Past issues of the Jackson Daily News yielded a few headlines that tell part of the story about Mississippi's racist past. It's no secret mob violence ruled Mississippi at times, as blacks were lynched by mobs, morals and civil rights be damned. However, it is one thing to be told about the lynchings and another to see them plastered on the front pages of the newspaper. Here are some headlines and articles from the past that are not dead and definitely not forgotten, at least by those who suffered for decades under the rule of Jim Crow and the mob. The Duck Hill lynching gained particular notoriety, as blowtorches were used to obtain confessions in ways that would have made a Sicilian proud. The German newspapers spared no effort in exploiting Mississippi's racism for its own propaganda, as seen below in one article.
Easier version to read from another newspaper. Most of the stories in this post were AP reports so they could be found at other newspapers. Thanks you, Newspapers.com. Sadly enough, most of the editions of the JDN from the 1930's didn't copy well to microfilm.
54 comments:
Just another reason the bozos want to keep the flag. It's about heritage....like this. They scream "Change the heart, NOT the flag".
The racist past of the Democratic Party in the South is truly shocking.
Meanwhile, Miss Mississippi shows more leadership than Phil Bryant ever will in his life.
5:11- true. Why does the GOP insist on picking up the torch & carrying it on?
This is a good piece of writing, KF. I don't think keeping the flag is for bozos or getting rid of it is for bozos. On the heels of Jim Crow, I grew up in what then rural Madison by Yankee Catholic parents transplanted here. My parents feared that their youngest children would absorb what was a very prevalent racism in Mississippi. They worried about it daily as they raised us in Catholic School...the only integrated private schools. All of this stuff happened here in Mississippi, and it was not long ago. We played public school sports because the other private schools except St.Andrews and other Catholic schools, wouldn't play us in sports...we were fully integrated. My parents chose Madison because racism was worse in Rankin. I eventually grew up with close ties of all colors. I married a man who was in the integrated Hinds County class rooms as a young child. He was only 7 years older than me. He became a lawyer in integrated law classrooms. I became aware after our marriage that he was appearing before black judges even older than he was. Our culture here is one that exploded into incredible progressive growth of the black community having a very large population of individuals more educated and achieved than most of their white counterparts. If you think about it, how many of our judges and lawyers walk into court houses in Mississippi everyday that fly the flag or report to the Senate and House as representatives of their constituency or work for our State government as civil servants with dark skin. Before I decide anything about the flag, I want to hear from the people who rose above oppression and who serve us everyday as public officials, lawyers, doctors, engineers, nurses, judges...legislators, police, firemen...all of color. I want to hear from Judge Goree, Judge Wise, Judge Owens, Judge Lewis, Representative John Horhn, Appellate Court Judge EJ Russell, Vikki Mumford, and Federal Judges Linda Anderson and Carlton Reeves. I want to hear from Tony Yarber, Mayor of Jackson and Canton mayor Arnel Bolden....Robert Schuler Smith, Mike Espy. The heart of Mississippi is changed...whether the flag changes should really be up to the people I named and others. They are some of the people who rose up in their absolute commitment to equality among people. There are many black families committed to our care in government and law. We have Tammy Cotton, wife of Jackson attorney Ramel Cotton, on the ticket for our State House of Representatives. KF, see if you can find out what these guys I named think...That's a great story. What do the African-American people who rose above that flag to take their place in law, government, and the judiciary... What do they think? As a historian and an attorney and someone close in politics...their decision is my decision.
What lynchings took place in Mississippi under GOP leadership?
5:30. Blah blah blah. They want to change the stupid, redneck flag. I haven't talked to them but for the love of God, anybody with a scintilla of sense wants to. Rednecks grow up, or go away.
5:42 ... let's go ask James Anderson that.
That is an interesting question. Spend a day at Ms. Dept. of Archives and History.
5:42 - Read a history book. if you had, you would know that today's GOP isn't the party it was 35 years ago. Nixon's Southern Strategy saw to that. It laid the groundwork for the demographic change for parties in MS and around the country. Therefore, the constituents of the Democratic Party who lead the opposition to civil rights would be modern day Republicans. This whole idea that the current GOP is the "Party of Lincoln" is a bold faced lie.
It's kinda hard to read some of those articles, But I couldn't find where any flags were involved in the killings.
And how nice it is that Negroes are no longer murdered in Mississippi.
