Republican Ambivalence Towards “Public Hangings” Is Violent And Dangerous To Democracy

The midterm elections in Mississippi on Tuesday (November 27) will in no way be the final knot in America’s long and heated racial discord. Indeed, and where a Senate race that should’ve been an easy win for Donald Trump and his supporters is neck-and-neck, it’ll be one more reminder of Republican ambivalence towards racism. The same goes for Cindy Hyde-Smith’s remarks about the history of public hangings. In praising a donor for his support by saying: “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row,” the Republican incumbent was mimicking the president’s own racial ambivalence. Both of which are color line violence and dangerous to the future of American democracy.

War Between Myth And Reality
The lack of knowledge about the violent nature of public hangings is mainly due to its conflict of meaning. Not only is it impossible to commemorate one side of the dispute without denigrating the other, but the resistance and victimization of blacks in public hangings flies in the face of an entrenched white culture which celebrates in justifying white rule. Meanwhile, the history of publicly torturing and hanging blacks did not end with the abolition of slavery. Many more were lynched through Reconstruction and after World War I, the last three occurring in 1962 during the Civil Rights Era. It was and is, to say the least, our country’s national crime and unspeakable cruelty of the insane mob.

In addition to exposing the many contradictions found in America’s ideals of “equality” and “justice for all,” remembering this shameful legacy challenges a white culture that thinks of itself as the great “civilizer.” This was, and still is, the situation faced by almost every incident of racism. To be sure, resistance to slavery, segregation, and racism is to call attention to the glaring failures of democratic institutions and egalitarian values in which the nation was supposedly founded on and takes great pride in. As for the many public hangings where thousands of whites were entertained, it makes American history less admirable, even less “exceptional” and honorable.

Honorable And Dishonorable Histories
Nor is there equal honor with the way whites treated blacks. Actually, there’s no honor involved in the beatings, hangings, and massacres through which slavery, segregation, and racism were enforced. African Americans can therefore take pride in their sacrifices made willingly and unwillingly to end slavery and racism. The same can’t be said of whites. This entails the white majority that rules today and has had two centuries to develop and mark its myth of origins in the nation. In the meantime, and since lynching is an important aspect of racial history and inequality because it’s so visible and violent, defying a conventional myth by the ascendant majority is always difficult-and dangerous.

It’s also dangerous to ask whites to take responsibility for institutionalizing a legacy of slavery, segregation, and public hangings. Since the power of shame and disgrace is always at play to do so, it is usually met with violent rhetoric with and even more violent backlash. Not only does such reaction deflect their ambivalence directly, but it ascribes violence to other causes-criminal elements or foreign agitation-rather than as a fundamental flaw in a white culture and American Dream. And although denial may be the easiest way of facing this paradox, it is not the best way to come to terms with the creative and destructive power of violence that still exists in American life.

Ignoble Violence And Domestic, Global Terrorism
Consequently, there can be no doubt that Americans find virtue in many instances of violence and tragedy like public hangings. In fact, violence and tragedy are viewed as basic to the settlement and conquest of the continent and the creation of the nation. It is our national character. But violence in defense of freedom and equality versus to enslave and segregate an entire race of people is something entirely different. One is noble, the other shameful. One is innocent, the other speaks of shame and guilt. White Americans therefore had to cast violence in a positive light or be crushed by it. This included public hangings which were preceded by hours of verbal abuse and physical torture.

This same kind of shameful violence is used to mythologize and rationalize American history. As a rallying point, it’s played a critical, instrumental role in helping white Americans justify a kind of twisted nationalism. A nationalism that’s used violence and tragedy to reach common goals, and commit wars around the world which have done far more harm than good. In resisting its pervasiveness by seeking to ignore or explain it away, ignoble violence is sadly seen as a generative force capable of refining and forging a new society and world. This is another reason why it’s so hard to show that hangings were psychological warfare, acts of terrorism to suppress a people’s rights and dreams.

Recalling Love And Cowardice At The Ballot
In the case of African American history, blacks displayed more love and tolerance than whites. They also showed more courage in the face of cowardice and shame. No wonder Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote that only love could make whites avoid more public hangings; or that Ida B. Wells reminded Americans: “Brave men do not gather by thousands to torture and murder a single individual, so gagged and bound he cannot make even feeble resistance or defense.” Conveying ambivalence towards racism and hangings makes it clear that white ascendancy still hasn’t confronted its shameful legacy of slavery and hangings. This entails violence as a prominent characteristic of American life.

On Monday, not far from Oxford, Mississippi, where three blacks were hanged in 1962,(1) President Trump and a host of Republicans will be holding a rally with Sen. Hyde-Smith. This, against their Democratic opponent Mike Espy who is African American. Meanwhile, and thanks to Republican ambivalence towards racism and public hangings, Civil Rights reform in Mississippi has been one of tokenism. It might be good then to recall on election day how lynching mobs cut off ears, toes, and fingers, strips of flesh, and distributed portions of the body as souvenirs among the crowd; or how public hangings symbolized a life murdered without due process of law and equal protection.

(1) Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career Of Jim Crow. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1966., p. 175.