Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith

history

Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith were African-Americans who were lynched on August 7, 1930 in Marion, Indiana. They had been arrested the night before, charged with robbing and murdering a white factory worker and raping his girlfriend. A large crowd broke into the jail with sledgehammers, beat the two men, and hanged them. Police officers in the crowd cooperated in the lynching. A third person, 16 year old James Cameron, narrowly escaped lynching thanks to an unidentified participant who announced that he had nothing to do with the rape or murder.The primary source for these events is A Time of Terror, which is an eyewitness account. Relevant passages are quoted in several of the external links, including »photo notes from Without Sanctuary and »Legends of America. Other accounts are in Lynching in the Heartland, listed in the Further reading section, above. A studio photographer, Lawrence Beitler, took a photograph of the dead bodies hanging from a tree surrounded by a large crowd; thousands of copies of the photograph were sold."Lawrence Beitler, a studio photographer, took this photo. For ten days and nights he printed thousands of copies, which sold for fifty cents apiece." from A Time of Terror, quoted in Legends of America, see previous note. See also Lynching in the Heartland, chapter 6 which discusses the photograph in detail.

Overview

The Ku Klux Klan was active in the area.According to the account in A Time of Terror. This is disputed by Madison, in Lynching in the Heartland (on pp 41-42), but supported by the notes to photo 32 in Without Sanctuary. Madison's position is also disputed by the Monroe H Little review of the Madison book. Cynthia Carr, author of »Our Town: A Heartland Lynching, a Haunted Town, and the Hidden History of White America discovered ads for local klan gatherings in Marion newspapers from 1930 during her research for the book, and interviewed subjects that believed the klan was still active at the time of the lynching.

Cameron has stated in interviews that Shipp and Smith had, in fact, started to rob a white man, who was later found shot. He says that he fled when he realized what was going on.in the 2001 Indian university Oral History statement, reported by IDS news at »this link The police accused all three men of murder and rape.in the 2001 Indian university Oral History statement by Cameron. This is also mentioned in pretty much all other accounts of the incident.

Museum

Cameron later became (in 1988) the founder and director of America's Black Holocaust Museum, a museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin dedicated to the history of lynching in the United States The museum's founding date is given in the AP interview/article by Sharon Cohen, which appeared in the Standard-Times on February 17, 2003, and is quoted in the IDS interview, see above. Cameron's position as Founder and Director is also mentioned in the Little review cited earlier and in other sources..

In 1937 Abel Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher from New York, saw a copy of this photograph. Meeropol later said that the photograph "haunted me for days" and inspired the writing of the poem, "Strange Fruit". It was published in the New York Teacher and later in the magazine New Masses, in both cases under the pseudonym Lewis Allan.Holiday's autobiography credits her with co-authoring the song, but »this PBS site credits the music as well as the words to Meeropol. This poem became the text for the song of the same name, performed and popularized by Billie Holiday.According to the »spartacus.schoolnet article and »this PBS site. The song reached 16th place on the charts in July 1939.

Notes

Further reading

  • An American Dilemma by Gunnar Myrdal (Harper and Brothers, 1944);
  • A Time of Terror: A Survivor’s Story by James Cameron (Black Holocaust Museum) (Black Classics Press, 1982). This book has an account of this lynching, by the man who escaped.
  • Lynching in the Heartland by James Madison (St. Martin’s Press, 2000) ISBN 0-312-23902-5.
  • Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America by James Allen, Hilton Als, et al. (Twin Palms Publishers, 2000). Book corresponding to web site cited below.
  • The God Moment by Alan D. Wright

External links

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