#abram smith

The fire of hatred was never extinguished. It smoldered almost invisibly. But now it flares up again, consuming the hearts of the haters and the lives of the random victims.

On August 7, 1930, a white mob used crowbars and hammers to break into the Grant County jail in Marion, Indiana, to lynch three young Black men who had been arrested earlier that afternoon after being accused of murdering a white man and assaulting a white woman. Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, both 19, were severely beaten and lynched, and 16-year-old James Cameron was badly beaten but survived.

That afternoon, word of the charges against these young Black men spread, and a growing mob of angry white residents gathered outside the Grant County jail. Around 9:30 pm, the mob attempted to rush the jail and was repelled by tear gas. An hour later, members of the mob successfully barreled past the sheriff and three deputies, grabbed Mr. Shipp and Mr. Smith from their cells as they prayed, and dragged them into the street. By then, the crowd totaled between 5,000 and 10,000 people. While spectators watched and cheered, the mob beat, tortured, and hanged both men from trees in the courthouse yard, brutally murdering them without the benefit of trial or legal proof of guilt.

As the bodies of Mr. Shipp and Mr. Smith remained suspended above the crowd, members of the mob re-entered the jail and grabbed 16-year-old James Cameron, another Black youth accused of being involved in the crime. The mob beat the teenager severely and was preparing to hang him alongside the others, but when a member of the crowd intervened and said he was innocent, James was released. 

The brutalized bodies of Mr. Shipp and Mr. Smith were hanged from trees in the courthouse yard and kept there for hours as a crowd of white men, women, and children grew by the thousands. Public spectacle lynchings, in which large crowds of white people, often numbering in the thousands, gathered to witness and participate in pre-planned heinous killings that featured prolonged torture, mutilation, dismemberment and/or burning of the victim, were common during this time. When the sheriff eventually cut the ropes off the corpses, the crowd rushed forward to take parts of the men's bodies as "souvenirs" before finally dispersing.

Enraged by the lynching, the NAACP traveled to Marion to investigate and later provided the U.S. attorney general with the names of 27 people believed to have participated. Though the lynching was photographed and spectators were clearly visible, local residents claimed not to recognize anyone pictured. Charges were finally brought against the leaders of the mob, but all-white juries acquitted them despite this overwhelming evidence. In contrast, James Cameron, the Black teenager who survived, was tried for murder, convicted of being an accessory, and served four years in prison. The alleged assault victim, Mary Ball, later testified that she had not been raped.

After his release, James Cameron founded four NAACP chapters in Indiana, authored hundreds of essays on civil rights and a 1982 memoir, and on Juneteenth 1988 opened America’s Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to document the African American Struggle. “I can forgive but I can never forget,” he was quoted as saying. “That’s why I started this museum.” Mr. Cameron was pardoned by the state of Indiana in 1993 and died in 2006.

August 7 1930: The last confirmed lynching of African-Americans in the Northern United States occurs in Marion, Indiana; two men, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, are killed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Thomas_Shipp_and_Abram_Smith

Saints har lavet det store cut

New Orleans Saints lavet det store cut i truppen og er nede på 53 mand. Her er hvem Saints har cuttet og kan samles op af andre hold. QB Ian BookQB K.J. CostelloRB Devine OzigboRB Abram SmithWR Dai’Jean DixonWR Kirk MerrittWR Rashid ShaheedWR Kevin WhiteWR Easop Winston Jr.TE Chris HerndonTE J.P. HoltzTE Lucas KrullOL Josh AndrewsOL Derek SchweigerOT Sage DoxtaterOT Derrick KellyOT Khalique…

Preseason Gameday: Houston Texans

New Orleans Saints tager natten til søndag hul på preseason, når holdet på udebane møder Houston Texans. Saints kommer helt sikkert til, at spare en masse startere, så måske en serie eller to quarterback Andy Dalton og en masse spilletid til Ian Book. Det bliver også første gang at rookies Chris Olave og Trevor Penning får spilletid. Hvilket bliver interessant, at se deres debuter på NFL…

3/1/18 O&A NYC THROWBACK THURSDAY: Billie Holiday - Strange Fruit

Strange Fruit a song performed most famously by Billie Holiday, who first sang and recorded it in 1939. (more…)

“Southern Trees Bear A Strange Fruit”

1930: Photographer Lawrence Beitler was in Marion, Indiana, on the night of 7 August, when a mob of whites lynched two black men, Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp. Beitler made a tidy sum from selling souvenir photos of the spectacle at 50 cents each. It was probably one of these keepsakes that provoked Lewis Allan’s searing condemnation: Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and…