Under the baobab: Federal anti-lynching bill passes more than century after fight began

The Emmett Till Antilynching Act (ETAA) is awaiting President Biden’s signature. Most Black men of a certain age know the story of Emmett Till. His brutal murder in 1955 haunted our nightmares but also inspired resistance, which blossomed into the civil rights movement.

More than 5,000 people were lynched in America. Seventy-five percent were Black. Mississippi, where Till was killed, led the states with 531 recorded lynchings. Led by the NAACP, for over 100 years people struggled to get federal anti-lynching legislation through Congress. In 1918, Congressman Leonidas Dyer of Missouri first introduced the Dyer Antilynching Bill. It was defeated by a Senate filibuster.

As we now approach the end of this era of legal repression and social suffocation, I remember my late friend, James Cameron. He as much as anyone committed his life to opposing this American atrocity. In 1988 he founded America’s Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee. The museum was devoted to teaching Black history from Africa through slavery to the present times. You may be familiar with him from a picture he is not in. One of the most famous depictions of a lynching shows two disfigured and mutilated Black men, hanging from a tree surrounded by thousands of white people celebrating the slaughter.

James was supposed to be the third corpse.

In August 1930, James was 16. He and two other teenage friends, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, tried to rob a young white man who was killed in the attempt. Cameron ran away before the man was killed. Cameron, Shipp and Smith were arrested and charged the same night with robbery, murder and rape. (The rape charge was later dropped when the girl recanted). Cameron said that a lynch mob of 12,000-15,000 had taken all three of them from the Grant County jail in Marion, Indiana. Shipp was beaten and hung from the bars of his jail window. Then Smith was beaten to death. The mob hung the three boys from a tree. As Cameron was being beaten and hung from the tree, the voice of an unidentified woman in the crowd said, “This boy has done nothing wrong.”

Frank Faunce, a local sports hero and football All-American from Indiana University, intervened, removing the noose from Cameron’s neck. He said Cameron deserved a fair trial. Faunce escorted Cameron back to the jail.

James Cameron was convicted and served four years as an accessory before the fact to murder. After his release, James committed his life to studying the African American experience and fighting against racial injustice. He worked in civil rights, wrote independent articles, pamphlets and a memoir called “A Time of Terror: A Survivor’s Story.”

James and I both attended the 1963 March on Washington. I got to know him later in Milwaukee. We helped him do a fundraiser for a pilgrimage he organized for his parish to visit the memorial to enslaved Africans in Goree, Senegal. In 2005, 80 members of the U.S. Senate honored him by passing a resolution apologizing for never outlawing lynching. He was introduced by President Bush during the State of The Union Address. The ETAA honors his work and the efforts of thousands of others.

More Penn Staters on stage

Another Penn State alum is directing a show in NYC. Stori Ayers, MFA grad, directed Dominique Morisseau’s “Confederates” at the Signature Theatre. The two time NAACP Image Award winner Morisseau is the first African American woman to receive a Tony nomination for Best Book of a Musical. Her PSU commissioned project, “Blood at the Root” is being revived this year by the School of Theatre. Previews begin March 22. I ran into another PSU grad, Najib Felix, who is starting his last year at Julliard. His first time onstage was in “King Lear” at our State Theatre.