May 31, 2023 • 38 mins
Mari Crabtree, associate professor of African American Studies at the College, joins us on this episode of Speaking Of… to talk about her latest publication, My Soul Is a Witness: The Traumatic Afterlife of Lynching.
The book, which was published by Yale University Press, provides an intimate look at the aftermath of lynching as seen through the personal accounts of Black victims and survivors who lived through and overcame the trauma. Crabtree speaks with Matthew J. Cressler, associate professor of religious studies at the College, about her research.
“I wanted my book, to be kind of resting on the foundation of that work (from the Equal Justice Initiative), and focus on stories of individual people, because those lives are the reason the numbers matter, ultimately and that was something I didn’t want to lose,” says Crabtree. “So that’s why I wanted to invite the reader into these particular communities, and kind of weave these communities, these stories, these families into the book. (…) I wanted people to feel the full weight, or as much of the weight as they could carry, of the personal side of these of these lynchings.”
Featured on this Episode:
Mari N. Crabtree is a writer and an associate professor of African American Studies at the College of Charleston. Her research seeks to excavate Black life beyond the binary of suffering or resistance by exploring how culture provides a lens for understanding the struggle for Black liberation but also Black ingenuity, joy, and love. Her book, My Soul Is a Witness: The Traumatic Afterlife of Lynching, was published in 2022 by Yale University Press as part of the New Directions in Narrative History series. She also has published essays in Raritan: A Quarterly Review, Rethinking History, Contemporaries, Chronicle of Higher Education, and elsewhere.
Matthew J. Cressler is associate professor of religious studies at the College of Charleston. He is the author of Authentically Black and Truly Catholic: The Rise of Black Catholicism in the Great Migrations (NYU Press, 2017) and has written for America, The Atlantic, National Catholic Reporter, Religion News Service, The Revealer, Slate, U.S. Catholic, andZocalo Public Square. He is a member of the Charleston Area Justice Ministry, a grassroots coalition of more than thirty congregations coming together to make the Lowcountry a place that is just and equitable for all.
Resources:
My Soul Is a Witness: The Traumatic Afterlife of Lynching (Yale University Press, 2022)
Review in The New Republic of My Soul Is a Witness:
James Baldwin’s collected essays, The Price of the Ticket
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:14):
Hello, and Welcome to Speaking of College of
Charleston. I'm Matthewkressler, associate professor
from the religious studiesdepartment. And on today's
episode I'm speaking with MariCrabtree associate professor of
African American studies abouther new book, My soul is a
witness the traumatic afterlifeof lynching published by Yale
(00:37):
University Press this January.
The book is an intimate look atthe afterlife of lynching
through the personal stories ofblack victims and survivors in
the South who lived through andbeyond its trauma. And first
off, I just want to thank Martyfor being in conversation with
me, this is such a powerful,it's actually hard to come up
(01:01):
with the right words, becauseit's powerful and beautiful.
It's troubling and disturbing.
It's deeply insightful. It'sprovocative, and I'm just really
grateful to be in conversationwith you about it. So thank you.
Well, thank you for doing thiswith me, I, I'm really glad that
(01:22):
you're the person I get to talkto about my book.
So I told you this before, andI'll say it again, I have a
thing about first lines ofbooks, I love to see how authors
how writers kind of invite kindof the, you know, make the first
impression and invite readersand I was particularly struck,
(01:43):
by the way you open yourintroduction. So the way you
open your book, particularlybecause it struck me as a really
interesting place to startspecifically a book on the
trauma of lynching and memory.
So I was wondering if we couldmaybe begin the conversation
with you reading for us thatopening paragraph and then I
have a question, I'd love to askyou about it.
