Strange Fruit

Saddam’s lynching has been too good a story not to write about. Certainly, the Middle-East expert Robert Fisk is qualified to do so, as in his article "The Whole Bloody Thing Was Obscene". His quoting of Malcolm in Shakespeare’s Macbeth was an interesting reference even if the Thane of Cawdor was killed by a dagger to the heart and not by a noose. Fisk tells us of hangings that Saddam had ordered upon others during his reign, where the victims were taunted and mocked by his executioners just as he was finally taunted by an execution mob.

When the cellphone video of Saddam’s hanging came my way via email and someone asked me to describe it I told him it was like an American lynching of black people in our not distant past. "Oh," he said, "right."

A few grainy films of our lynchings are still around for viewing if we need any reminders, (perhaps they’ll be shown this month as we celebrate the Martin Luther King holiday). The postcards of lynchings of black people are still extent, sent cheerfully around the country with friendly messages to friends up and through the 1930’s. One does not need any sound to hear the hideous noises that are visible on the mouths of the people surrounding their victim. The photo postcards outdo the cellphone video any day.

The term lynching is derived from the man who administered peace and justice in Virginia in the 1700’s, Charles Lynch. It was our system of punishment used by whites against black slaves, although any white people who thought it wasn’t a good idea were also in danger of getting lynched themselves.

In 1930 a Dr. Arthur Raper presented his commissioned report on lynching. He discovered that "3,724 people were lynched by mobs in the United States from 1889 through to 1930. Four-fifths were blacks and practically all the lynchers were native whites. The victims were tortured, mutilated, dragged and burned. Of the tens of thousands of lynchers and onlookers, forty nine were indicted and four were sentenced".

It was hoped by the NAACP in 1932 that Franklin Roosevelt would bring an end to mob lynching in America. But he had other plans like being the leader of the New World Order along with his buddy Winston Churchill who Fisk often refers to in his articles with fondness, nostalgic for the old days when we had "civilized leaders." But FDR needed the white vote in the South and could not alienate those whites who liked hanging blacks. In order to make the "world safe for democracy" he killed the bill that would have banned lynching by mobs. He failed making the world safe, never brought it democracy, replaced one despotism with another and expanded imperial America where foreign policy is the only way a president is judged.

In 1981 nineteen year old Michael Donald was lynched in Mobile Alabama by upset Klan members who were angry about a jury verdict in another case. They took revenge on Donald, a black kid, while he was walking home. After forcing him into their car, they took him to the next county and hung him from a tree. There was some justice in that particular lynching with the intervention of Jesse Jackson who brought it to national attention. People were prosecuted for Donald’s lynching. The instigator, Henry Hayes, was executed on June 6, 1997 by electric chair and one would probably be informed, humanely, with civility. Like the Americans expected of the Iraqis in the case of Saddam.

There is a photograph of the lynching of Michael Donald, 1981 in Wikipedia. There aren’t any people visible laughing and shouting at the young man hanging in a tree as in the old postcards. The photographers of the victim got to the scene after the celebrating executioners had fled. By 1981 in America white people who hung black people were a little bit more cautious about advertising their glee.

Robert Fisk is British. Apparently his first thoughts when he saw the cellphone video of Saddam’s execution were not of white mobs laughing and jeering as they hung black people in the United States. His beat is the Middle East.