{"id":25853,"date":"2018-08-23T10:06:44","date_gmt":"2018-08-23T14:06:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=25853"},"modified":"2024-07-02T16:56:18","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:56:18","slug":"a-history-suppressed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=25853","title":{"rendered":"A History Suppressed"},"content":{"rendered":"

A dark time in our nation\u2019s history, the period between the end of post-Civil War Reconstruction and 1950 saw thousands of African Americans murdered via lynching \u2013 predominantly in the South. Two UNC professors hope to honor these individuals by uncovering injustices that, for decades, have been systematically erased from public memory.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"black
An anti-lynching banner flew outside NAACP headquarters in Manhattan, New York, from the early 1900s until 1938.
(Library of Congress\/NAACP)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jeff Brown accidentally bumped into a white girl while trying to catch a train. Lacy Mitchell testified against a white man charged with rape. Berry Noyse was accused of killing the local sheriff and was never given due process. All these events produced the same outcome: The person was lynched.<\/p>\n

In 2015, the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI)<\/a> released \u201cLynching in America, Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror.\u201d The report is second in a series examining the trajectory of American history and explains how lynching became a phenomenon in the United States, especially between 1880 and 1940.\"Lynching<\/a><\/p>\n

While teaching a class about the rural South, American studies professor Seth Kotch<\/a> shared the report with his students.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were reading about rural economies, how people communicated with one another, and how customs were translated generationally \u2013 and lynching is one such custom,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s specific to the South in the same way that some of the other traditions we were talking about were specific to the South.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response, the class made \u201cA Red Record\u201d<\/a> \u2013 an interactive map of North Carolina where visitors could click on data points to learn about individual lynchings.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust seeing these incidents laid out in this familiar map, I thought, was powerful,\u201d Kotch says, explaining the idea was to disrupt this familiarity. \u201cFor a lot of students, things happened in that comfortable\u00a0space that they\u2019re not seeing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group used the EJI report and Vann Newkirk\u2019s \u201cLynching in North Carolina: A History 1865-1941\u201d as starting points. For each reported lynching, they dove into online archival databases to gather information like the date and location of the murder, victims\u2019 names, and\u00a0the narrative around the tragedy.<\/p>\n

In total, the class found 181 cases of lynching in North Carolina between 1866 and 1947. Kotch suspects that is a conservative number, assuming many were either unreported or records have since been lost.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was kind of shocking how widespread the phenomenon was,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you look at the map itself and get rid of the cartesian lines it still looks like a map of North Carolina.\u201d<\/p>\n

Subsequent classes have mapped South Carolina and Tennessee, Arkansas, and this fall will cover Virginia. In addition, Elijah Gaddis<\/a>, a former UNC graduate student and current assistant professor at Auburn University, will map Alabama. Kotch\u2019s goal is to map the entire former Confederacy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A changed landscape<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mackenzie Drake, a student in Kotch\u2019s Spring 2016 semester class, took the project a step further by photographing 16 lynching sites.<\/p>\n

Her route wound through backroads and major highways, rural communities and cities, in neighborhoods and town centers. She was often struck at the juxtaposition between the site\u2019s history and its current state \u00ad\u2013 next to a high school, in a backyard, and under a bridge with hundreds of commuters zooming across.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Mackenzie<\/a>
Mackenzie Drake, a former student of Kotch, paired photographs of lynching sites with copies of archival newspaper clippings about each murder.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI feel like actually going there and documenting that with a picture, for me, it kind of honored the people it happened to,\u201d she says. \u201cThis is something that we shouldn\u2019t forget about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drake worked within a 70-mile radius from Chapel Hill. Using Kotch\u2019s map, she picked sites based on the abundance of available information, including latitude and\u00a0longitude pairings.<\/p>\n

None of the sites she visited memorialized the lynching. \u201cIt was crazy to think that probably every day, hundreds of people pass by this place and it\u2019s not recognized at all,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The project has given Drake pause when thinking about the history behind places she visits on a day-to-day basis. This is the response Kotch hopes for.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of what Jim Crow did was make comfortable environments uncomfortable for people of color,\u201d he says. \u201cRestaurants, beaches, parks \u2013 all these spaces were made hostile. Hopefully, what this digital project can do is allow people who otherwise wouldn\u2019t encounter their daily environments as uncomfortable or challenging see them in a different way.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tackling difficult topics<\/strong><\/p>\n