(02:07):
Sure. The artist has much tooffer the scholar, beauty,
pleasure, and certainly adexterity with language and
sound and images, but also agift for reflecting the world
back onto us and revealing thenuances and mysteries of the
human condition. Art the goodstuff anyway, compels us to
(02:28):
pause and think more deeply. Itdemands the self reflection that
prompts us to ask who we are,and what we can become, and and
urges us to abandon stalequestions and imagine new ways
of seeing the world. Much of myown writing has been refracted
through art, especially as Iworked through this project on
(02:48):
the traumatic legacies oflynching in the US South. A turn
of a phrase and a use of commonyaka poem provided a flash of
insight into the impulse to trappainful memories inside and the
costs of carrying the burden ofthat pain to the grave. A scene
from a Toni Morrison novelprompted me to wonder if a place
(03:09):
a tree a courthouse, the landitself can really hold the
memories of the dead. A blueslyric, and the slow bending of a
blue note from a LightninHopkins song made me feel just
for a moment, the desperation ofsearching for relief when faced
with the limits of otherworldlyjustice.
(03:30):
Who thank you so much for that.
So I you know, I am friends withyou, I know your work well. And
I knew that this book was aboutthe trauma of lynching, not just
kind of as acts of violence, butas kind of memory carried in the
body, in the soul. And so thenwhen I read that first line,
right, the the artist has muchto offer the scholar, you know,
(03:53):
beauty pleasure. Those are wordsthat I you know, was kind of
surprised to read as the openingline. And I was wondering if you
could speak more about why youchose to open this book on the
afterlife of lynching, you know,this book on history and memory
of horror and trauma, with ameditation on art and beauty,
(04:14):
which I thought was a reallypowerful way to begin.
Well, there are a couple reasonsfor this. I think the first is
that so much of my work isreally refracted through the
work of artists, especiallyother writers, but also visual
artists, musicians and otherfolks. And so I wanted to pay
(04:41):
homage to the people who inspireme who provide me with a lot of
the ideas at the core of my ofmy work. And the other part of
this too is that I think, on abook about lynching, which
necessary really is going to bea book about violence is
(05:02):
necessarily going to be adisturbing book to read. I
wanted to prepare readers forthe other things that I'm doing
in this book, because as much asthis is a book about lynching,
it's really a book about blacksoutherners how black
(05:22):
southerners made it through andbeyond lynching and the real
beauty that is revealed in sucha study, you know, when you
actually asking a slightlydifferent question from what we
tend to ask about lynching, wetend to ask, why did people do
this? You know, what were theconsequences for white and black
(05:44):
southerners of lynching? Andthose are all legitimate
questions to ask them that havebeen asked, I think in answered
quite well by a lot of otherscholars, but I wanted to send
your black people I wanted tocenter the black cultural
tradition. And I wanted tocenter the grace and beauty that
issues forth from black people,black communities, and that
cultural tradition.
(06:05):
Yeah, and I think that that'sone of the things, one of the
many things that I love aboutyour book so much, is precisely
what you were just saying abouthow you're taking this, the
subject that in some senses,those of us who are awake to the
world and our past, feel like weknow so much about but giving it
(06:28):
to us, inviting us into anentirely different way of
approaching that right. And soactually, my my second question
kind of dovetails very well withthat kind of first one, because
in the first chapter, so chapterone is titled an anatomy of a
lynching. There are these tworemarkable moments that I don't
(06:49):
think I've ever seen anythingquite like in a work of history,
because so the book, or sorry,the chapter is an anatomy of a
lynching. And you kind of tostart off the book breaking down
for us kind of how lynching kindof in broad brushstrokes
operated in history, so you'rebreaking down the mobs and the
(07:12):
rituals and the myths thatdefined these horrifying
spectacles in that moment, so asyou're doing this, and as you're
kind of leading us through thesereally, really difficult,
disturbing kind of descriptionsof, of, of lynching, you have a
(07:32):
paragraph break. And then youliterally instruct us as readers
breathe. You know, when I wasreading it, it was like, almost
like having you turn to thecamera. If this were a movie and
insisting that we pause and gono further. You even say like,
at one point, this is a quote,you say breathe, and then you
(07:54):
say, let our, let your eyes losefocus, let them wander from the
page, you're reading this book,you know, I was reading this
book, and then you as author aretelling me, now you need to stop
reading. I don't want you to goany further yet. Which just
totally blew me away. And so Iwas wondering if you could talk.
