Strange Fruit

This website is seriously disturbing.

The website has 81 photos of lynchings from the late 1880s to the 1930s, a collision of technology improvements and culture. These days it'd be mobile phone videos and going viral on youtube within minutes. Back then it was photographs and postcards - up to the point when they were banned for making the areas from which they were sent look bad. Some of the inscriptions on the cards aren't that different from comments you read now on youtube videos either.

The victims pictured are predominantly black, although there are also a couple of non-black people in there (and at least one black lynch mob incidentally). The crimes they were accused of range from forming a union and going on strike to paedophilia to lying to protect a child to murder to theft to to attempting to use legal means to improve conditions to rape to enclosing prime cattle land to assault. Some were undoubtedly guilty. Some were undoubtedly innocent. Most weren't actually tried. All were murdered, some in astonishingly brutal ways that make you wonder just what exactly was going through people's heads at the time.

Photo #27 - described in the additional information as "The lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, a large gathering of lynchers. August 7, 1930, Marion, Indiana" is seriously, seriously creepy.

I think it's because the onlookers are all so ordinary looking. There are women in dresses, men smiling towards the camera - it could be a church picnic were it not for it being at night and the two dead black men hanging from a tree.

It's also because, seriously, 1930. The youngest of my grandparents was 19 in 1930. That's not that long ago. And yes, I know that isn't even close to the last verified lynching date. But that people would be willing to (a) participate, (b) be photographed there and (c) be smiling astounds me. It's so far removed from what I consider 'normal'.

I mean seriously, they just watched two guys be beaten up and hanged. And smiled. This is not, in any sense of the world I live in, normal.

The lone survivor of the trio who were singled out to be lynched, James Cameron, founded the Black Holocaust Museum
in Milwaukee after a visit to Yad VaShem in Israel. James Cameron died in 2006 at the age of 92. He was 16 when they broke into the jail. 1930 is really not long ago.

The museum was trying to interview people living who remembered and attended the lynching to try and better understand how and why the lynch mobs formed. I hope the museum finds funding again because I think understanding what happened and how is important, not least for prevention and education reasons.

(no subject)

Last drinks called at Naughtons.

Seriously of all the places I would have thought safe from closure Naughtons was very high on the list. I mean, it's a pub. Next to a university. Across the road from 4 residential colleges. Down the road from a further 6. Down the road from two major hospitals and a research institute. Down the road from a major football club.

And yet, after 173 years, it's apparently closing.

Bloody stupid overheated housing market. How can they even think of turning Naughtons into student accommodation?? And surely they could do it without losing the pub! There are plenty of students who'd pay to live above a pub!!

I lived in one of the residential colleges down the road. I did Honours in the department across the road. I haven't been there since they gentrified the place some time in the early 2000s, but it still holds great memories for me.

A group from my Honours cohort (together with students from neighbouring departments) used to go there for a counter meal and to watch Melrose Place every week together.

My 3rd year lab prac group went there every lunchtime break until we were asked not to drink alcohol before returning to continue the all day prac. (I still don't think this was affecting our results in any meaningful way!) Even then we still went afterwards. (Actually we still went for the counter meal at lunch, we just got the non-alcoholic variety of drink with it.)

Pretty much every college function ended up there at some point. It was the pre-pub crawl meeting place, the post-pub crawl meeting place (for those still capable of movement), the after formal dinner meeting place, the meeting place in general.

I have some seriously interesting photos taken in it. I am still grateful that I had left before Carlton won a grand final and half the players decided to celebrate there. (This was from the less feral part of the celebrations. Probably fortunately the more feral parts weren't filmed.)

I had some great nights there. I had some crappy nights there. I think I still have a beer glass or two from there.

Seriously, how can they be closing Naughtons?? Unbelievable.