Monroe Little on a Lynching in the Heartland: Race And

James H. Madison. A Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in America. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. ix + 153 pp. $24.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-312-23902-2. Reviewed by Monroe Little Published on H-Indiana (February, 2002) The dust jacket's testimonials for this mono‐ bushed a young white couple parked along lover's graph allege, with characteristic hyperbole, that lane... Claude Deeter, aged 24," a white male Mari‐ James Madison's A Lynching in the Heartland on factory worker "fought the three assailants "takes the mask off the American crime we call heroically but could not resist the bullets fred lynching," with "the skills of a historian and the from a revolver by one of the three" teenagers. artistry of a journalist." None other than Darlene "His companion, 18 year-old Mary Ball, was Clark Hine praises Madison for his skillful unrav‐ pushed down in the weeds and thorns along the eling "of the conundrum of race, sex and violence riverbank and raped..." (p. 3). Aroused by the al‐ on the one hand, and myth, memory and history leged rape of Ball and the subsequent death of on the other to illuminate the darkness in the Deeter from his gunshot wounds a white mob, heart of a community and in our nation." Don't righteously united in its fury, stormed the Grant believe the hype. In truth, Madison's monograph County jail where the alleged assailants were be‐ is none of these things, but merely a narrative ing held. Two of the prisoners--Abraham Smith "about race" which--by his own admis‐ and Thomas Shipp--were dragged from the jail by sion--"masquerades as a book about a lynching" members of the mob and tortured before receiv‐ (p. 1). ing an extreme dose of vigilante justice; a third, Unfortunately, Madison even fails at the task James Cameron, narrowly escaped the same fate. he sets for himself. Beginning with the horrific act Madison then extends his narrative backward of a lynching in Marion, Indiana on August 7, in time in an attempt to understand the social and 1930, which claimed the lives of two African political causes for this crime as well as its re‐ American men and almost resulted in the death of membrance in local, state, and national culture. a third, Madison describes the event using matter- He devotes an entire chapter to the history of of-fact prose that is as predictable as any Holly‐ Grant County, where Marion is located, which he wood B movie script. Three black teenagers "am‐ describes as "an ordinary place in time" (p. 27), H-Net Reviews and its Midwestern frontier roots. Subsequent Madison's inadequate research design and analy‐ chapters explore historical patterns of racial seg‐ sis as well as reliance on the case study method regation and community in Marion, Indiana; the fail to do justice to the complexity of this impor‐ unsuccessful efforts of the NAACP and the State tant subject. "From 1880 to 1930 angry mobs Attorney General's office to bring members of the lynched 4,697 fellow Americans," Madison in‐ mob to justice; and the lines of color which con‐ forms the reader. "Of these victims 3,344 were tinued to have an important influence on the lives African Americans" (p. 13). True enough, if one re‐ of Grant County and Marion residents during the lies solely on aggregate statistics. There is no men‐ civil rights movement of the 1960s and through‐ tion or use whatsoever, however, of the painstak‐ out the rest of the twentieth century. ing record keeping of the scholar Monroe Work Of particular note are chapters fve and six, who compiled and published annual lynching sta‐ which discuss the evolution of popular narratives tistics for decades at the Tuskegee Institute Ar‐ about the lynching along with a detailed account chives. Consequently, Madison cannot explain of the origins of photographer Lawrence Bietler's why the annual number of African American famous photograph of Smith and Shipp's bodies lynching victims during this ffty year period in hanging from the tree in Courthouse Square. the United States did not actually begin to exceed Along the way he discusses James Cameron's at‐ that of whites nationally until 1886, a harrowing tempt to memorialize the event in his memoir, A statistic that continued unabated to 1930 and be‐ Time of Terror,[1] and as part of his "Black Holo‐ yond.