(08:16):
And I think again, this kind oflike rhymes with that first
question about art and theartist and what the artist has
to say. But he talked more aboutthis choice you made as an
author, and how it connects tothe ethics that you are kind of
insisting that we take up asreaders and that you are taking
(08:37):
up as scholar and writer becauseI think that this is a kind of
narrative choice. It's anauthorial choice. But it's, it's
one that's deeply informed bythe ethics of your work as a
scholar and writer. Soyeah, the first chapter is, was
a very difficult chapter towrite because of the extended
descriptions of violence. It wasI imagined very hard for someone
(09:04):
to read as well. And I did getsome feedback and one of my book
manuscript workshops about howhard Chapter One was to get
through because of the notbecause I was unnecessarily
talking about violence. It'skind of unavoidable in a book on
lynching. But that it wasunrelenting in some ways. And so
(09:25):
I wanted those linebreaks thosepauses, the instruction to
breathe, to be there for thereader. And to also recenter the
focus away from what the lynchmob did because that's what
those sections that precededthem. Were talking about. I
(09:47):
think it was because the book isreally about black communities
in the South. I wanted to talkabout black families, black
communities. I wanted to talkabout them again. And, and
remind the reader as they werepausing and breathing, that
that's what this is reallyabout. I had really good advice
from Tara Hunter, my mentor atPrinceton, who said that you
(10:13):
shouldn't be writing for thevery worst reader out there. So
you don't need to be writingthis to convince someone who's
the worst person you canimagine, who doesn't think
lynching was that bad or needsto see every little bit of gore
on the page, and instead tothink about what you need to
convey about the gravity of thisact, in order to set the stage
(10:38):
for the analysis that you'redoing. And so that was also part
of that kind of thought process.
And the writing was, how do Iachieve that balance where I am
imagining a reader who I want tostay with me, who I don't want
to hurt while they're reading.
While I also want to notminimize the true harm? The true
(11:01):
terror, the true trauma thatissued from lynchings. Yeah,
yeah. And I think to say alittle bit more about it, like
it just and it's so this is inchapter one. So you're still
early on as a reader, you know,you're still early on in the
(11:22):
book. And it almost kind of Ithink one of the reasons that it
was so striking for me is italmost kind of not almost it did
insist that this isn't that youshouldn't engage this book, as
you perhaps we're kind ofconditioned to engage it right
like that we're conditioned, youknow, when we're reading a
scholarly work working conditionto kind of particularly a work
(11:42):
of history, to approach it as akind of text through which we
absorb new information, right,that we are learning about, you
know, the facts for lack of abetter term, right? And it and
those brief moments reallyinsisted that like, No, we're
not dealing with facts. I mean,we are but but but like that,
(12:06):
what you really, as you werejust saying, like, what you're
really doing is kind of invitingus to, to inviting us into the
lives of these black families,these survivors, often of
lynching or the threat oflynching. And inviting us to
kind of be with them almostright there is there's a kind
(12:28):
of, I'm kind of failing forwords on it, but it's a kind of
meditation, you know, there is akind of, I'm a religious studies
scholar, so I'll just go there,right, there's a kind of like
spiritual kind of like,component to that part of the
book, which I thought was reallypowerful. And, you know, for
the, for the listeners, thisbook is part of a series called
(12:52):
net new directions and narrativehistory. And so I felt like that
was a moment in particular,among many others, where I felt
you kind of, in a sense, saying,like, you know, inviting us, you
know, of course, to think aboutlynching in particular ways, but
also to kind of think about whatwe're doing as historians or as
(13:14):
scholars, or as just readers ofhistory, like you're kind of
insisting that we relate to thepast in ways that are different
than how we're accustomed to. Idon't know if you have more
thoughts on that. Butyeah, because again, there's
been wonderful work, wonderfulscholarship done. Wonderful work
by the Equal Justice Initiativein compiling names and numbers,
(13:36):
places of or lynchings tookplace. And that work is
absolutely indispensable. I wantin my book, to be kind of
resting on the foundation ofthat work, and focus on stories
focus on individual people,because individual people lives
are the reason why the numbersmatter, ultimately, right. And
(13:58):
that was something I didn't wantto lose. So that's why I wanted
to invite the reader into theseparticular communities, and kind
of weave those communities thesestories, these families into the
book, instead of it being anattempt at like covering every
single lynching that happened inthe south, which would be
impossible, really diving intothese stories because I wanted
(14:21):
people to feel the full, fullweight or as much of the weight
as they could carry of thepersonal side of these of these
lynchingsYeah, and speak I guess I'm this
whole podcast is speaking tolisteners, but directing this to
the listeners. You know, this islike one of the real gifts of
this book and why I'd reallyencourage you to read it the
(14:42):
lives that that materi that youbring to the page, or lives that
you really feel like you come toknow. And correct me if I'm
getting the name wrong. JamesPennington is a Jesse Jesse
Jesse Pennington is one of thesepeople who survives a lynching.
