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Lynching: Postcards from a Heinous Past
| Length: | 22 min |
| Released: | 2001 |
| Ages: |
High School College Adult |
For those who thought lynching was a grim chapter in history books, this film is an eye opener.
In 1998, in Jasper, Texas, the Klu Klux Klan killed an African American by dragging him behind a truck while his body shattered. In response to this outrageous crime, a Texas court, for the first time ever, condemned a white man to death for the murder of a black man.
We meet James Cameron, who tells first-hand how he narrowly survived being lynched by an angry mob in Marion, Ind. when he was sixteen years old. He was dragged from his home, and falsely accused of raping and murdering a white woman. His elderly mother vainly prayed to be taken in place of her son. As a rope was being placed around his neck, next to two young men already hanged, the sheriff intervened and had him imprisoned instead-- for the crime he never committed.
Now in his eighties, Cameron has created a museum in Milwaukee to keep alive the memory of man’s inhumanity., It documents the history of lynching in the United States. The museum was inspired by Cameron’s visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Israel.
Picture postcards from the early part of last century, which travelers sent back home, record their appreciation of the public spectacle of lynching. Joanne Martins, an African-American historian, confirms that this grim history is too readily forgotten.
In 1998, in Jasper, Texas, the Klu Klux Klan killed an African American by dragging him behind a truck while his body shattered. In response to this outrageous crime, a Texas court, for the first time ever, condemned a white man to death for the murder of a black man.
We meet James Cameron, who tells first-hand how he narrowly survived being lynched by an angry mob in Marion, Ind. when he was sixteen years old. He was dragged from his home, and falsely accused of raping and murdering a white woman. His elderly mother vainly prayed to be taken in place of her son. As a rope was being placed around his neck, next to two young men already hanged, the sheriff intervened and had him imprisoned instead-- for the crime he never committed.
Now in his eighties, Cameron has created a museum in Milwaukee to keep alive the memory of man’s inhumanity., It documents the history of lynching in the United States. The museum was inspired by Cameron’s visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Israel.
Picture postcards from the early part of last century, which travelers sent back home, record their appreciation of the public spectacle of lynching. Joanne Martins, an African-American historian, confirms that this grim history is too readily forgotten.
"Highly recommended…The film is moving, informative and creatively done….Suitable for high school, undergraduate or graduate students." Thomas Beck, Auraria Library, University of Colorado, EMRO