Drake previously learned about lynchings in high school but says her education on the topic was glossed over and misconstrued.<\/p>\n

For example, before Kotch\u2019s class, Drake thought these murders were primarily carried out by white supremacists like the Ku Klux Klan. In reality, they were normalized throughout the white southern community and became a public spectacle.<\/p>\n

Kotch hopes to combat this lack of understanding in future generations. \u201cWe know that students aren\u2019t learning about what\u2019s called \u2018hard history\u2019 often in their high school classrooms,\u201d he says. \u201cHard history is history of things like enslavement, lynching \u2013 difficult stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

In collaboration with Carolina K-12<\/a>, high school teachers from around the state will be invited to UNC to learn how to disseminate this information to their students. Kotch is also developing free teaching materials that align with state standards and can be used as tools in the classroom. He hopes to start with North Carolina schools and eventually expand to other states.<\/p>\n

Teachers often find lynching discussions difficult because it can make students uncomfortable, Kotch says, but discomfort is invaluable for growth.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to learn about these histories because there\u2019s no way to confront their legacies \u2013 which are real and manifest \u2013\u00a0without learning about their origins,\u201d he explains. \u201cIgnorance doesn\u2019t inoculate you against the effects of what you\u2019re trying to ignore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Seth
Seth Kotch talks to teachers about lynching during the Southern Oral History Program and Carolina K-12 teaching fellows workshop at UNC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Telling the whole story<\/strong><\/p>\n

Like Kotch, American studies and anthropology professor Glenn Hinson<\/a> was inspired by EJI\u2019s report \u2013 so much so that he contacted the organization to see how he could help. Although numerous studies investigate the details of lynchings, there are far fewer that focus on family members of victims. Hinson wants to hear those stories.<\/p>\n

When people talk about lynchings the narrative ends at the moment of the murder, Hinson says, but that is where his work begins.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur goal is not to retell a gruesome history, but to speak to histories of resilience,\u201d he says. \u201cThere were generations of folks since then that carried that knowledge, that memory, and carried it forward through history. What happened to those families? What were those stories? And most importantly, what are the stories of those descendants now?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"Photo<\/a>
With the Descendants Project, Glenn Hinson and UNC undergraduate students are tracing the family lineage of lynching victims and gathering oral histories of descendants.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Before introducing \u201cThe Descendants Project\u201d to a class, Hinson wanted to see if it was viable and searched for family members of Eugene Daniel \u2013\u00a0a 16-year-old boy killed in\u00a0New Hope Township in 1921.<\/p>\n

Through online archives, Hinson traced Daniel\u2019s family from 1910 until 1940. After that, the trail grew cold and he became increasingly doubtful the project would prevail.<\/p>\n

That was, until he came across a 2014 obituary of Daniel\u2019s niece. Hinson saw that a son of the deceased woman was from Oxford. He opened the phone book and found a name that matched.<\/p>\n

After a few rings, Johnny Webb picked up. Hinson confirmed that Webb was the correct person mentioned in the obituary, explained the project, and told Webb he was a descendant of a lynching victim.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I can remember, it was a pretty casual conversation and just slowly got around to that,\u201d Webb says.<\/p>\n

Hinson understands calling a stranger to inform them about a tragedy in their family can be controversial, especially if the person was unaware of the murder. He recalls many times people hung up on him, but also others who have expressed gratitude in learning about this history.<\/p>\n

Webb was one of those who stayed on the phone. \u201cI think it\u2019s something that needs to be known,\u201d Webb says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t need to be swept up under the rug \u2013 people need to know how people really acted in those days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Webb didn\u2019t know about the murder but had always suspected something may have happened. \u201cSomebody down that [family] line suffered or had to go through worse trials and tribulations than I\u2019m going through for me to be able to have some of the rights that I have as an African American,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

With Webb\u2019s willingness to participate, frustration Hinson experienced up to that point washed away. \u201cThat\u2019s what said to me, we can do this project<\/em>,\u201d Hinson says.<\/p>\n

Since 2016, Hinson\u2019s students have collected oral histories from 10 descendants of five lynching victims. The classes have attempted to find many more, but continually run into what Hinson calls \u201ca strategic history of erasure.\u201d<\/p>\n

