A Man Was Lynched Yesterday

From 1920 to 1938, a simple black flag with white font hung from the 7th story window of the Manhattan headquarters of the NAACP. It’s message, “A Man Was Lynched Yesterday,” was a reminder to northern white communities that nothing so trivial as miles could remove from them the shared responsibility of the plight of African Americans. That flag indicted them for their indifference to the suffering of southern people of color who suffered extra-judicial killings at the hands of mobs. No laws were every passed due to a solid voting bloc of southern senators who killed all legislation, and the flag stopped flying when the NAACP was threatened with eviction from its headquarters.

To lay it out in the simplest of terms, lynching is a form of mob violence meant to punish people for alleged crimes and to intimidate groups of people. It happens as a public spectacle with victims on display meant as a message to others. During the last part of the 19th and early decades of the 20th century, postcards were made that bore the images of victims still hanging from trees, with crowds or active participants posed around them. I do not recommend googling the term. The images are too much.

But it hasn’t stopped.

It has only evolved.

Over the past week, and for the days coming, there have been many documentaries and retrospectives of life and death of Martin Luther King Jr. With the 50th anniversary of his death being yesterday, it makes sense. We still have some of the witnesses of that dark day and so we must put down their stories in the historical record before they are lost. Articles are going up from news organizations, and religious sources to commemorate MLK and reflect on his influence. I, personally, have been reading a lot his works and listening to his speeches and sermons recently as I try to find my own way to figure out what MLK means to me. But through it all, there is one thing we need to grapple with.

Dr. King was lynched.

While it was a hotel balcony and a rifle instead of a tree and rope, it was a lynching all the same. Like so many thousands before him, Martin Luther King was lynched by a white man because he was causing problems. Violence was chosen as a solution to the anxiety experienced by a group used to being on top, and feared that equality would mean subservience. In an instant, Dr. King joined a list composed mostly of the nameless. People of color killed for no other crime than amount of melanin in their skin. 

But we remember his name.

Have you ever been to the MLK monument at the Tidal Basin in Washington, DC? I love going there. The view is magnificent, with the enormous sculpture of King facing, arms crossed in defiance, directly at Thomas Jefferson’s memorial across the water. The walls which circle behind him are filled with his most inspiring quotes. All of them paint the image of a visionary who is seeking a better future, and gave his life to make it a reality. The instill in the reader an aspiration for peace and justice. 

It is the King we want to remember.

It is only part of the story.

If this was the man, then no wonder his murder seems so unimaginable.

There have been numerous pieces in places like Sojourners, as well as on the SCLC website, that remind us that our memorials to Martin Luther King only capture part of the image of the man who lived that life. These pieces all call us to look longer at the man we are trying to remember and attempt to find the full view.  We love to remember “The Dream,” but do you know the part of the speech that talks about a “Promissory Note?” We know that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” But do you carry the calls to address brutality from police? Shivers travel down our spines at the mention of the “The Mountaintop,” but what do we feel when we hear “the edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring?” Dr. King spoke as often about the sickness of America as he expressed hope for peace. In one of his most powerful speeches, he proclaimed that America had committed more war crimes than any other nation on Earth. 

He wasn’t just a visionary. 

Martin Luther King Jr. was dangerous.

That is what causes a lynching. 

I have watched many of the retrospectives and documentaries that have come out over the last few days, and I have encouraged friends and family to watch some of them as well. Many are fantastic, and I encourage you to find them as well. NBC News ran one a couple of weeks ago about the relationship between Dr. King and the media. In it, one of the journalists who covered him at the many marches and rallies said something incredibly poignant in remembrance of MLK. He lamented that Dr. King was only seen as a leader of African Americans, and not as a cultural leader for all of us. If it only it could have been.

I know that I will never hold Martin Luther King Jr. with the same reverence as a person of color. As a product of the dominant culture (i.e. middle-class, straight, cis-gendered, white, and male) I could never appreciate him in the same way. My feelings and affections will always be different, and that is OK. I can share my appreciation with communities of color, and we, together, can talk about him. I love to read his words and listen to his public words. I have tracked down sermons and speeches for myself, and rarely have I found one that did not move me. I find that just incredible knowing how difficult it can be to produce profound words on such a regular basis, but, nonetheless, I will never have the same appreciation as a person of color.

That is because Dr. King was speaking FOR them.

He was speaking TO me.

A man was lynched yesterday, 50 years ago. He was a dangerous man. He was so dangerous that some just could not take it anymore. One thought the only way to overcome his crippling anxiety about a world that might look different in the future was to kill the man who personified his anxiety. He took a rifle, and committed a public act of violence. He killed Dr. King on the balcony of a hotel for everyone to see. The visionary we love today was not another victim of the inevitable death that comes for all of us.

Dr. King was murdered

He was lynched.