Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 18 November 2004 — Page 31

The Muncie Times • November 18, 2004 • Page 31

AFRICAN BRIEFS

Georgia lynching of black. male revives memories of other black killings By Alton Maddox COWETA COUNTY, Ga.- ‘TOO Years of Lynching,” by Ralph Ginzburg, chronicles, in its initial pages, the torture of Sam Holt (a male of African ancestry) by whites for allegedly killing a white man, Alfred Cranford, and “ravaging” his wife near Newnan, Ga., in 1899. Fifty years later, an accusation of the rape of a white woman still would have led to the stretching of a black man’s neck in Georgia. Holt’s lynching was after Reconstruction, during the nadir of black life. Reconstruction was marred by the TildenHayes Compromise. This political accord ushered in Jim Crow and the disenfranchisement of black voters - notwithstanding the federal government’s promise, in the 1860s, that our ancestors would be given full citizenship rights and would enjoy special federal protection. There were more than 3,000 reported lynchings in this country between 1882 and 1900. Many more lynchings actually occurred during this period. Congressman George H. White introduced the first anti-lynching bill in Congress in 1900. The North Carolina

Legislature immediately gerrymandered him out of office and Congress was once again lilywhite. W.E.B. DuBois, in 1897, accepted a teaching position at Atlanta University. DuBois admitted that the Holt lynching radicalized him and, in 1905, he was selected to head the Niagara Movement. Monroe Trotter, editor of the Boston Guardian and co-founder of the Niagara Movement, vociferously denounced the federal government for its complicity in these hate crimes. One hundred years after the Niagara Movement was formed, African Americans are still being lynched for engaging in interracial dating. At 8:40 a.m. on Oct. 13, 21-year-old Bernard Burden’s black body was found hanging from a tree in a white neighborhood of Grantville, Coweta County, Ga. Like Alabama, Coweta is an Indian word. Apparently, the wrongful imprisonment of Marcus S. Dixon, a high school student, for having sex with a white girl is not enough of a warning to black males. Similarly, the prosecution of Kobe Bryant fails to ring a bell. The Scottsboro Boys case and Emmett Till’s lynching are simply historical antiques. The Atlanta media have already

buried this terrorist act in their cold files. The Grantville Police Department waited more than 24 hours before reporting the hanging to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. This delay, for the trail to grow cold, smacks of a cover up. Black leaders in Georgia were too busy stumping for Sen. John Kerry to sound an alarm. Burden had been staying at his white “friend’s” home for a few days before his neck was stretched. Although blacks are still being lynched as I write, Congress has refused to make the lynching of African Americans a federal crime. Georgia led the nation in lynchings between 1883 and 1923, and in 1902 the all-white Georgia General Assembly seriously considered a proposal to empower juries to recommend castration in rape convictions following kangaroo trials. It also refused to pass legislation against lynching and mob violence. A Southern filibuster killed the Dyer anti-lynching bill in the Senate in 1922. More than a half million blacks fled the South in 1922. The GavaganWagner anti-lynching bill died in the Senate in 1940. Without success, Congressman Arthur W. Mitchell of Illinois introduced an antilynching bill in

Congress in 1941. Growing up in Coweta County more than five decades ago, I am not surprised by the Burden lynching. I would be surprised if any member of the lynch mob is arrested, prosecuted and convicted in this repressive jurisdiction. In the past, the official response would have been, “So what?” Today, any suspicious, racially-motivated death is, automatically, a suicide. Coweta County was created when Alabama and Georgia demanded that the Creeks fold their tents and take a westward flight. The 1825 Treaty of Indian Springs arose in February 1825 because William McIntosh, a leader of the Creek nation, betrayed his people and fraudulently sold their land to Georgia. He was executed for treason in April 1825. The black community, on the other hand, is still tolerant of treasonous acts. It is for this reason that Burden’s mother, a vocal and loving mother, will not receive any help in Georgia. Any help will mirror the fraudulent scams that permeated the Amadou Diallo case. By 1827, President John Q. Adams agreed that the Creeks had to be expelled from Georgia, after the signing of the Treaty of Fort Mitchell,

which supposedly severed the Creeks, claims to any remaining lands in Georgia, for $42,491 including “goods, school tuition money and improvements.” The Creek War of 1836 ended all resistance in Georgia and Alabama and left the Creek nation homeless and starving as the U.S. Army hounded them westward. The Cherokees were also forced out of Georgia and westward on the Trail of Tears in 1838. This will be our fate today for ignoring history. Given the media and political cover up, Burden’s death was supposed to be buried in a sterilized, obituary section of the newspaper. Except for the Tatum family allowing me to sound the alarm weekly in its newspaper, I have been virtually banned from all media and especially the black media. One hundred years ago, the black media took an aggressive stance in exposing lynchings. Ida B. Wells, who later married an African American lawyer, Ferdinand Barrett, established her reputation as editor and coowner of the Memphis Free Speech and a crusader against lynching. Her husband founded the first black newspaper in Chicago, The Chicago Conservator. Continue on page 32