Let's ask James Meredith...We are an amazingly progressive State for our bad history. If the flag needs to be abolished, then we do that after study of the opinions of the people who overcame it. There are so many great people who overcame this flag.
I will advocate to change the flag as soon as our black leaders...many good leaders now in government and law...as soon as they want it changed.
James Anderson wasn't lynched and Jackson is run by Democrats.
How many lynchings -- lynchings the subject of this JJ item -- have taken place in Mississippi since Kirk Fordice became Governor?
GOP should take no position on the flag until our fine black leaders take a position.
Donner, just come out and say it. You are the final word historian with the beyond reproach research skills that far surpass everyone on the planet. Just say it Donner.
it would appear that KF has invited DL in for a guest appearance tonight. And yes 6:13, the Republican Party has changed - but I would not get to high and mighty, the Dem Party is a thrall to Socialist and soft Commies. When the Dems are celebrating Bernie the Socialist and Hill is trying to match him...please save the lecture on the Repubs. Their biggest problem is a billionaire who will say what most average taxpayers think but are to intimidated to say. And he doesn't have to whore himself to some interest group for money to run. He is terrifying both Repubs and Dems. This is going to be fun to watch along with flag moralizing, gay rights moralizing, and all the other hand wringing the left loves to do around election time. Repubs better take a lesson from past elections- walk away from us and we won't show up. Happened to McCain and Romney. Plenty of voters but they did not show up for them. Wonder why? In the end it all comes down to who represents my interest. The Cynic.
5:30 - love your testimonial, even though it is only as seen thru tinted eyeshades. 1) I don't give a damn about the flag whether we keep it or change it, but 2) I don't think it is up to the black Mississippians that you have selected to decide as you suggest, and 3) obviously your husband hasn't taught you much about his profession (legal) because all those Judges you named should not be out professing an opinion on this political issue. And to suggest that your selected candidate for the House, Tammy Cotten, should be the next success story, I assume it is because she is married to a successful plantiffs attorney. Granted, she would be much better than the racist member she would be replacing (Jim Evans) who spewed racism more than any white member of the legislature in a couple of decades.
(And besides, St. Joe wasn't the only integrated school as you state. Ought to check your facts before you spew them out in such an epistle.
ROFLMAO that anyone truly bothered to read @5:30!
Y'all must read Natchez Granny's daily droppings also!!!
1937! Come on 19 friggin 37! How many lynchings were there? Didn't jackson state find out there were around 4000 and around 2000 were black people? What color were the others? It's funny the state won't carry out the death sentence and if they ever do it takes 25 to 30 years to get around to it. I don't advocate lynching and it might have killed innocent people ( I believe in death sentence only with DNA , more than one eyewitness or criminal is so stupid to confess) but it was swift. And yes Dylan Roof should be lit up. I believe God has a special place in hell for someone who goes in his house and murders his children !
And jj why the lynching story?
ISIS can't touch the rebel flag waving nuts in Mississippi. In my home county they tried to burn alive a black family. Fortunately the father was a veteran who held the Ku Klux Kowards off with a rifle while the wife and kids ran into the woods behind the house. He died a slow, two-day death because of the heat that fried his lungs. Where were the idiots who now claim the rebel flag somehow "honors" somebody. They quietly sat on their butts while the KKKowards desecrated the flag they laughingly claim represents some kind of history other than the real history of the flag. It is a terrorist symbol, pure and simple.
This must be Bill Minors favorite blog!
She can comment here any time she wants to do so. When have I ever said she couldn't?
Why not?
As stated earlier, I was digging through the archives for old stories on the Gold Coast. I came across stories on other topics such as polio and lynchings. I found them interesting and thought they were worth posting. Are we scared of history or something?
8:37: Great reason why there should be a Second Amendment. Not enough of those bastards were shot.
If you are in Firefox, click on each photo. Then you should be able to click on a magnifying glass icon to enlarge it. The cleaner versions should be readable.
Come on kingfish why the lynching story?
8:37
Where is your home country? Tell us more about your father holding the kluckers off with his rifle, like when and where? I'm 55 and the only kluckers I've ever seen were in Pearl in the 1980's. Also ISIS can touch the flag waving nuts in MS they can touch the crying ass flag haters also. So while we are fighting over a flag they are planning to cut off an Americans head. Your more likely to die in jackson from a gun shot than beheading but you never know.
Put the flag on the ballot. What ever the people decide the other side has to live with it. Even though we've done this before.