escapes to Chicago. And so Ikind of get to know him in this
(15:03):
early moment in his life. Andthen later in the book, he shows
back up again, because he, heended up because he was in
Chicago attending the funeralfor Emmett Till. And it was this
moment where, you know, if youare familiar with African
American history, you've you'veheard, you know, the funeral of
Emmett Till, you know, describedin so many ways in so many
(15:26):
times. But there was this kindof very human connection where
it's this this person, I feellike I now know so many of the
people that you that youdescribe in the book and
understand that that's a real areal gift and why, you know, one
of the many reasons that I'dencourage people to really pick
up my soul as a witness and, andsit with it. So I'm going to
(15:48):
take us to a different moment inthe book now, the middle of the
book, Dara is, you know, again,we're friends. So we've talked
about this. So I was gonna say,dare I say, maybe both of our
favorite chapters if we have tochoose a favorite chapter, which
is chapter three, the title ofwhich is haunting. And in this
chapter, you tell ghost stories,in a sense, you tell ghost
(16:13):
stories, but ones that very muchchallenge the kinds of
romanticized ghost stories thatyou might hear on a kind of
ghost tour in downtownCharleston, right? You and this
is a quote from the book younote that throughout the South
African Americans have toldstories about haunted
courthouses, inexplicableafflictions, mysterious deaths,
(16:38):
and agonized deathbedconfessions that resurrected the
ghosts of local lynchings. And Ijust, you know, I was so kind of
captivated by this chapterhaunted by this chapter, that I
was wondering if you might tellus a ghost story. If you if you
(16:58):
might just choose maybe one ofyour favorites, or a one one
moment that really stands out toyou to give again, you know,
listeners a sense of how thisbook is, you know, doing
something a little different inthe ways that we think about
lynching and memory.
Yes, the one I'll talk aboutthen is the one that James Reed
(17:22):
told me and the way I even foundJames Reed is interesting,
because I had been working on mydissertation, talking to my
district, one of my dissertationcommittee members, Robert
Harris, and he was like, Oh,well, you know, my brother in
law, James Reed, has this ghoststory, he told me that about a
haunted courthouse where a manhad been lynched. And so that's
(17:44):
how I came across. It was verymuch kind of by accident. But
this is what how I describe it,at least in part in the book.
From a second story window ofthe small brick courthouse in
Pickens County, Alabama, a faceetched onto the windowpane piers
out onto the tiny town ofCarrollton. For the locals, that
(18:06):
pane of glass has become thestuff of legend, or to be more
precise legends. Mostexplanations for the apparition
in the courthouse involve thelynching of a black man. But the
differences between black andwhite memories of the haunting,
reveal how these disparatememories of the apparition in
the window served very differentpurposes for each community.
(18:30):
Growing up in Hattiesburg,Mississippi during the 1940s and
1950s, James Reed hurt his greataunt Maggie, Maggie rose
Barnett, read, tell all kinds ofstories about living in rural
Mississippi at the height of JimCrow. When the extended family
came over to visit, they talkedabout everything from Klan
violence, the daily humiliationsof segregation. But one story in
(18:53):
particular stuck out a storyabout a face that would appear
in a courthouse window,remembered it this way, quote,
growing up, my great aunt whoraised me used to tell me of a
story of a situation that tookplace back in the oh, I guess,
early 20s of an African Americanbeing lynched in some part of
(19:13):
Alabama, which was actually itwas right across the river.
