McCain-Palin rallies open the gates of hell – one step away from a postcard
The McCain-Palin rallies are opening the gates of hell. Just ask James Allen.
James Allen has collected a series of postcards of lynchings.
Searching through America’s past for the last 25 years, collector James Allen uncovered an extraordinary visual legacy: photographs and postcards taken as souvenirs at lynchings throughout America.
This photo is the lynching of Leo Frank, a Jew.
As celebrated as any court battle in the twentieth century, the trial of the “jew,” Leo Frank, for the murder of “little Mary Phagan” pitted Jews against Christians, industrialists against workers, northerners against southerners, and city against country folk. It launched political careers and destroyed others, prompted the formation of the AntiDefamation league, and set the stage for the resurrection of a more sinister and brutal Ku Klux Klan.
Leo Max Frank was arrested on April 27, 1913, the morning after Confederate Memorial Day. A grotesquely engineered trial led to Frank’s conviction and a sentence of death by hanging. After Governor John Slaton’s commutation of the death sentence, Frank was transferred, for his own safety, to a prison farm in Milledgeville, Georgia. On the night of August 16, 1915 at 11 p.m., a gang of twenty-five men, some of Marietta, Georgia’s “best citizens,” wearing goggles and hats pulled down low, pulled Frank from a hospital bed (he had been hospitalized for a near fatal, seven-inch knife wound to his throat.) They placed him, feeble, undressed, and handcuffed, in one of four waiting cars and departed for Marietta, intending to hang him over the monument of Mary Phagan. Frank, often described as stoic, sufficiently impressed two of the lynchers with his sincerity and innocence that they advocated his return to the prison farm. The mob, minus the few who “mutinied,” drove into a grove just outside Marietta, selected a mature oak, swung the rope over a limb, stood Frank on a table, and kicked it out from beneath him.
Postcards of the lynched Leo Frank were sold outside the undertaking establishment where his corpse was taken, at retail stores, and by mail order for years. The owner of the property where the lynching occurred refused repeated offers to buy the tree from which Leo Frank was hung. The dean of the Atlanta Theological Seminary praised the murderers as “a sifted band of men, sober, intelligent, of established good name and character – good American citizens.” The mob included two former Superior Court justices, one ex-sheriff, and at least one clergyman.
Leo Frank was posthumously pardoned in 1985.
“Kill him.” “Terrorist”. “Treason”. “Sit down boy“. That’s just this week.
Watch James Allen’s movie. Look at the proud faces of the onlookers, the writing on the cards, as if this were a barbecue. And ask yourself, when you hear how McCain-Palin rallies have opened the gates of a kind of hell we thought was gone – how much further does this have to go before someone really gets hurt?
Tags: mccain palin lynch mobs, race, racism
October 7th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Shalom Tim,
The feds are investigating:
Feds to look into Lee County Sheriff Scott’s ‘Hussein’ Obama comment at Palin rally
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081006/NEWS0107/81006002
B’shalom,
Jeff
October 7th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Thought this was nice:
Palin’s spokeswoman Tracey Schmidt quickly sent out a press release, while the rally was still going on, distancing the Palin camp from the comment.
“We do not condone this inappropriate rhetoric, which distracts from the real questions of judgment, character, and experience that voters will base their decisions on this November.”
…but we’ll call him a fucking terrorist. Their hypocrisy knows now bounds apparently.
October 9th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
What do you expect from just another Skinhead Redneck cop?
October 9th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Loved your video now on the front page of Youtube.com – you should use youtube annotation to drive traffic to your next video immediately and it will also hit the front page. Good luck
October 10th, 2008 at 8:04 am
I am a History buff, and a big reason is that I had a African American professor (1968) at Baltimore Community College. He educated me about KKK and lynchings, and Native American genocide. Stuff that is still basically ignored by media. I love the early songs and poetry of Bob Dylan who uncovered this hate too.
I was a lucky man to receive that education. Most don’t. Your picture and videos are most appreciated. The power of one is vital for the social conscious of others to begin. The human spirit needs a moral compass, or else the collective is dominated by the hatred of the power base. We need to change the power base to common decency. It is a process not an event.
October 10th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
The way Palin and McCain are inciting the crowd, they should be prosecuted for murder if someone should kill Obama.
October 10th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
People scream they want the ten commandments in courthouses.I agree. But how many of those that would throw the first stone can name all ten. Thou shall’t not bear falsewitness is one.
A shining moment for America’s image to shine in the world may reduce our great country to ashes by mankind’s basest instincts. Cain slew Abel simply because God smiled on his brother’s offerings. This could be the fulfillment of Dr King’s dream, that his young daughters would be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. And Lincoln’s… that the nation be restored “with charity for all and malice toward none.”
We will not convert Muslims, Jews and other faiths to Christianity with this anarchy. Jesus Christ gave us the right of every idividual regardless of color, race, creed, nationality and sex to stand in paradise with Him. We are a free nation because our faith formed our laws. But He never advocated hatred or violence. The rest of the world and our new imigrants would never know this based on the behaviour now exhibited by our citizenry. Nor by the inaction of Palin & McCain to control these angry mobs, much less their actions that encourage it. God Help America.
October 10th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Wow! To fkowynia: I not Christian but I wish there were more Christians like you around. As a professional historian with an interest in religous studies I am appalled at how the religious right has so severely distorted Christianity and are making it synonymous with nutcase. Kudos to you for representing the positive side of this faith like MLK and others.
October 11th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Have you seen the absentee ballots in New York that were ACCIDENTALLY marked Barack Osama? They swear it was just a typo. Bullshit! The “S” is nowhere near the “B” on the ketboard. I am a typo QUEEN and I’ve never even came close to that typo. If it said Onama or Ovama or Ogama I’d believe that bullcrap. A full investigation needs to be made. I’m PISSED about it. Someone needs fired.
October 13th, 2008 at 6:22 am
I wouldn’t be able to sleep soundly tonight. The photos are disturbing. Being in Asia, I have read these kind of lynchings in the US ans saw couple of movies about it too. But I never saw actual photographs of these acts. I nearly vomitted of the gruesome and inhumanity of these killers. Most of them, I observed, were African-american people. I really feel sorry for the african-american people. We know that it wasn’t their fault for seeking better lives in other countries when Africa at that time was in extreme poverty that they are being bought as slaves. But to be treated this way is as horrific and despicable as the holocaust.
History should NOT repeat itself. We hope Obama will change your country.
October 17th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
there more then one plumber who is a republican political secret o one more tips their handperatlve for dirty work say it isnt so joe