Images from the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and a 1930 lynching in Indiana have more in common than meet the eye.

By Susan Williams

Madison

James Madison will speak on his book, “A Lynching in the Heartland,” on Saturday, Feb. 16, 10-11:30 a.m. at the Virgil T. DeVault Alumni Center, 1000 E. 17th St., Bloomington. His talk is part of the new IU Authors Series that showcases the literary efforts of IU faculty and offers opportunities for discussion. The series is sponsored by the Bloomington Division of Continuing Studies and the IU Alumni Association. There is a $10 fee to attend, which includes a continental breakfast. Contact the division at 812-855-4991.

Chicago Jubilee Rag, by John McCluskey Jr., professor of Afro-American studies and of English at IUB, and A Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in America, by James Madison, the Thomas and Kathryn Miller Professor of history at IUB, could be no more different in genre, time or style. But both works tell a story of America’s rough and continuing pursuit for racial equality.

‘Chicago Jubilee Rag’

John McCluskey’s forthcoming historical novel is based upon facts cultivated with painstaking care from speeches, letters and numerous other documentations. The novel is set toward the end of the 19th century; its most dominant character is real-life American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who was born a slave in 1818. The story also introduces other famous African Americans, including young Scott Joplin and Paul Dunbar, a musician and a poet, respectively, who enriched America’s musical and literary histories.

The three men come together at the Chicago World’s Fair in August 1893 for a program commemorating “Colored American Day.”

Known as the Columbian Exposition in recognition of the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of America and funded by the U.S. Congress, the historic fair featured hundreds of displays from around the nation and the world, but had largely ignored black Americans. In fact, Frederick Douglass, a well-known and respected man who had advised U.S. presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson on black issues of the day, attended the fair’s opening as a commissioner from Haiti, not as a representative of his own country.

Douglass’ speech on that Colored American Day gratefully recognized the opportunity for African-American participation, but it also criticized that opportunity as an apparent afterthought.

“It is known to many of you that there is a division of opinion among intelligent colored citizens as to the wisdom of accepting a ‘Colored People Day’ at the fair,” he said to a largely black crowd.

“This division of opinion has been caused, in part, by the slender recognition we have received from the management of the exposition. Without expressing any satisfaction with this phase of that management, I think that we cannot wisely withhold our thanks to the World’s Columbian Exposition for the opportunity now afforded us to define our position and set ourselves right before the world. It might perhaps have done more and better for us at its inception, but we should not forget that it might also have done less and worse for us.”

And later, with McCluskey describing him as “an unsmiling Moses, tablets flung at the feet of unbelievers,” Douglass responds to the jeers of a few white hecklers.

“Rejoicing in the liberty we have already secured and congratulating the nation upon the recognition given our rights in the fundamental law of the republic, we shall nevertheless fully expose and denounce the injustice, persecution, lawless violence and lynch law to which as a class we are still subjected,” he boomed. “We wish especially to emphasize the fact that, owing to our 200 years of slavery and the prejudices generated by that cruel system, all presumptions in law, government and society in this republic are against us, so that it is only necessary to accuse one of our number of crime in order to secure his conviction and punishment.”

And never one to mince words, Douglass added that the “Negro problem” discussed widely during that time was, in fact, a national problem.

“Yes, men talk of the Negro problem. Again, there is no Negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have honesty enough, loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough to live up to their own Constitution.”

‘A Lynching in the Heartland’

In Madison’s book, published last fall by Palgrave, the time has changed from an August day in the late 19th century to an August day well into the 20th. The setting shifts from big-city Chicago to small-town Marion, situated nearly midpoint between Indianapolis and Fort Wayne.

The more dated clothing of the late 1800s has changed into something more modern, the book’s cover shows. But the cover also reveals that even in change, some things remain the same.

In what has become one of the most famous photographs of an American lynching, Madison’s book cover displays an image taken by Lawrence Beitler in August 1930. The scene shows the dead bodies of two young black men hanging from the limbs of a large tree in the Courthouse Square.

But as Madison points out, the picture is really “two-in-one.” After looking at the bloodied, suspended bodies, the viewer’s eye moves downward to the white crowd standing below the tree. Some people, men and women, have turned to face the camera, one young fellow offering an especially jeering grin that seems to invite the viewer to join the party. A man points to the dangling bodies somewhat defiantly—what do you think of this, he seems to say. There is no sign of sadness, outrage, disgust or shock.