Let's see. Noxubee county iswhere we were our family was,
and it was right across theriver. So it had to be the
Tombigbee River in Alabama. Sowhatever is close to Noxubee
County in Alabama is where thistook place. The story goes,
(19:33):
there was this African Americanthat was allegedly dating a
white woman, and he was arrestedand killed. And he said that he
was not guilty of anything. Hehadn't raped. It was a rape
situation. They had not rapedthis woman. But they took him
out and killed him anyway. Thestory goes is that he said,
quote, you will see my face inthe courthouse window once a
(19:55):
month or something to thateffect. And according to the way
it was told to me They triedchanging out the window and
everything. And regardless ofthe number of times they tried
to change out the window, hisface would appear, as he
predicted.
I so I have a few things I wantto say. The first is that I
(20:15):
remember you giving apresentation on this chapter
before well, before it was abook chapter, when it was still
in progress. And you had animage of that front of the
courthouse. And I'm, as you'rereading the story, I'm seeing
the image like that, that hasnever left me like that has
stuck with me that face. And soI'm just, I'm blown away by
(20:35):
that. But I also, you know, asyou were reading that particular
story, I was struck by kind ofone of the, I think signatures
of the book, which is that it'sa storytelling book, or it's a
book where you are allowing kindof, or inviting all of these
people to tell their ownstories. And the way you're
(20:55):
doing that is very much, youknow, not like what will happen
in post production of thispodcast, where arms and ands and
you know, coughs are taken out,but you're really attentive to
the silences, the pauses, thekind of stop start nature of
these stories, and, and, youknow, so not only do you keep
(21:18):
them in the book, but you attendto them as kind of moments that
demand that we listen, right?
Not that they're just kind oflike someone who hasn't quite
got the words, right, but thatwe can actually learn something
about those ellipses, you know,those things that might in a
normal text just show up as anellipsis. Right. And so I'm
(21:38):
wondering, like, you know, inthat, you know, since you read
that story, and you've broughthim into the room, if you could
maybe say a little bit aboutthat kind of choice, because I
think that that is, again, akind of distinctive way that you
bring these people's lives intoour lives through the book.
Yeah, I think it was reallyimportant in both the
(21:59):
transcription process for oralhistories that other people
recorded, and the transcriptionprocess for my own oral
histories that I did, to thinknot just about what they were
saying, but how they were sayingit. Trauma is something that
operates by having sometraumatic episode, return, often
(22:22):
on by uninvited. And yeah, like,of course, you never know when
it's going to show up. And theways in which people were
recalling stories. So often,we're most easily understood
through the the framework oflike, what trauma is on in terms
(22:44):
of psychology, right? Like, whatdoes a post traumatic stress
response look like? And so asmuch as I was obviously
interested in, like, how did theface appear? Or what did they do
to the Windows or, you know,what did the town do in the
aftermath? Those details areobviously really important, but
(23:04):
also the ways in which peopletold stories, especially stories
that were from their own directexperience, was just as
important as what they weresaying, really the how they're
saying it. And I kind of closeChapter Three with a close
reading of an interview thatPaul or tease as a historian of
Florida, did with many Weston,this black woman in Mississippi
(23:27):
in the 1990s, through DukeUniversity. And I am very
attentive to what she's sayingabout, you know, lynchings that
happened in her family and hertown, but also, her reluctance
to return to some of thosehorrific memories, and also the
ways in which she was able tocompartmentalize those memories
(23:48):
from the rest of her life as away to just continue to live.
And that's just as much of thestory as what happened to her,
like, how does she come to termswith or if she can't come to
terms with how does she handleand survive this?
Yeah, and many Weston along withJesse Pennington are two of the
the people like the the thehuman beings that you can bring
(24:08):
into our lives through the bookthat like I'm never going to
forget, like that moment at theend of chapter three is one of
my favorites. And I actuallybefore I want to transition to
another question, but before weleave, I have to chime in as the
religious studies professor,because one of the things that I
love and it's throughout thebook, but it's specially there
in this haunting chapter is howyou let the stories be there and
(24:31):
be true and not kind ofimmediately start to
psychoanalyze or like, offersome kind of explanation of
what's actually going on. So youopen you know, and I won't read
the passage, but you openchapter three with the story of
a theodicy of kind of God andkind of coming down through in
the form of a tornado to kind oflike rip through this town where
(24:52):
waco where there's been alynching and you you share these
stories and then the last linein this opening part is or So
the story is went right, like asa wait, like, as a way of I hear
you saying like, and I'm notgoing to comment on like whether
God actually sent a tornado downbut like, this is what they say
and like, we need to hear whatthey say, Right? Which I just
(25:14):
love. And again, you know, in Ithink much of history as a
discipline kind of like ifyou're not attuned to kind of
religious studies scholarship,you might be inclined to be
like, well, this is what, youknow, they said, but like, let
me tell you what's actuallygoing on. And you're just like,
you know, this is what they say,and why don't we sit with this?
