homersapien 11,357 Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 The Fiery Cage and the Lynching Tree, Brutality's Never Far Away They burned him alive in an iron cage, and as he screamed and writhed in the agony of hell they made a sport of his death. After listening to one newscast after another rightly condemn the barbaric killing of that Jordanian air force pilot at the bloody hands of ISIS, I couldn't sleep. My mind kept roaming the past trying to retrieve a vaguely remembered photograph that I had seen long ago in the archives of a college library in Texas. Suddenly, around two in the morning, the image materialized in my head. I made my way down the hall to my computer and typed in: "Waco, Texas. Lynching." Sure enough, there it was: the charred corpse of a young black man, tied to a blistered tree in the heart of the Texas Bible Belt. Next to the burned body, young white men can be seen smiling and grinning, seemingly jubilant at their front-row seats in a carnival of death. One of them sent a picture postcard home: "This is the barbeque we had last night. My picture is to the left with a cross over it. Your son, Joe." The victim's name was Jesse Washington. The year was 1916. America would soon go to war in Europe "to make the world safe for democracy." My father was twelve, my mother eight. I was born 18 years later, at a time, I would come to learn, when local white folks still talked about Washington's execution as if it were only yesterday. This was not medieval Europe. Not the Inquisition. Not a heretic burned at the stake by some ecclesiastical authority in the Old World. This was Texas, and the white people in that photograph were farmers, laborers, shopkeepers, some of them respectable congregants from local churches in and around the growing town of Waco. Here is the photograph. Take a good look at Jesse Washington's stiffened body tied to the tree. He had been sentenced to death for the murder of a white woman. No witnesses saw the crime; he allegedly confessed but the truth of the allegations would never be tested. The grand jury took just four minutes to return a guilty verdict, but there was no appeal, no review, no prison time. Instead, a courtroom mob dragged him outside, pinned him to the ground, and cut off his testicles. A bonfire was quickly built and lit. For two hours, Jesse Washington -- alive -- was raised and lowered over the flames. Again and again and again. City officials and police stood by, approvingly. According to some estimates, the crowd grew to as many as 15,000. There were taunts, cheers and laughter. Reporters described hearing "shouts of delight." When the flames died away, Washington's body was torn apart and the pieces were sold as souvenirs. The party was over. Many years later, as a young man, I visited Waco's Baylor University, often referred to as the Texas Baptist Vatican. I had been offered a teaching position there. I sat for a while in the school's Armstrong Browning Library, one of the most beautiful in America, containing not only the works of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the acclaimed Victorian poets, but also stained glass windows, marble columns, and elegant ceilings that bring to mind the gorgeous interior of Michelangelo's Laurentian library in Florence. Sitting there, I found it hard to reconcile the beauty and quiet of that sanctuary with the photograph that I had been shown earlier by a man named Harry Provence, publisher of the local newspaper. Seeing it, I realized that as young Jesse Washington was being tortured, students his own age, some of them studying for the ministry, were just finishing their spring semester. In 1905, when another black man had been lynched in Waco, Baylor's president became a leader of the anti-lynching movement. But ugly memories still divided the town. Jesse Washington was just one black man to die horribly at the hands of white death squads. Between 1882 and 1968 -- 1968! -- there were 4,743 recorded lynchings in the U.S. About a quarter of them were white people, many of whom had been killed for sympathizing with black folks. My father, who was born in 1904 near Paris, Texas, kept in a drawer that newspaper photograph from back when he was a boy of thousands of people gathered as if at a picnic to feast on the torture and hanging of a black man in the center of town. On a journey tracing our roots many years later, my father choked and grew silent as we stood near the spot where it had happened. Yes, it was hard to get back to sleep the night we heard the news of the Jordanian pilot's horrendous end. ISIS be damned! I thought. But with the next breath I could only think that our own barbarians did not have to wait at any gate. They were insiders. Home grown. Godly. Our neighbors, friends, and kin. People like us. Bill Moyers Managing Editor, Moyers & Company Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AUDub 11,136 Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 Here's another incident that some here have likely never heard of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AURaptor 1,122 Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 Not relevant. Sorry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
