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When the mother speaks
(This is something I hope people feel inspired by)
The excerpted article below, taken from an oral presentation by James Cameron at Indiana University, was published Friday, January 12, 2001 by IDS News. Cameron's story has been reported or portrayed by Nightline, PBS, HBO, Ebony, Village Voice, Newsweek, The Washington Post, in the book Lynching in the Heartland by James Madison, and in the book The God Moment by Alan D. Wright. There are different slants on what happened, which is understandable due to the milling confusion of an enraged mob that seems to have quite possibly numbered in the thousands. But the accounts I have read all seem to agree on the main facts. The interpretation of The Voice and where it originated is "up in the air."
... Cameron's story began in 1930 ...
"Hate is a disease, and in 1930 I became sick with hatred."
Cameron [then 16] was with his two friends, Abe [Abram] Smith and Tommy [Thomas] Shipp, when his friends decided to rob someone they saw sitting in a parked car. Shipp gave Cameron a gun, and Cameron opened the door to the car. What he saw stunned him.
"That white man [Claude Deeter], in that car, was my friend. I shined his shoes, sometimes, and he always asked me about my family."
Cameron gave the gun back to his friends and ran. He heard gunshots as he ran, but he didn't stop until he reached his home. Police later came to take him away. A white man was dead and his white girlfriend [Mary Ball] had been raped, they said.
After questioning at the station, the police took Cameron to jail.
"I will never forget my mother pleading and crying for them to take her instead of me. That's just not something you forget."
The three boys were put into separate cells until an angry mob [Wright and Madison both mention "thousands"], led by the Ku Klux Klan, came to get them, one by one.Thousands of Indianans carrying picks, bats, ax handles, crowbars, torches, and firearms attacked the Grant County Courthouse, determined to 'get those goddamn Niggers.' A barrage of rocks shattered the jailhouse windows, sending dozens of frantic inmates in search of cover ... The door was ripped from the wall, and a mob of fifty men beat Thomas Shipp senseless and dragged him into the street ...The dead Shipp was dragged with a rope up to the window bars of the second victim, Abram Smith. For twenty minutes, citizens pushed and shoved for a closer look at the ‘dead nigger.’ By the time Abe Smith was hauled out he was equally mutilated. ‘Those who were not close enough to hit him threw rocks and bricks. Somebody rammed a crowbar through his chest several times in great satisfaction.’ Smith was dead by the time the mob dragged him ‘like a horse‘ to the courthouse square and hung him from a tree. The lynchers posed for photos under the limb that held the bodies of the two dead men. Then the mob headed back for James Cameron and ‘mauled him all the way to the courthouse square,’ shoving and kicking him to the tree, where the lynchers put a hanging rope around his neck. Cameron credited an unidentified woman's voice with silencing the mob and opening a path for his retreat to the county jail and, ultimately, for saving his life ... After souvenir hunters divvied up the bloodied pants of Abram Smith, his naked lower body was clothed in a Klansman's robe — not unlike the loincloth in traditional depictions of Christ on the cross. He was third, and as he was taken to the tree where his friends had met their deaths, Cameron begged people he knew for help, but they said nothing.
Madison says: "[The lynch mob] actually did break into that jail through several steel doors and bars. Then they removed the prisoners one by one: first Shipp, who was taken to the courthouse square and hanged from the bars of one of the jailhouse windows; then Smith, who was lynched by a rope thrown over the branch of a maple tree."
The ABC News/Nightline account quotes Cameron as saying, "When they got me down to street level, the uniformed police was helping the mobster members, who had their robes and open-face hoods on. They were helping … to clear a path from the jail up to the courthouse square, which was just a half a block away. And one young lady was standing on the hood of an automobile that was parked on the jail lawn, and she was jumping up and down saying, 'Kill all the niggers! Kill all the niggers! Kill all the niggers!'"
Finally, Cameron stood with death on both sides of him as they put the noose around his neck.
"At that moment I said 'Lord forgive me my sins' and I felt this calm wash over me. It had been a miracle up until that point that I had not been beaten to death. Then came the next miracle."
Because Shipp and Smith being killed and mutilated before they were hung.
As Cameron stood there waiting for his death, he heard a voice.
"[It said:] 'Take this boy back. He had nothing to do with this,'" Cameron said. "I heard this voice, but no one else did. Nevertheless, the crowd grew quiet and they released me."
...
Wright reports Cameron saying at eighty-six, "It was a voice from heaven. It was a miracle ... God saved me for [what] I'm doing today." Other accounts describe the voice as "an angelic voice" and as a "sweet, undefiled, and distinct voice, unlike any he had ever heard. A woman's voice.
According to PBS, Mary Ball later testified that Cameron had fled before the shootings and that she had not been raped. Cameron was released after serving around four years in prison, and he received a pardon in 1993 from Indiana Governor Evan Bayh.
From the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee web site: After surviving the incident, Cameron went on to become a self-taught historian and student of civil rights and democracy. During the 1940s he founded four chapters of the NAACP in Indiana and served the anti-discrimination cause in a number of other positions. Cameron moved to Milwaukee in the 1950s, and worked with Father James Groppi and others to end housing discrimination in the city. He continued his educational efforts, authoring more than 240 articles and pamphlets and speaking before a variety of groups in the U.S. and Europe. His efforts culminated in 1988 with the founding of the Black Holocaust Museum. A pioneering institution honoring the contributions and sacrifices of America's black citizens, it has gained national and international recognition for the integrity of the concept that anchors it, the soundness of the history it chronicles, the range and uniqueness of the artifacts that it houses, and the value of its rich learning environment.
