant (White culture/social status).

Spectacle lynching became just that… a spectacle. This was a point in time that the Middle Class had never seen before: a time in which leisure time was experienced and entertainment was demanded. This was the same time the masses enjoyed baseball, circuses, and carnivals; naturally anything that could be considered “entertainment” was made popular and available to the masses. To fill the free-time of the populace, special trains were run, photographs were offered, and postcards were written, all within a single lynching. These patterns became something of a ritual, mimicking the popular baseball games: whereas in the latter, one could buy a ticket, eat a hotdog, cheer for the home team, and get players’ autographs, at a lynching, one could watch or take part in the victim’s jailbreak, confession, torture, hanging, shooting, and burning. If you were “lucky,” you’d even get some sort of souvenir (a charred finger or toe) in the process. If a little less unlucky, you could still get a photograph with the still-warm body to take home.

Finishing the topic of American lynching, we discussed how it is, essentially, a modern phenomenon, due to the rise in racial terror. Between 1890 and 1940 was the height of the Jim Crow Era. In that time, nearly 5,000 were executed by the lynching method, and that number may be largely undercounted. Of those 5,000, most of them were black males, their number rising each decade as a way to “keep blacks in their place.”

Nothing about lynching was legal. However, it was sanctioned by the state, if not the federal government. To put one’s self in the shoes of a Black contemporary, who would you go to for help? At the public displays, police, sheriffs, and even judges were present at the lynching. W.E.B. DuBois’s question, How do you poke holes in the sky?” becomes pertinent at this time.

Moving on to religion and culture in our discussion, we talked about the politics of respectability, still relevant in the Victorian Age of America. The shift of respectability, however, was to economic status, of which few African Americans at the time had little to make do with. A product of slaves or former slaves, the Afro-American populace had little material wealth to speak of, leaving them at the bottom tier on the social hierarchy. This was the time in which DuBoise spoke to the “Talented Tenth” that would lead and guide the entire race out of its social slump. Within that conversation, many Black Christians subscribed to a brand of Christianity that equated all humanity. Since every human was made of the same stuff and reflective of God’s image, religious intellectuals pushed for equal socio-economic treatment. In this way, they taught their church-sanctioned counter-narratives.

Sarah Smith gave us a great review of Blues People, in which the author emphasized the growth of the arts in tandem with societal issues and Black cultural identity. An interesting juxtaposition I picked up on was that Jazz was acceptable in the mainstream, both Black and White, while Blues music was considered something akin to Black “grunge” music. With the Blues being so prevalent (yet still “underground”?), Billie Holliday’s “Strange Fruit” became a headline. In which, she explicitly attacks the morality of lynching. The hauntingly beautiful song is one facet in the Harlem Renaissance in which what it means to be a Black artist resounds: “Am I a Black artist, or am I an artist who happens to be Black?” Either way, we can all agree that the art produced in this period is reflective of the society at large, the politics of respectability, lynching, Jim Crow, and Black unity within the Church, boycotting, and protest. Professor McKinney likens the artwork of this time to Picasso’s Guernica, noting one specific quote: When asked “Who did this?” Picasso answered, “You did,” a nod to all people, not one in particular. In this way, art became “another arrow in the quiver” for social commentary.