Trigger Warning: Graphic Violence, Lynching
In 1939, famed jazz singer Billie Holiday sang and recorded “Strange Fruit,” a poem-turned-song written by schoolteacher Abel Meeropol to critique the lynching of Blacks, especially in the South. Holiday was initially met with much resistance — her label feared retaliation from the South and her producer refused to record it— but the impact this song had on American culture was vivid. The influence this song still has on music, on Blackness and on the United States is still apparent. Curiously enough, the executives that resisted Holiday’s desire to record this moving song were more concerned with reactions from the South than the vibrant and detailed account of the heinous terrorism enacted against Black bodies. The poem was a reaction to the infamous picture of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith*. A disturbing picture, but not an uncommon one.
The blatant violence against Black people was (and is) as common to the United States as apple pie. It is as American, as the saying goes, as baseball. Lynching in particular had a very specific role in American terrorism. Thousands of Black men, women and children were killed in cruel and inhumane ways. There are stories of men being forced to eat their castrated genitals, of married couples having to hold their hands out as their fingers are dismembered, while their ears are being cut off and holes of flesh are ripped from their body. Now, after imagining these gruesome events, picture entire families looking at this disturbing scene with glory, with pride. Picture children eating watermelons, wives drinking lemonade and husbands smiling with glee. So we have, as Billie Holiday beautifully sang, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze. We have white people watching them swing as if they’re at a sporting event. And here’s the kicker— we have entire Black communities being forced to witness these lynchings with a clear message in mind: a message to reinforce domination, instill fear, and at times, drive Blacks out of the area.
These public lynchings, however, are not things of the past. With the increased usage and proliferation of technology, it is now much easier to capture the unjust murders of Black people, often at the hands of the police. While it was never unknown, especially to minority communities, that the police were killing and brutalizing Black and Brown people, it is now a highly publicized phenomenon. Black bodies are being gunned down and their bloodied corpses are left on the streets as we are constantly being bombarded with the images. We are constantly being bombarded with images on news channels and with videos on social media. Black Death is constantly being circulated, yet the videos and images we use as “proof,” never actually get justice. It is always just an endless cycle of videos of blatant murder that physically and mentally drain us and haunt us with the ghosts of injustice.
In truth, we’re haunted by the ghosts of injustice in more ways than we think. The effects of lynching, slavery and oppression still have impacts on the Black community today. Dr. Joy DeGruy from Portland State University has even developed a theory for this cumulative trauma and stress: “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS).” Her P.T.S.S. theory is the result of a 12-year quantitative and qualitative comprehensive study and begins with chattel slavery. This chattel slavery was then followed by institutionalized racism which resulted in M.A.P: “Multigenerational trauma together with continued oppression,” “Absence of opportunity to heal or access the benefits available in the society,” and finally “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome,” a syndrome reinforcing helplessness, depression and anxiety.
Trauma is affecting us and has been affecting us for centuries. Public lynchings are still happening— an eight-year-old boy was just pushed off of a table with a rope tied around his neck. Black people are being gunned down in front of their children, in front of their partners and in front of their friends. And we are watching it. We are watching the videos, and we are being filled with such a helpless rage, we don’t know what to do with ourselves. We are crying. We are hurting. We are in pain. And we’ve been in pain since “southern trees bear strange fruits” peeled from Billie Holiday’s lips. We’ve been in pain since before then. We’ve been in pain since the tongues of our ancestors tasted a language not their own. We’ve been in pain for centuries at the hands of Whiteness. We’ve been in pain but we’ve kept going. We’re still going. We’re hurting but we’re still going. Still breathing. Still here.
*The picture shown above is a distortion of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith from Claudia Rankine’s book Citizen: An American Lyric. It forces viewers to look at the perpetrators of the violence, not the Black victims.
Comments