Madison’s book has a real-life figure, too, in James Cameron. He was only 16 when he was arrested in the early morning hours of Aug. 7, 1930, along with two others, Tom Shipp, 19, and Abe Smith, 18. The alleged crime was a hold-up attempt the night before, during which a young white man was killed and his white girlfriend raped. Somehow, he survived when white citizens stormed the Grant County courthouse, and dragged Shipp and Smith out to their deaths by beating, stabbing and, finally, hanging.

The words from Douglass’ 1893 speech seem to ring again: “It is only necessary to accuse one of our number of crime in order to secure his conviction and punishment.”

While Madison focuses on the Marion lynching, his text sends out ever widening circles that encompass a nation’s collective conscience.

The terrible event in Marion was not an isolated one.

“From 1880 to 1930 angry mobs lynched 4,697 fellow Americans. Of these victims 3,344 were African American. Race was a central factor in this tragedy, as in many of America’s tragedies,” he writes.

“Some suggest that lynching was a southern, not American, drama. Certainly most took place in the South, over 95 percent of the nation’s total during the 1920s.”

And later, again in echo of Douglass’ thoughts about the “Negro problem,” Madison writes, “Lynching was a southern tragedy, most Americans believed, a part of the South’s peculiar history and special form of race relations. The numbers show clearly that most lynchings occurred in the South, but lynching was an American, not southern, tragedy, as much as some pious Yankees wanted to think otherwise.

“From 1880 to 1930, 123 black Americans died at the hand of northern lynch mobs, 79 of them in the Midwest.”

After a trial and a time in prison, Cameron eventually moved to Milwaukee in 1953, where he published a memoir, A Time of Terror, and established the Black Holocaust Museum, both during the 1980s, at his own expense. Eighty-five years old in 1999 when he was honored with James Cameron Day in Milwaukee and an honorary degree from the University of Wisconsin, Cameron had become a highly publicized voice that raised terrible memories, a tone of forgiveness and searching questions—much like Frederick Douglass had.

“At times Cameron seemed like an Old Testament prophet, warning of the sins of racism,” writes Madison.

But Cameron’s stage was more visible than Douglass’ was in 1893 at the Chicago World’s Fair. A story about Cameron was published in Ebony magazine and he talked with Oprah Winfrey on her television show in the 1980s. After he was pardoned in 1993 by then Indiana Gov. Evan Bayh, he made appearances on television and radio shows such as Good Morning America, CBS Evening News, Dateline NBC, Larry King Live and NPR’s All Things Considered. He was featured in the Village Voice, Newsweek and The Washington Post.

A Lynching in the Heartland ends with text written from notes taken from a panel discussion among 14 Marion citizens in 1998. Half are African American, half are white.

Madison notes that all panel members agreed there had been much progress, pointing to numerous black citizens in visible and influential community and government positions. But he also writes that “no one on the panel claimed that the color line had been erased. There were still hate crimes in Grant County. Only a couple of weeks earlier someone had desecrated the black section of the local cemetery and painted swatikas on tombstones. There were reports of discrimination in employment and housing and still some questions of ‘comfort’ for black families living in mostly white parts of the city.”

Spanning two centuries, McCluskey’s Chicago Jubilee Rag and Madison’s A Lynching in the Heartland are set during a time of unbelievable progress in the United States—from traveling by horse and then by car, from a race to conquer outer space ahead of the Russians during the Cold War to sharing research on an international space station.

Over the years, collective American cleverness, celebrated at the 1893 World’s Fair as a major theme, developed electricity, modern heating and cooling, invented the telegraph, the telephone and then the Internet, fed a nation fairly well and advanced health care to new levels. Still there are lingering problems left unsolved.

As Madison concludes: “There would always be the memory of the battered bodies of Abe Smith and Tom Shipp hanging from the tree on the Courthouse Square. But becoming more and more haunting as time passed was the white crowd standing below those bare, dangling feet. By the beginning of the 21st century that crowd of shameless spectators was no longer just Grant County’s memory but all of America’s. Americans would continue to decide what to do with that memory and what stories it evoked.”