icanthearyou 4,462 Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 Not relevant. Sorry And..........wrong again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WarTim 3,456 Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 The TWO have absolutely N O T H I N G to do with one another.(BTW.... I HATE racism-the KKK-all of their ilk.) This is apples=oranges...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
icanthearyou 4,462 Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 The TWO have absolutely N O T H I N G to do with one another.(BTW.... I HATE racism-the KKK-all of their ilk.) This is apples=oranges...... Just because you can not understand, doesn't mean the two are not related. Think about terrorism. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AURaptor 1,122 Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 They're not related . Period. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homersapien 11,357 Posted February 6, 2015 Author Share Posted February 6, 2015 The TWO have absolutely N O T H I N G to do with one another.(BTW.... I HATE racism-the KKK-all of their ilk.) This is apples=oranges...... NOTHING? They have NOTHING in common? To borrow a phrase from your camp, it must suck to be you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homersapien 11,357 Posted February 6, 2015 Author Share Posted February 6, 2015 They're not related . Period. How about being two clear examples of evil? If not, please explain why. Oh, and since you like to play with numbers, what percent of that crowd do you reckon are self-proclaimed Christians? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
icanthearyou 4,462 Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 They're not related . Period. Think about the majority who remain silent in the face of the terrorists. Think about those from the side who are terrorized who begin to unjustly demonize everyone they associate with the terrorists. Don't look now, you and Louis Farrakhan are the same! Think about what really stopped the reign of terror. Think about the dangers of stereotypes and dogma used purely for evil. There are many parallels. Many lessons. I know this is quite difficult for you. This is way beyond Obama sux, libs is dumb. Try harder. You can do it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AURaptor 1,122 Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 This is the same tactic being used to defend Lying Brian. Dig up a totally unrelated issue to deflect , defend , & dismiss the very prominent matter at hand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homersapien 11,357 Posted February 6, 2015 Author Share Posted February 6, 2015 This is the same tactic being used to defend Lying Brian. Dig up a totally unrelated issue to deflect , defend , & dismiss the very prominent matter at hand. Totally unrelated? And exactly how does this deflect, defend & dismiss the matter at hand? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AURaptor 1,122 Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 Because it's totally unrelated, and you're trying to give cover for today's Islamic terrorism. Just as Obama did. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GiveEmElle 1,559 Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 Compare They are both brutal acts. Both acts are committed by misguided people who don't value human lives. Contrast One is racism. One is terrorism. One stemmed from a belief that skin color determined worth. The other stems from political motivation under the guise of religion. The two acts are similar and different. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AURaptor 1,122 Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 Here's something for the defenders of Obama and the idea that "Christians did bad stuff too " crowd... Obama refuses to call Militant Islam by its name. CONSTANTLY is telling us that ISIL - ISLAMIC STATE has zero to do with ISLAM. So then why go out of his way to trash Christianity, SPECIFICALLY, for sins centuries ago, while he ignores what is going on today ? If it's not Muslims today who are committing atrocities, then why in the hell bring up and blame Christians for events 100's or a 1000 years ago ? And Obama seems ( shocker ) to have once again forgotten history. Muslims attacked the West LONG before the Crusades.( See Charles Martel ,and the Battle of Tours ) or the Reconquista and the fall of Granada. Obama and the Left are intent w/ spinning the narrative here, so as to lay guilt on those who are literally quite guiltless. Blaming the West of today for the sins of those from 100's of years ago, and who were actually DEFENDING themselves from MUSLIMS, in the first place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AUUSN 823 Posted February 7, 2015 Share Posted February 7, 2015 Here's something for the defenders of Obama and the idea that "Christians did bad stuff too " crowd... Obama refuses to call Militant Islam by its name. CONSTANTLY is telling us that ISIL - ISLAMIC STATE has zero to do with ISLAM. So then why go out of his way to trash Christianity, SPECIFICALLY, for sins centuries ago, while he ignores what is going on today ? If it's not Muslims today who are committing atrocities, then why in the hell bring up and blame Christians for events 100's or a 1000 years ago ? And Obama seems ( shocker ) to have once again forgotten history. Muslims attacked the West LONG before the Crusades.( See Charles Martel ,and the Battle of Tours) or the Reconquista and the fall of Granada. Obama and the Left are intent w/ spinning the narrative here, so as to lay guilt on those who are literally quite guiltless. Blaming the West of today for the sins of those from 100's of years ago, and who were actually DEFENDING themselves from MUSLIMS, in the first place. No need to go back 1000 years some say just go back to 2003: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1184546/Donald-Rumsfelds-holy-war-How-President-Bushs-Iraq-briefings-came-quotes-Bible.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