AGAIN, why the lynching story!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Good lord 5:30 is such an insufferable self-indulgent apologist whiner! Take a lesson from Rachel Doliezal or whoever. Clueless.
The lynching was done under the "noble" idiot flag.
9:07
My home "country" is the U.S.A., but I can sometimes interpret dumbass redneck. My home county is Forrest. The father was Vernon Dahmer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_Dahmer
The difference between ISIS and the Ku Klux Kowards is ISIS steps up to what they do and the Kowards hide behind the rebel flag. Oh, and their lawyer supported MKKKDaniel. If you think the Mississippi Klukkers didn't hold their own with ISIS, you are simply hiding you eyes. ISIS can't touch them for Kowardice.
Oh ok why not?
I'm not scared of history but then again I'm not trying to change or remove history!
But it seems to me your just like the clarion ledger with their headlines like " in six days it will be just two months before the 78 anniversary of the Duckhill Ms lynchings. Kinda shitty for you to be a shit stirrer.
Billingsly and Longwitz are still cowardly silent on their opinion of the flag.
Its the flag toters who are trying to change history.
They want to make the old battle flag something it never was...honorable.
If you respected history, you'd hate that flag, pure and simple.
Thanks for sharing these stories, about the Gold Coast and the lynchings.. Why not talk about some different stuff, including historical events every once in a while?
"Our culture here.....growth of the black community having a very large population of individuals more educated and achieved than most of their white counterparts".
Opinion. Stick with facts. If this is a fact, back it up. Another Bill Minor soundbite.
Kingfish earlier showed us he doesn't know the difference between The Stars and Bars and The Battle Flag of Northern Virginia. Now he writes this Bill Minor piece with questionable motives.
Here's a piece most of you have probably seen by now and that the rest of you should read word for word and retire to your white-guilt pouty-party with.
http://megynkelly.org/179680/the-confederate-flag-needs-to-be-raised-not-lowered/
" That was 1939"
Yes, and Hitler was flying the Nazi flag then as well.
Think the Swastika doesn't symbolize the terror Nazis inflicted on Jews still?
You see Swastikas as tattoos or armbands or flags and you don't think that person sporting it is an asshole who supports Nazism? Well, others see you sporting The Battle Flag and think you revere the KKK.
I hate the KKK hijacked The Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia. But, unlike some of you, I absolutely understand why Jews and Blacks and those who have no Southern roots see it as a symbol of hatred and violence and find it offensive.
Some things are just are offensive and should be. This absurd notion that " being offended" and " political correctness" are bad is hypocrisy at it's worst. Some of you are trying to have it both ways. You can't be offended by baggy pants or liberals and then say no one should be offended by The Battle Flag or insulting remarks.
Now you are offended by those you offended being offended. This is the stuff of Alice in Wonderland!
Rude and crude is still rude and crude. Being hate filled and insulting is always going to be offensive. And, if you hurl insults at people then why are you surprised that they are actually insulted? You think you can demean others and you never expect them to react or fight back? Are you crazy?
You love The Constitution when it comes to the Second Amendment but you aren't offended that the KKK violated The Constitution egregiously? You don't get that Blacks might see The Battle Flag waving as a " slippery slope" threat to their Constitutional rights like you see any gun regulation as a " slippery slope" threat to yours?
You say you're for " State's rights" but not when South Carolina does something you don't like?
Your hypocrisy is very telling. You don't have a cohesive, consistent political or philosophical point of view. What you are doing is trying to defend the past as you fear the past makes you look like a loser. Well, we lost. Get over it and learn from it.
Seems to me that more than a few of you would like to try to be as rash now as our ancestors were in 1860! And, the results would be exactly the same!
The real problem everyone & I mean everyone including JJ,JFP,CL is missing is that our govt. (Federal & State) loudly boasts it's a DEMOCRACY.So the majority of the people make the rules. Right. In it's purest form, if the majority vote (which they have already done to keep the flag) than it's a done deal. Right. But, NO, special interest groups like the NAACP,SCLU, SPLC, Obama, Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton and others uses the liberal media to promote the minority agenda (Gay agenda, Black agenda, illegal immigrants Agenda.
So, I see our state flag as a symbol of strong Democracy as long as it keeps flying.
