100 Years of Lynching Have We Forgotten?

Billie Holiday sang of the “Strange Fruit“.  This is one part of many parts of our black history.  The black history of ALL of us.  This is a small part of our human history.  I write about it not to diminish any of our other parts of our history but to spotlight This part for a short time.

Strange Fruit

Southern trees bear 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,

Then the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,

For the rain to gather,  for the wind to suck,

For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,

Here is a strange and bitter crop.

I know a black man who refers to himself as a “traveler” and it’s true that we black folks are “travelers”, not necessarily in the sense of the popular meaning of the word.  We’re not all travelling for pleasure’s sake.  Some of us have travelled  for survival’s sake.  Anyway, wherever we happen to be, we tend to tell the stories–good and bad–of that place we find ourselves.  I’m in North America.  And there are many stories here, that I’m living in right now and that my parents lived in before me and theirs before them… Right here I’m telling a story that happened before me, but that I remember. I know a few bits and pieces and maybe that’s all I want to know.

We talk about lynching in a certain “it’s in the past” kind of attitude.  We no longer can relate to what this thing called lynching actually meant.  Try to imagine what it was like to live in a time when white madmen and madwomen could come out of nowhere and “lynch” you?  Burn you alive with no one to answer to?   This brutality is actually a part of our history as black people, and as North American people.  Those of us who were brought to North America and survived slavery also had to contend with this strange thing called Lynching.

A few years ago when I was busily learning about those special, precious books of our black history–books like Africa’s Gift to America by J.A. Rogers; They Came Before Columbus by Ivan Van Sertima in that beautiful bookstore called Marcus Books here in Oakland,  there was one book–100 Years of Lynching by Ralph Ginzburg, that stood out for it’s bitter truth of a time passed long ago, but not so long ago.  It’s a book of newspaper articles chronicling stories of lynchings of black people in the United States.  I remember that I wanted that book, but I didn’t want to read it.  I just wanted to put it on my shelf as a testimony unlistened to of a time in my history.  The book speaks of a profound sickness of a people, a sickness that has never been addressed.  The sickness is racial hatred.  Why is it that America refuses to do anything about this mass sickness that is STILL tearing away at the souls of so many her white people?

There’s a website that wants to bring remembrance and humanity to those named and unnamed victims of race hatred sickness still going on to this very day.  Strangefruit.org

We ought to think back on our history, and what we’ve endured as black people in America.  We ought to take time to remember our ancestors on whose backs we stand and we ought to acknowledge that we are standing on their backs.  We ought to remain strongly united, because it’s for our own survival that we unite as black people over every dividing  issue that we may have.  Some may say that in these times, racial unity is old and unnecessary.  But if we think carefully, we are always oppressed based on our race.  We should consider very carefully, and ask ourselves if we think that “integration” has erased our black skins and that we struggle on the merits of our individuality.   Too often for us, we are denied access based solely on our race.  If that is so, then it becomes important to be able to unify based on our race, for our continued survival, for our striving and for actually being able to thrive in this perilous land!  And I say that we ought to unite across nationalities, as black people as well!  Overcoming every issue that could cause divisiveness, for the greater good of unity as a black global community!  Imagine what it would look like if we could have each others’ back, nation to nation!  Imagine if the people in Haiti could have counted on every black nation to help them in the time of their greatest need?  If we had that kind of unity, Haiti might be on the road to recovery, rather than languishing in great pain and disease right now.

Black people in America have a very difficult and psychologically damaging and painful history.  Some people say that black people in America are still suffering to this very day from post traumatic stress syndrome–decades longs and being passed from generation to generation.  I personally believe this.  But I also believe that it can be said about many black people worldwide.  We are all suffering many types of post traumatic stress at the hands of our exploited and oppressed history throughout the world.  But turning against each other, nation to nation will not help us!  Turning our backs on each other and being too harsh and condemning of each other can’t possible help either.  Our harshness and coldness to each other just makes us extremely vulnerable to exploitation from other struggling  peoples of the world, who are more than willing to stake their own survival on our disunity–oftentimes becoming rich and fat at our expense while we rot in starvation and degradation and psychosis, simply because we refused to overcome our differences and practice and display an ability to give the benefit of the doubt to each other in love and care!  Can you love your black brother, blackman, even if he did you wrong?  Can you forgive your black sister, black woman, even if she did you wrong?

If we remain unwilling to do these simple things, then we have to know that we will continue to be “Strange Fruit”  for the entire world to devour.