[2] Why was this the case? Madison's lack of caust" museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Madi‐ thorough research and over-reliance on the case- son also documents the tireless, if largely ineffec‐ study approach cannot answer this question be‐ tual, efforts of Mrs. Flossie Bailey, an African cause its focus is too general in its statistical anal‐ American resident of Marion and local NAACP of‐ ysis and too narrow in its geographical focus to ficial, to bring the murderers of Shipp and Smith provide an answer. to justice. It is a testament to the tenaciousness of Nor does A Lynching in the Heartland truly both Cameron and Bailey that they continued help us understand the connection between race, their lengthy and lonely struggle despite the white sex, and violence. Madison's over-simplistic attri‐ community's concerted effort put the lynching be‐ bution of lynching to white myths of black male hind them and consign it to the dustbin of history. sexuality and lust for white women creates a par‐ "No one today can be sure exactly what happened adigm which cannot recognize that African Amer‐ August 6 and 7, 1930," Madison concludes. Over ican women, children and entire families could be time there "would always be the memory of the victims of lynch law, too--as Leon Litwack's heart- battered bodies" of the victims, together with the rending essay in Without Sanctuary attests.[3] "more and more haunting" image of "the white The actual raison d'être of white lynch mobs was crowd standing below" Shipp and Smith's "bare to make an example of the target of their violence, dangling feet." At the dawn "of the twenty-first for the purpose of social control, knowing that century that crowd of shameless spectators was one black body hanging from a tree--irrespective no longer just Grant County's memory, but all of of gender or age--served as well as another to ter‐ America's. Americans would continue to decide rorize and dominate the African American com‐ what to do with that memory and what stories it munity. evoked" (p. 153). Madison challenges the widely held popular Unfortunately, that white crowd is not the view that the Ku Klux Klan was responsible for only shameless witness to the Marion lynchings. the deaths of Smith and Shipp. Although he ad‐ 2 H-Net Reviews mits that there were probably former Indiana once noted that for African Americans the South Klan members in the mob and among the jail staff was any place in the United States that was south charged with guarding the prisoners, as an orga‐ of the Canadian border. nization the Klan was little more than a receding As the sociologists Stewart Tolnay and E. M. memory in Indiana by 1930. "The Indiana Klan Beck note in their far superior monograph, A Fes‐ was guilty of much evil and much foolishness," he tival of Violence, mob actions such as that perpe‐ writes, "but it was innocent in the Marion lynch‐ trated by the upstanding white citizens of Marion, ings, or rather no more guilty than many others in Indiana "served four functions: (1) to eradicate this ordinary place in America's heartland who specific persons accused of crimes against the continued to believe in 'us' and 'them'" (pp. 41-42). white community; (2) as a mechanism of state- Such a dismissal of Klan involvement not only sanctioned terrorism designed to maintain a de‐ fails to understand that the KKK was national in gree of leverage over the African American popu‐ scope during the 1920s, but also the longevity, res‐ lation; (3) to eliminate or neutralize African onance, and systemic nature of its ideology and American competitors for social, economic, or po‐ vigilante tactics in American culture. As a result, litical rewards; and (4) as a symbolic manifesta‐ Madison's analysis cannot help us extract the tion of the unity of white supremacy."[7] While meaning from two cryptic inscriptions on a dou‐ the frst of these was the manifest function of ble-matted framed copy of Bietler's photograph lynching, the other three latent functions, note which read: "Bo pointin to his niga" and "Klan 4th Tolnay and Beck, are critical for understanding Joplin, Mo. '33."[4] why this crime was perpetrated so extensively These are not the only problems with Madi‐ against African Americans after emancipation. son's book. Although he is correct in asserting that Madison's retelling of the events in Marion historians have only recently "begun to explore that hot August night gives credence to Tolnay the complexity" of lynching, Madison ignores the and Beck's analysis. Although he focuses on the wealth of twentieth century sociological scholar‐ manifest relationship between lynching and gen‐ ship on this subject ranging from Gunnar Myrdal der in the racial universe, the official reports sug‐ to A. D. Grimshaw.[5] His most glaring omission in gest that it was the murder of Deeter that contrib‐ this respect is Oliver C. Cox's Caste, Class & Race. uted as much as Ball's alleged rape, if not more, to First published in 1948, Cox's monograph provid‐ the fury of the mob.

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