'The results would be exactly the same.' That all depends. If America were bound by the politically correct rules of war that has caused her to lose recent wars, the South would undoubtedly win. If America resorted to the brutal tactics utilized by the union during the Civil War, the South, both citizens and soldiers, would most definitely be crushed. 80% of the armed forces are from the South. It wouldn't be a walk in the park to keep States from seceding today, I personally believe the South would win.
Hey moron at 10:04. We are a democratically elected REPUBLIC. There is not one true democracy in the world that works. That is called mob rule. There is a huge difference. Go study history
10:18 am What politically correct " rules of war" do you mean?
Which rules of the Geneva Convention do you find objectionable?
Torture? Killing civilians because you don't like how they think?
What exactly do you have in mind? And, please, let us know which branch of the service you joined and your billet and when you were in combat.
And, pray tell how exactly THIS time, you are going to get Southern States to all work together rather than at cross purposes and where you are going to get the military hardware, computer technology, the infrastructure up to snuff, etc that you need to win a war, oh great military genius? Going to get Putin or Jong to finance " the Cause" ?
Who wants to be 'the party of Abe Lincoln'? One of the grandest racists of all time.
Revisit the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Revisit and book that catalogs his writing and speeches and remarks.
The same goofballs who elected Chockwe Lumumba holler racism at the drop of a waist-line.
1:04. You and your fellow right wing nut blowhards are and have been embarrassing the sane among us for years. Years. Will you all please just STFU. You are going to lose your flag, sooner or later. Deal with it. Mature. Grow up.
The flag is going to go. Kick, scream, threaten, cuss all you want to. It WILL go, sooner or later. Quit embarrassing the rest of the state with your tired, old, useless "heritage" bullshit. The flag, thank God, will one day be gone. FOREVER.
1:04 pm Why don't you visit Hayes or do you know that Lincoln and Douglas weren't the only ones running?
5:44 you need to start a political party. You are spot on. These small minded, short thinkers (rednecks) are killing us. I wish they would just step back, take a deep breath and realize what they are doing.
12:22
Sherman shelled Atlanta for two weeks when the City had no defending army. One of his officers told him they were just slaughtering civilians, including women and children, and Sherman replied that the dead bodies were a beautiful sight. Throughout the war the union army starved and murdered a civilian population, thus making the ability to support an army impossible.
Those war tactics are generally frowned upon today.
@ 8:50
The mayors of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, Darmstadt, and Tokyo agree.
8:50 pm and 9:43 pm Your superficial understanding of military tactics and history is showing.
The lingering negative effects of Sherman's March and Reconstruction is why we had the Marshall Plan.
You admire Sherman? Are you some damn Yankee?
These were armies with a government that could surrender at war and the civilians well knew they were in harm's way.
What is your military background if any? Desk jockey?
Interesting to mention Tokyo and you left out London and missed that that none of these places were obliterated, people survived.
You seem not to know weapon limitations or anything about how many boots on the ground are eventually needed.
You seem not to understand that you have to have the ability to deal with what remains after the shelling or the bombing.
But, please, do tell all of us what your military strategy for our current situations might be. You are not a Patriot if you have the winning plan and won't share it!
I suspect you are like the many over the years who have told me how we could have won the war in Vietnam using military and arms capabilities that didn't exist except in your imagination!
Awwww. Poor 8:37 got showed up and lost it.
When it is pointed out that he was wrong, he launches ad hominem attacks.
You'd think this was the Internet or something.
All lynchings (and everything else bad) in Mississippi have taken place under white, conservative, male legislative and executive leadership.
6:30
More black men have died violent deaths in Chicago in the past ten years than died in ALL the "lynchings" in the history of the South.
Black lives matter.
All those black men took place under liberal, bi-racial, legislative and executive leadership.
It would take the KKK 100 years to catch up with Chicago, and cost a fortune in rope.
She walked the dog twice on this one. Do any Natchez dog owners pick up after their mutts?
Thanks, KF, for publishing these articles. I'm black, and I find these type articles interesting and informative. I show them to my kids, and we discuss them. It's a part of history that schools in Mississippi seem to ignore. I'm 55 years old and didn't know about a lot of this until I was grown. For those who want to know why you published them, just tell them that history is important to know so that we don't repeat some of it.
8:24; I hope you inadvertently left out the word 'accurate' when you typed '.....history is important to know....'.
Far too many in 'the black community' today are teaching their children inaccurate history, which isn't history at all. It's just bullshit. Proud that you recognize this and are making a difference at your house.
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