icanthearyou 4,462 Posted February 7, 2015 Share Posted February 7, 2015 Compare They are both brutal acts. Both acts are committed by misguided people who don't value human lives. Contrast One is racism. One is terrorism. One stemmed from a belief that skin color determined worth. The other stems from political motivation under the guise of religion. The two acts are similar and different. Both ISIS and the KKK are terrorist groups. Race and religion are motives behind both. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GiveEmElle 1,559 Posted February 7, 2015 Share Posted February 7, 2015 Compare They are both brutal acts. Both acts are committed by misguided people who don't value human lives. Contrast One is racism. One is terrorism. One stemmed from a belief that skin color determined worth. The other stems from political motivation under the guise of religion. The two acts are similar and different. Both ISIS and the KKK are terrorist groups. Race and religion are motives behind both. Yes, the KKK did cause lots of terror. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WarTim 3,456 Posted February 7, 2015 Share Posted February 7, 2015 They're not related . Period. How about being two clear examples of evil? If not, please explain why. Oh, and since you like to play with numbers, what percent of that crowd do you reckon are self-proclaimed Christians? Attacking Christianity does not help your case homey. You may want to re-think that... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AUDub 11,136 Posted February 7, 2015 Share Posted February 7, 2015 They're not related . Period. How about being two clear examples of evil? If not, please explain why. Oh, and since you like to play with numbers, what percent of that crowd do you reckon are self-proclaimed Christians? Attacking Christianity does not help your case homey. You may want to re-think that... Uh, he's not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WarTim 3,456 Posted February 7, 2015 Share Posted February 7, 2015 They're not related . Period. How about being two clear examples of evil? If not, please explain why. Oh, and since you like to play with numbers, what percent of that crowd do you reckon are self-proclaimed Christians? Attacking Christianity does not help your case homey. You may want to re-think that... Uh, he's not. Uh, he is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AUDub 11,136 Posted February 7, 2015 Share Posted February 7, 2015 They're not related . Period. How about being two clear examples of evil? If not, please explain why. Oh, and since you like to play with numbers, what percent of that crowd do you reckon are self-proclaimed Christians? Attacking Christianity does not help your case homey. You may want to re-think that... Uh, he's not. Uh, he is. No, he's not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AUUSN 823 Posted February 7, 2015 Share Posted February 7, 2015 Obama talked about the Crusades. Maybe he should talk about the Mongols. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/02/06/obama-talked-about-the-crusades-maybe-he-should-talk-about-the-mongols/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AUUSN 823 Posted February 7, 2015 Share Posted February 7, 2015 Pointing out that Americans have done, on their own soil, in the name of their own God, something similar to what ISIS is doing now does not make ISIS any less barbaric, or any more correct. That is unless you view the entire discussion as a kind of religious one-upmanship, in which the goal is to prove that Christianity is "the awesomest." Obama seemed to be going for something more—faith leavened by “some doubt.” If you are truly appalled by the brutality of ISIS, then a wise and essential step is understanding the lure of brutality, and recalling how easily your own society can be, and how often it has been, pulled over the brink. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/the-foolish-historically-illiterate-incredible-response-to-obamas-prayer-breakfast-speech/385246/?utm_source=SFTwitter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AURaptor 1,122 Posted February 7, 2015 Share Posted February 7, 2015 No need to go back 1000 years some say just go back to 2003: Your post makes absolutely no sense, what so ever. You're attempting to conflate Rumsfeld's remark to mean that our use of force against Iraq was in any way based in Christianity ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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