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American Morning
The History of Lynching In America
Aired February 08, 2002 - 08:33 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: February, as many of you may know, is Black History Month. Our next guest has written about a subject that, for many African-Americans and for many white Americans, brings pain, not pride. It is man's inhumanity to man, a complete and devastating history of lynching in America.
The book is called "At the Hands of Persons Unknown," and the author Philip Dray joins me now. We should warn you in advance that some of the images we're going to look at are quite disturbing. Thanks very much for being here this morning.
PHILIP DRAY, AUTHOR, "AT THE HANDS OF PERSONS UNKNOWN": Thanks for having me.
COOPER: There are -- there are some people who would say, you know, lynching is a shameful part of America's past, but it is a part of the past and shouldn't be dredged up. Why did you write this book?
DRAY: I was brought into it -- several years ago, I visited the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, and I had gone there for some other research. And when I was brought into the room where what they call the "lynching archives" were kept, I was struck by how huge it was. And so I realized there was a story there to tell. Not just of a single lynching, but rather the entire history of lynching, which really dates back to Colonial times.
COOPER: Was lynching an aberration? Was it something that just happens on society's fringe?
DRAY: That was a common perception, but, really, it was a systematic form of caste oppression, really. During the 1890s black Americans were lynched almost every other day.
COOPER: You say a systematic form of cast oppression.
DRAY: Yes.
COOPER: What do you mean?
DRAY: Well, in other words, it wasn't -- it took many forms. It often was the excuse was used that a black man had assaulted a white woman. But really, it often had to do with political or economic reasons. But it was a way of eliminating competitive blacks.
COOPER: Two years ago in New York there was a photo exhibit called "Witness" that was very popular here.
DRAY: Yes.
COOPER: And it was shocking to many people. It was an exhibit of photographs from lynchings. And we're showing some of the photographs of that now.
DRAY: Right.
COOPER: What was so shocking to people were the images. What I found shocking about your book, was another aspect of these lynchings. And I want to read to you an account that's from your book by a person who witnessed a lynching in 1903 in Greenville, Mississippi. A man named Henry Waring Ball. And this is what he wrote.
He wrote, "Everything was very orderly. There was not a shot, but much laughing and hilarious excitement. It was quite a gala occasion. And, as soon as the corpse was cut down, all the crowd betook themselves to the park to see a game of baseball."
DRAY: Right. That was...
COOPER: It sounds like a festival.
DRAY: Well, that's very common. What they used to call spectacle lynchings, which were some of the largest public events in the South in -- around the turn of the last century, often involving 10,000 or 15,000 people.
COOPER: And they sold postcards?
DRAY: There would be postcards. That was just a part of it. You'd have announcements in the newspaper, a special excursion trains would be run from large cities like Atlanta or Dallas. It was like a large picnic, a day-long festival, really. The centerpiece of which would be either the hanging or the immolation of the lynch victim.
COOPER: There was a level of violence to these lynchings which I hadn't realized. I mean, dismemberment, disembowelment...
DRAY: Yes.
COOPER: ...burning. It's probably what police today would call "overkill." Why the overkill?
DRAY: I think just because it was such an obsession among the lynch mobs. And it was a very -- highly ritualized. They used to have a thing they called "lynch craft," which was the -- sort of the adherence to the various rituals of lynching, which involved a lot of mutilation and such.
COOPER: How did lynchings come to an end?
DRAY: Pardon me?
COOPER: How did lynchings come to an end, finally? DRAY: They really faded out very, very slowly over the course of the 20th Century through public pressure, the influence of foreign wars, in which the U.S. was involved. So there was heightened sense of human rights and tolerance, this sort of thing.
COOPER: Is there still -- you know, there haven't -- there hasn't been a lynching, I think, since the early '60s, but there are hate crimes...
DRAY: Yes.
COOPER: ...and, you know, most notably, Jasper, Texas, probably in mind, Mr. Bird. Is there still a lynching mentality in white America?
DRAY: Well, I think lynching, as we used to know it is not -- is gone. In other words, the Jasper incident is a good example of -- the crime was horrendous, but the reaction was very swift in a way that never would have occurred 100 years ago. In other words, the culprits were arrested, they were put on trial, they were condemned by the community. A century ago, nothing of the sort would have occurred.
COOPER: What sort of an impact do you think lynching still has on black America?
DRAY: Well, I think it's a -- very much a powerful thing in the collective memory of all black Americans, to this day. Obviously, you see it, and it's reflected in things such as racial profiling or the Amadu Diallo case. So I think it's still a very powerful, powerful impulse.
COOPER: All right. Philip Dray, thanks very much for being here.
DRAY: Thanks.
COOPER: The book is quite extraordinary.
DRAY: Thank you.
COOPER: Thank you very much.
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