Yeah, yeah. Because I'm I'm muchless. As well, I'm not trained
(25:38):
as a historian to figure outwhich ghosts are real. But also,
I don't care in a certain way,because I care much more about
why the ghosts appear. Like, whydo they tell the ghost story?
And that's a much moreinteresting question to me than
like, was there? was God's handright at play in this tornado?
(25:59):
Or was the face in the window?
The face of this? This man, youknow?
So I have, I have two morequestions. One is for one is for
our students, and one is for me.
So this one goes out to all ourstudents, you know, both of us
teach classes and AfricanAmerican Studies. And I think,
you know, and you can, you know,share a little bit if you if you
(26:22):
think differently, but you know,I think a lot of our students
come to African American Studiesand stay because they find in
African American Studies, thistradition of critique of
resistance, and of protest,right to systems of oppression,
that so much of the world ignoreus, right? They find in our
(26:42):
classes, this kind of refreshingrecognition of the dominance of
white supremacy, and antiblackness and colonialism and
the ways that they shape ourworld that are so often ignored,
right. And so that's, you know,what I think draws a lot of our
students to our classes, maybeeven what keeps a lot of our
(27:03):
students in our classes. Andyet, you know, in your book,
you're offering an importantcritique of the dominance of the
resistance paradigm, as you callit. And you're drawing on the
works of other scholars as well,who really want to challenge
this assumption that the end allbe all of African American life
and living is resistance, right?
(27:26):
That we always have to readAfrican American history through
the lens of resistance. I'mthinking especially about your
your chapters on protest, andthe blues where you kind of push
us to kind of move beyondthinking that protest is just a
synonym for the civil rightsmovement or a social movement.
And yeah, so I'd love to hearyou reflect a little bit on on
(27:49):
why you think it's important tochallenge this dominant paradigm
and how challenging it kind ofinvites us to reframe how we
think of African American life.
Yeah, I think that the, the kindof focus on protest has to also
be historically situated. Sowithin us society and within
(28:14):
academia, there for a very longtime was a truly distorted
narrative about black life. Iffocused on kind of black
facility, it was one that kindof played up the Sambo or other
(28:37):
kinds of caricatures ofblackness, that denied
resistance existing. It was onethat criticized African
Americans for not having thesame forms of resistance that
you saw in places like Haiti, orin Jamaica, which had, again,
also much larger blackpopulations percentage wise
than, than the United States.
And so the focus on resistancewas initially especially like in
(29:00):
the 1960s, let's say, inacademia, and also in, you know,
our social movements was areflection of a desire to show
that no, people are not okay.
With Jim Crow. No, people werenot okay with slavery, no,
people are not okay, withoppression, and therefore we
(29:23):
have to do something about it.
So that's where a lot of that iscoming from. And I think that's
where a lot of the students arealso coming from is that they
have seen an absence of reallytalking about not just the fact
of the injustice, but what weshould do about it. And that's
what I do agree, you know, thestudents come to our classes to
learn about. I also wantHowever, my students to
(29:45):
appreciate that black people'slives are not just about
suffering, or resistance, thatthere are so many other facets
and nuance senses of blackculture and kind of black
communities that don't have todo with what white people are
(30:08):
doing to you, right. And so Iwanted to leave room for in the
book. And I hope I do this in mycourses to, to think about what
it means to have a fullerunderstanding of black life
that's not simply reactive towhite supremacy. And so I think
(30:29):
that it's important to then onthe one hand, have a broader
definition of protests and notjust think about, you know,
people in the streets,protesting and marches or just
people boycotting or peoplemaking political speeches, but
to also think about it and someof the everyday ways that people
(30:49):
resist and even resistancethrough or protest through
mourning, right, affirming thethe value of the person who has
you have lost is a form ofprotest, even though it's not
public. It's not directed bywhite people, it is directed
within right within thecommunity, and to yourself. But
I also think, again, like thebook is about a kind of beauty
(31:14):
and grace, that can't be reducedto just what white supremacy
forced to be created. And that'salso just an important lesson
for all of us to be reminded ofwhen we're thinking about black
people's lives. There aren'tonly two stories, it's not only
(31:36):
suffering, or resistance,there's so many more things we
should be talking about, even ina book about lynching.