The video "Third Man Alive: Story of Dr. James Cameron" reports that Cameron is the only still-living survivor of a lynching
The excerpted article below, taken from an oral presentation by James Cameron at Indiana University, was published Friday, January 12, 2001 by IDS News. Cameron's story has been reported or portrayed by Nightline, PBS, HBO, Ebony, Village Voice, Newsweek, The Washington Post, in the book Lynching in the Heartland by James Madison, and in the book The God Moment by Alan D. Wright. There are different slants on what happened, which is understandable due to the milling confusion of an enraged mob that seems to have quite possibly numbered in the thousands. But the accounts I have read all seem to agree on the main facts. The interpretation of The Voice and where it originated is "up in the air."
... Cameron's story began in 1930 ...
"Hate is a disease, and in 1930 I became sick with hatred."
Cameron [then 16] was with his two friends, Abe [Abram] Smith and Tommy [Thomas] Shipp, when his friends decided to rob someone they saw sitting in a parked car. Shipp gave Cameron a gun, and Cameron opened the door to the car. What he saw stunned him.
"That white man [Claude Deeter], in that car, was my friend. I shined his shoes, sometimes, and he always asked me about my family."
Cameron gave the gun back to his friends and ran. He heard gunshots as he ran, but he didn't stop until he reached his home. Police later came to take him away. A white man was dead and his white girlfriend [Mary Ball] had been raped, they said.
After questioning at the station, the police took Cameron to jail.
"I will never forget my mother pleading and crying for them to take her instead of me. That's just not something you forget."
The three boys were put into separate cells until an angry mob [Wright and Madison both mention "thousands"], led by the Ku Klux Klan, came to get them, one by one.Thousands of Indianans carrying picks, bats, ax handles, crowbars, torches, and firearms attacked the Grant County Courthouse, determined to 'get those goddamn Niggers.' A barrage of rocks shattered the jailhouse windows, sending dozens of frantic inmates in search of cover ... The door was ripped from the wall, and a mob of fifty men beat Thomas Shipp senseless and dragged him into the street ...The dead Shipp was dragged with a rope up to the window bars of the second victim, Abram Smith. For twenty minutes, citizens pushed and shoved for a closer look at the ‘dead nigger.’ By the time Abe Smith was hauled out he was equally mutilated. ‘Those who were not close enough to hit him threw rocks and bricks. Somebody rammed a crowbar through his chest several times in great satisfaction.’ Smith was dead by the time the mob dragged him ‘like a horse‘ to the courthouse square and hung him from a tree. The lynchers posed for photos under the limb that held the bodies of the two dead men. Then the mob headed back for James Cameron and ‘mauled him all the way to the courthouse square,’ shoving and kicking him to the tree, where the lynchers put a hanging rope around his neck. Cameron credited an unidentified woman's voice with silencing the mob and opening a path for his retreat to the county jail and, ultimately, for saving his life ... After souvenir hunters divvied up the bloodied pants of Abram Smith, his naked lower body was clothed in a Klansman's robe — not unlike the loincloth in traditional depictions of Christ on the cross. He was third, and as he was taken to the tree where his friends had met their deaths, Cameron begged people he knew for help, but they said nothing.
Madison says: "[The lynch mob] actually did break into that jail through several steel doors and bars. Then they removed the prisoners one by one: first Shipp, who was taken to the courthouse square and hanged from the bars of one of the jailhouse windows; then Smith, who was lynched by a rope thrown over the branch of a maple tree."
The ABC News/Nightline account quotes Cameron as saying, "When they got me down to street level, the uniformed police was helping the mobster members, who had their robes and open-face hoods on. They were helping … to clear a path from the jail up to the courthouse square, which was just a half a block away. And one young lady was standing on the hood of an automobile that was parked on the jail lawn, and she was jumping up and down saying, 'Kill all the niggers! Kill all the niggers! Kill all the niggers!'"
Finally, Cameron stood with death on both sides of him as they put the noose around his neck.
"At that moment I said 'Lord forgive me my sins' and I felt this calm wash over me. It had been a miracle up until that point that I had not been beaten to death. Then came the next miracle."
Because Shipp and Smith being killed and mutilated before they were hung.
As Cameron stood there waiting for his death, he heard a voice.
"[It said:] 'Take this boy back. He had nothing to do with this,'" Cameron said. "I heard this voice, but no one else did. Nevertheless, the crowd grew quiet and they released me."
...
Wright reports Cameron saying at eighty-six, "It was a voice from heaven. It was a miracle ... God saved me for [what] I'm doing today." Other accounts describe the voice as "an angelic voice" and as a "sweet, undefiled, and distinct voice, unlike any he had ever heard. A woman's voice.
According to PBS, Mary Ball later testified that Cameron had fled before the shootings and that she had not been raped. Cameron was released after serving around four years in prison, and he received a pardon in 1993 from Indiana Governor Evan Bayh.
From the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee web site: After surviving the incident, Cameron went on to become a self-taught historian and student of civil rights and democracy. During the 1940s he founded four chapters of the NAACP in Indiana and served the anti-discrimination cause in a number of other positions. Cameron moved to Milwaukee in the 1950s, and worked with Father James Groppi and others to end housing discrimination in the city. He continued his educational efforts, authoring more than 240 articles and pamphlets and speaking before a variety of groups in the U.S. and Europe. His efforts culminated in 1988 with the founding of the Black Holocaust Museum. A pioneering institution honoring the contributions and sacrifices of America's black citizens, it has gained national and international recognition for the integrity of the concept that anchors it, the soundness of the history it chronicles, the range and uniqueness of the artifacts that it houses, and the value of its rich learning environment.
The video "Third Man Alive: Story of Dr. James Cameron" reports that Cameron is the only still-living survivor of a lynching
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