You can recognize a really good movie when it leads you to surprising revelations about yourself and the world around you. One such movie is “The United States vs. Billie Holiday.”
It is a terrific movie (with way too much nudity). Of course, I am a big fan of the singer’s style and songs. Andra Day inhabits Billie Holiday.
The movie revolves around the song “Strange Fruit,” which is about the lynchings in America. During the movie, I went to the NAACP site to see their history of lynchings.
“From 1882-1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States. Of these people that were lynched 3,446 were black. The blacks lynched accounted for 72.7% of the people lynched. These numbers seem large, but it is known that not all of the lynchings were ever recorded.” New York City had a number of lynchings.
I read this grim history just after seeing a very emotional moment in the movie. I did my best not to tear up.
Then, I read onward: “Out of the 4,743 people lynched only 1,297 white people were lynched. That is only 27.3%. Many of the whites lynched were lynched for helping the black or being anti lynching and even for domestic crimes. Quite a few states did in fact lynch more white people than black.”
I thought, Whaaat? 27% of the lynchings were of White people? Many were lynched for helping African Americans or for being against lynching?
As I sat there briefly distracted from the movie, I recalled hearing the stories of my father and mother about the many fights on behalf of African Americans. So, I now realized that some paid a big price, besides the casualties of the Civil War. I would remind high-minded Whites that those nooses that are shown around from time to time could be for you. Maybe, that was the meaning of the noose outside the Capitol on January 6th.
The history of America is made up of two traditions: the anti-racist tradition that President Abraham Lincoln spoke about; versus the racist tradition that the Southern sociologists like Joseph LeConte and George Fitzhugh wrote about. So far, after a great deal of tumult and deaths, the anti-racist tradition has prevailed.
Next time you eat a full bunch of grapes for a snack, remember that if the twenty grapes represent the strange fruit of lynching, 14 of them would be black grapes and 6 of them would be white grapes.
Let us also remember that this April 4th of Passover and Easter also commemorates the death of President Abraham Lincoln.
The President was shot on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, died on Saturday, and mourned on Easter Sunday, April 16, 1865. Before this year’s Passover and Easter, you might read his Second Inaugural Address in which he outlines the anti-racist tradition of America for which he and, fighting for the Union and against slavery, over 35,953 African Americans and 323,575 White Americans died.
Recently, we have also been discovering more about the role of Asian Americans in the fight for the Union. Admiral David Farragut was the most notable Hispanic American leader fighting for the Union and against slavery (who moved his family from Virginia to New York City before the war started).
