Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith were two African-American men who were lynched

Lynching

Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...

 on August 7, 1930 in Marion, Indiana

Marion, Indiana

Marion is a city in Grant County, Indiana, United States. The population was 29,948 as of the 2010 census. The city is the county seat of Grant County...

. They had been arrested the night before, charged with robbing and murdering a white factory worker, Claude Deeter, and raping his white girlfriend, Mary Ball. A large crowd broke into the jail with sledgehammers, beat the two men, and hanged them. When Abram Smith tried to free himself from the noose as his body was hauled up by the rope, he was lowered and then his arms broken to prevent him from trying to free himself again. Police officers in the crowd cooperated in the lynching. A third person, 16 year old James Cameron, narrowly escaped lynching thanks to an unidentified participant who announced that he had nothing to do with the rape or murder. A studio photographer, Lawrence Beitler

Lawrence Beitler

Lawrence Beitler was a studio photographer who on August 7, 1930, took a photograph of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. The photograph later sold thousands of copies and inspired the political poem "Strange Fruit" by the Jewish poet Abel Meeropol. The poem was later transformed into...

, took a photograph of the dead bodies hanging from a tree surrounded by a large crowd; thousands of copies of the photograph were sold.

Overview

Cameron has stated in interviews that Shipp and Smith had, in fact, started to rob a white man, who was later found shot. He says that he fled when he realized what was going on. Mary Ball later testified that she had not, contrary to the accusations against the three men, been raped. The police accused all three men of murder and rape.

Museum

Cameron later became (in 1988) the founder and director of America's Black Holocaust Museum

America's Black Holocaust Museum

America's Black Holocaust Museum located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin was the only memorial dedicated specifically to the victims of the enslavement of Africans in the United States...

, a museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Milwaukee is the largest city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, the 28th most populous city in the United States and 39th most populous region in the United States. It is the county seat of Milwaukee County and is located on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. According to 2010 census data, the...

 dedicated to the history of lynching in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

In 1937 Abel Meeropol

Abel Meeropol

Abel Meeropol was an American writer and song-writer, best known under his pseudonym Lewis Allan and as the adoptive father of the young sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.-Biography:...

, a Jewish schoolteacher from New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, saw a copy of this photograph. Meeropol later said that the photograph "haunted me for days" and inspired the writing of the poem, "Strange Fruit

Strange Fruit

"Strange Fruit" is a song performed most famously by Billie Holiday, who released her first recording of it in 1939, the year she first sang it. Written by the teacher Abel Meeropol as a poem, it exposed American racism, particularly the lynching of African Americans. Such lynchings had occurred...

". It was published in the New York Teacher and later in the magazine New Masses, in both cases under the pseudonym Lewis Allan. This poem became the text for the song of the same name, performed and popularized by Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...

. The song reached 16th place on the charts in July 1939.

Further reading

• An American Dilemma by Gunnar Myrdal (Harper and Brothers, 1944);
• A Time of Terror: A Survivor’s Story by James Cameron (Black Holocaust Museum)
  James Cameron (civil-rights activist)
  James Cameron , not to be confused with the film director of the same name, was an American civil rights activist. In the 1940s, he founded three chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People . He also served as Indiana's State Director of the Office of Civil...
  
  (Black Classics Press, 1982). This book has an account of this lynching, by the man who escaped.
• Lynching in the Heartland by James Madison (St. Martin’s Press, 2000) ISBN 0-312-23902-5.
• Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America by James Allen, Hilton Als, et al. (Twin Palms Publishers, 2000). Book corresponding to web site cited below.
• The God Moment by Alan D. Wright

External links

• "Strange Fruit: Anniversary of A Lynching" National Public Radio
• Lynchings in America review by Melvin Sylvester
• Without Sanctuary: Photographs and Postcards of Lynching in America
• Notes on the photo from Without Sanctuary, includes a quote from A Time of Terror
• Lynching in the USA, includes an account of the origin of Strange Fruit
• Lynchings & Hangings in American History
• A 2001 interview with James Cameron at Indiana University, published by IDS news
• A 2005 interview with James Cameron, the survivor (from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel July 8, 2005.) (link may require free registration)
• Review of A Lynching in the Heartland reviewed by Monroe H. Little (Department of History, Indiana University), review published on H-net