Between 1877 and 1950 there were more than 4,400 cases of African American men, women, and children who were hanged, burned alive, shot, drowned, and beaten to death by white mobs. White Christians lynched more than 4,400 Black bodies in the name of white supremacy.
How was The Church involved in these killings? Here are two examples lifted from Robert P. Jones’ book White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity.
In Springfield, Missouri on Easter Sunday morning 1906 three black men, Horace B. Duncan, Fred Coker and William Allen, were lynched in the town square by a mob of a thousand whites. Arthur Hodge, a Springfield community leader involved in creating a memorial for the victims in 2018 states, ‘They hanged them. They threw kerosene on them. They burned them to a crisp. And then they went to church…”
“Contemporary newspaper accounts note that the white crowd sifted through the pile of ashes for souvenir pieces of clothing, bone or charred flesh. Entrepreneurial businessmen took pictures of the grisly scene, which captured smoke still rising from the men strung up from a tower-originally constructed to support streetcar electrical lines and featuring a miniature Statue of Liberty at the top-to sell as postcards. A few white entrepreneurs even struck medals to commorate the occasion. One read, ‘Easter Offering’.”
The second illustration is recorded in 1899. Samuel Thomas Wilkes, a black Georgia farmhand was lynched after being accused of killing a white farmer, Alfred Cranford. The story continues in Robert P. Jones’ book, (A week after the murder,) “Governor Allen Candler, a member of one of Georgia’s most prominent Methodist families, offered a $500 reward for his capture. The paper put up another $500 and ran another article, declaring. ‘When Hose (Wilkes) is caught he will either be lynched and his body riddled with bullets or he will be burned at the stake…the mob which is in pursuit of him is composed of determined men…wrought up to an unusual degree.”
News that Wilkes had been captured traveled to Atlanta on Sunday morning. Jones continues, “When the city’s white churches emptied from morning services, many worshipers streamed straight from church to the train station, hoping to participate in the much-anticipated lynching.” The Atlanta and West Point Railroad had to add a special train of six coaches to meet the demand. Conductors announced the train shouting, ‘Special train to Newnan! All aboard for the burning!’
Here is how Jones continues the story, “Meanwhile, church was also letting out in Newnan just as Wilkes was escorted off the train by his captors, who were delivering him to the jail to collect their reward… Wilkes made it safely to the jail, but before he was locked in the cell, the crowd threw the bailiff aside, seized the suspect, put a chain around his neck and brought him back outside. The scene abruptly shifted from solemn order to enthusiastic, cheering chaos…
Given that these events occurred on a Sunday just as worshippers were leaving church, it is striking to note the conspicuous absence of religious opposition to the mob violence… Historian Edwin Arnold noted the flow from church benedictions to the lynching processional: ‘members who had attended the Sunday morning services now stood on its steps watching or joined the procession as it passed by…”
Wilkes was paraded through town and was periodically held aloft resulting in loud cheers from the crowd.
“At the site, he was stripped naked, and a chain was wrapped around his body from neck to foot, locked around his chest, and attached to a tree. Tree limbs and railroad ties were laid at his fee, and young boys scavenged for additional brush to add to the pyre. Before the fire was lit, Wilkes was tortured for a half hour. His ears were cut off, his fingers removed one by one, and his genitals severed-with each held up for the approval of the cheering crowd. With Wilkes in agony but alive, he was doused with kerosene, and the pyre was lit. At that point, he screamed his last words: ‘Sweet Jesus!.. While the intensity of the violence and suffering caused some in the crowd to look away, it also inspired expressions of religious ecstasy reminiscent of revival meetings ‘Glory!’ an old man in the crowd was recorded as saying. ‘Glory be to God!’”
As the mob passed the towns churches worshipers joined the mob. No one from the churches objected to the lynching. Not one pastor confronted the desecration of a black body. Why? Because the white church is systemically a racist institution that places non-white bodies at a lesser value than white bodies. Non-white bodies may even be considered less than human and therefore not worthy of being treated in a human manner. In the White Supremacist Church Black lives do not matter.
See you next time.
Say their names: *Breonna Taylor*
*George Floyd*