When the judge cut the eight of them loose, and all five hundred of them negroes stood up at once, I thought for sure either I was gonna die, or I’d have blood on my hands before I got out of that courtroom.

I ain’t never heard no other noise like that. The shuffle of shoes against wooden floors, the stomp of heels hitting the ground, the drawing in of breath, all in unison.

I swear to God, the fat bailiff next to me half pissed himself.

I wasn’t much better. I tried to remember what that girl I’d had a month back looked like naked, and just why she’d agreed to the tryst in the first place. I figured if I was going to have a last thought, I’d make it a fun one.

But, as the eight Klansmen filed out to the whoops and hollers of their kind, them negroes just stood silent, watching, like they were saying more with their mute witness than any lawyer had said over the course of this whole case.

Then, they all filed out together, not saying anyone to anything, just movin’ on.

I think that’s when I remembered to breathe again.

Memphis Note
In 1874 a group of Klu Klux Klansmen lynched 16 blacks in Gibson County, Tennessee. Their trial was held here in Memphis. The judge freed all eight of the men that were charged, while five hundred blacks watched on, knowing that this country’s courts were not for them.

Augustus Ackerman slumped back into the chair, his head spinning at the news.

“Are…are you sure? Sure it was them?” He looked up at the dirty man standing in his parlor, tears welling in his eyes.

“There were three bodies strung up just north past town, sir. The smallest amongst them, the one that was little more than a boy, they say he still bared bandages from the beating the crowd gave him.” The man nervously grasped at his hat, uncomfortable at bearing such horrible news. “And his head was shaved, too. Like they did to him as well.”

Augustus’s breath was coming in ragged gasps now.

“Those were my cousin’s boys. I’d brought them down from Ohio to finish the inside of my house. They were carpenters. Who would do such a thing? Could have such a monstrous resolve?”

“I..I don’t know, sir.” The dusty man was unsure if should respond or not.

“They left as soon as those bastards from the damned Committee of Safety got wind. I sent them on their way that very day, just liked they asked. And yet still…they…oh God…”

And with that August Ackerman broke down into uncontrollable sobs.

Memphis Note
The Committee of Safety was Memphis’s own version of the House Un-American Activities Committee, only a hundred years earlier and devoted to rooting out any Northern influence in the days before the Civil War. They were completely unofficial and answered to no one in the government, elected or appointed. Fear and coercion were the tools they used to force people from the city. And sometimes they would go too far, as with the case of three carpenters that were found hung north of the city, just days after being told to leave town.

“How long they gonna leave those boys up there?” The old man stands in the crossroads looking up at the bodies, not speaking to anyone in particular. “Just don’t seem Christian.”

A breeze kicks up, sending the ropes and branches twisting, moaning.

“Odds are, ones that did it claim they’re Christian.” Growls a dusty traveler, just come up the road.

“Actions like this would seem disagree with that.” Says the old man, squinting up at him.

The traveler shrugs his bag off his shoulder. “Met a sailor once. Just back from China. Said there was a people there that put their dead in coffins on the sides of cliffs. The Bo, he called ‘em”

“Yeah? So?”


“Near as I can tell I’m not a star worshiping heathen. And I’m guessing you’re not either. So let’s not leave them up there like this.”

The old man snorts as the traveler pulls out his knife.

“What are you gonna do?”

“Dig ‘em a grave. Throw ‘em in a fire. Toss ‘em in the river. Don’t matter none. They’re naught but bones now. But whatever it is, I’ll do it with kindness.”

The old man sighs and follows him over to the tree.

Memphis Note
Lynchings. The unfortunate, half-buried stain on the post-Reconstruction South. Thousands of cases were documented, with more probably slipping into the cracks. One of Memphis’s most important residents, Ida B Wells, made a name for herself by printing stories and refusing to be silent about this commonplace nature of lynchings. Speaking out against them nearly cost Wells her live when a lynch mob came looking for her one night in Memphis. Luckily, she was away from the city at the time.

“Brothers and sisters, we are gathered here, in a meager structure, not fit to weather the fury of God.” Were the words Rabbi William Fineshriber opened with, glowering over his wire-rimmed glasses, not at his congregation, but around them.

“A man is dead.” He followed, his gaze not lessening. “Hundreds, no thousands, witnessed his dousing in gasoline and his being lit a’fire. Yet not one of them raised a voice in protest over the lies and neglect and absenteeism of his arrest and illegal trial by public jury.”

The rabbi paused, and swept his gaze across the room. What came next would cause him, and all that followed him trouble.

“Our faith, our people, should not be at issue here. But, rather, the issue should be the life of a man lost in vain. A poor man. A humble man. A man, whom in all aspects, was unequivocally righteous. He was the same as us in his love of God.”

Fineshriber paused, taking a breath, judging his words.

“To take a stand now is not a noble thing. That was lost before this hour, before the lynching of an innocent man. All that remains is what we do after.”

Memphis Note
In 1917, a man was burned alive with out trial or jury. His name was Eli Person, and his only crime was living too close to a murder scene. He was burned alive on the Wolf River bridge in front of nearly five thousand spectators. One of the most vocal protestors of that act was the rabbi of Temple Israel, one Rabbi William Fineshriber, who lead a protest that crossed religious boundaries. His was a legacy of civil rights before there was any such movement to give a name to.