He notes that newspaper articles and even death certificates often didn\u2019t mention family members. Furthermore, census data at that time for African Americans is fraught with inaccuracies.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou quickly discover that white census takers cared very little for black families,\u201d he says. \u201cYou might find so many misspellings that you can\u2019t even locate this person historically.\u201d The same is true for marriage, military, birth, and death records, he adds.<\/p>\n

In one case the class found 15 spellings of one woman\u2019s name, some so inaccurate they could only tell it was her by the name of a spouse or child. For the students who were able to find and interview descendants though, Hinson notes how personal it became for both parties.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a lot of the members of the class this was a profoundly transformative experience, as it has been for me, to grapple with the erasure and see how difficult it is to find these stories,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Reconciling the past<\/strong><\/p>\n

This fall marks the start of an undergraduate research course dedicated to Hinson\u2019s project. Students will continue to search for families and will also work with community leaders to bring an EJI public memorial to Warren County.<\/p>\n

A descendant involved in the project suggested the idea. \u201cWarren County, the history is deep,\u201d Hinson says. \u201cThe descendant from the county said: We don\u2019t want students just to talk to families, there are bigger stories here and you have to put it in context.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>That context includes racially-charged moments in the county\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Photo<\/a>
Jereann King Johnson sits in the sanctuary of Oak Chapel AME Church in Warrenton. The church was one of the only local institutions that fought for the release of Matthew Bullock’s brother and cousin prior to their death.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Warren County was the site of an infamous 1921 double-lynching in which Matthew Bullock, the intended victim, fled to Canada and a failed extradition ensued. With Bullock gone, the mob instead lynched his brother and cousin.<\/p>\n

Another notorious account surrounds Soul City \u2013\u00a0first proposed in 1969, it was a town that emphasized providing opportunities for minorities and the poor. The project fell through, and part of the site became a federal prison.<\/p>\n

It was also the start of the environmental justice movement in 1973 with a lawsuit brought against Ward Transformers Company for dumping thousands of gallons of chemicals on the roadsides of mostly low-income, African-American communities. The case brought national attention to the issue of institutionalized environmental racism.<\/p>\n

Jereann King Johnson<\/a>, a community activist working to preserve African American\u00a0legacies in Warren County, says this history affects residents to this day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat has been sort of the veil that people see the community through,\u201d she says, \u201cParticularly black people who have lived here all their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

A long-time friend of Hinson, Johnson is interested in helping UNC students learn about these stories. Although she didn\u2019t move to the area until the late \u201870s, she sees similarities in the history of her own hometown.<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up in the Jim Crow South, in southwest Georgia, and heard stories of lynching and abuse of black folks by white people and it\u2019s something you don\u2019t forget,\u201d she says. \u201cAs much as you move toward a desegregated state, you\u2019re still reminded of injustices there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although race relations have obviously improved in Warren County over the years, Johnson sees a general avoidance in discussing race issues as stunting future growth. She hopes Hinson\u2019s work will help guide that conversation.<\/p>\n

Some people may interpret discussing racial violence as provoking a troubled history, but that\u2019s not Hinson\u2019s aim. \u201cIt\u2019s not about stirring up the past, it\u2019s forcing an accounting,\u201d he says. \u201cReconciliation can never occur until there is an accounting.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

The Equal Justice Initiative is a non-profit organization working to end mass incarceration and excessive punishment, challenge racial and economic injustice, and protect human rights for vulnerable populations in American society. In 2018, EJI opened the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, to remember lynching victims in the United States. Part of the memorial is an installment of small plaques \u2013 one for each county where someone was lynched. EJI\u2019s initiative involves distributing these plaques to listed counties across the nation. <\/em><\/p>\n

Seth Kotch is an assistant professor of digital humanities in the Department of American Studies within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences. <\/em><\/p>\n

Mackenzie Drake is a rising senior, majoring in economics within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences. <\/em><\/p>\n

Glenn Hinson is a professor of folklore in the Department of American Studies and Department of Anthropology within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences. <\/em><\/p>\n

Johnny Webb is a professional welder and church deacon in Oxford, and participant in the Descendants Project.<\/em><\/p>\n

Jereann King Johnson is a community activist focused on merging community involvement in education, and textile and cultural heritage specialist in Warren County. She recently received the Old North State Award for her efforts to preserve African-American heritage and culture.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Megan May<\/a>, Endeavors<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A dark time in our nation\u2019s history, the period between the end of post-Civil War Reconstruction and 1950 saw thousands of African Americans murdered via lynching \u2013 predominantly in the South. 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