infinite improbability

lynching?

I don't know how much of a story this was in other parts of the country, but several months ago, an African American man was found hanging from a tree in his front yard in Belle Glade, Florida. The police ruled it a suicide, but there was sufficient suspicion amoung the African American community in Belle Glade that an inquest was held to try to determine the cause of the man's death because many people suspected that it was a lynching and not a suicide. It was, and is, a highly suspicious case--the man was dating the daughter of the white police chief, much of the evidence at the scene was destroyed by the inept handling of the case by the officers called to the scene (no attempt was made to preserve the crime scene, the ground around where the body was hanging was trampled by officers destroying any potential evidence on the ground), and there are conflicting reports as to whether the man's hands were bound (the squad car video showed his hands hanging free, but the family member who found him said that his hands were bound but the officers untied them).

I don't know whether it was a lynching or not, but I certainly understand why people in the community are suspicious. The Associated Press, on the other hand, seems to be trying to convince people that the lynching rumors are nothing more than an irrational urban legend. An AP story which ran in papers all over the country, including my local paper, implied that African Americans are more inclined than white people to believe urban legends, that lynchings have reached the status of urban legends because they reached their peak over a hundred years ago, and thus any modern-day lynching rumors are just urban legends that have no basis in reason or reality. You can read the article here .

My sister Rebekah wrote an excellent response to the AP article, and her response was published as a letter to the editor in Sunday's paper. You can read it on the Bradenton Herald website, or continue reading the extended entry.

Lynching fear has a legitimate basis

An Aug. 24 Associated Press article on the suspicious death of an African-American man in Belle Glade very incorrectly implies that the lynching of African-Americans is an urban legend. Although the reporter correctly states that the peak in lynching was more than a century ago, she fails to acknowledge that it still happened, although with a lesser frequency, even into the 1960s, and was used as an ever-present threat by whites to keep ambitious African-Americans in a subservient place in society. The ultimate punishment for African-American crime, real or imagined, and/or the subordination of white dominance was death by lynching. African-Americans, usually males, were violently killed by mobs, most often by hanging, when they violated color barriers by even looking at a white person the "wrong way," but especially when a white woman was involved. Pictures of lynchings abound because attendees chronicled the event with pictures and post cards that they sent to family and friends. Women and children even attended lynchings, and smiles are plastered on the faces of those attending these celebrated social events.

Lynching is no urban myth. With a horribly sordid past history like this plaguing our nation, it is ridiculous for anyone to suggest that the African-American community in Belle Glade should not look upon the death of this young African-American man, who "violated" the color barriers in an interracial relationship, with suspicion.

Rebekah G. Brightbill
Bradenton