That's right. That's right.
Well, I mean, and I actuallythink that this dovetails
perfectly with my last question,which again, is the question for
me, because, you know, we beganthis conversation talking about
your opening sentence, right,your opening paragraph and about
(31:59):
how you kind of invite us intothis conversation on the trauma
of lynching through the artistright through beauty through
pleasure. And there arecountless poets, novelists,
musicians that you're quotingthroughout your book, in other
words, like artists are all overthe pages. But one artist in
(32:22):
particular, who you and I, youknow, adore and have learned so
much from is James Baldwin.
Right? Baldwin looms very large.
He's there in chapter epigraphs.
He's there in quotes, but ofcourse, he's you know, if your
first sentence is, the artisthas much to offer the scholar,
(32:45):
the first words that anyone willread, are actually Baldwins. The
title of your book comes from aBaldwin quote, as you know, near
the quote is my memory stammers.
But my soul is a witness. Andso, you know, I actually think
you're probably touching on thisa little bit in that last
answer. But I was wondering ifyou could reflect kind of as a
final question on what insightsBaldwin offers you, in
(33:08):
particular, you know, why hisvoice is so singular? You know,
which is not to say that likeover and against other artists,
but there seems to be aparticular thing or set of
things, we're way of sayingthings and thinking about, you
know, race and violence, andmemory and trauma and the blues
(33:29):
and these things. And just likewhat it means to be human, that
that Baldwin offers you. And soI just, your title opens with
Baldwin. And so maybe we can fitin that we close with him as
well. So,yeah, we're actually right now
I'm teaching a seminar onBaldwin, which I will be
(33:49):
teaching next spring, if any oneof my students have any students
are interested in taking it. Andhe's someone who was a real
seer. You know, he wrote in themiddle of the 20th century, late
20th century, but was but haswritten things that very much
(34:09):
speak to the President continueto speak to the present. And
he's also someone who's aliveduring a lot of the period that
my book is about. And I thinkboth of those things make him
such an important thinker for meto think with and through. The
idea for the book came in manyways from him, I read a short
(34:34):
story called going to meet theman, which is about a white
deputy sheriff in the south, whois made to feel something is has
changed because of the civilrights movement. And to reassure
himself of his place as a whiteman in the south, goes back to
this memory of a lynching thathe attended as a child. And so
(34:56):
even though my book is Not aboutwhite Southerners, although they
are in chapter four, and inparts of chapter two, two, it's
really a book that is thinkingabout memory, how does that
memory continue to shape who weare? And how do we go return to
memories as a way of kind ofpositioning ourselves. And so it
(35:18):
was through his short story thatI came to ask the scholarly
question about the afterlife oflynching for black Southerners.
And also, in part through hisand others, work on the blues,
his that that got me to thinkingabout the centrality of the
(35:40):
sensibility of the blues, inunderstanding black responses to
trauma. And his essay, the usesof the blues is a really
beautiful job of articulatingwhat it is that the blues are
about, right? You know, life ishard, you will suffer. There's
no way around that. But you haveto make a way for yourself to
(36:02):
get through that. And that'swhat that sensibility is right.
And it's one that he thinks thatis often not a part of the more
general American consciousness,right? We try to avoid thoughts
of suffering and death and tryto live in like this happy place
without the reality that lifedoes involve suffering. And we
(36:27):
have to still find a way eventhough it seems impossible to
get through it. And so there'sso many of these kinds of
insights from Baldwin. I lovewhat he can do with language. I
can't do what he does withlanguage. I don't think anyone
can. But I do appreciate what hecan do with language. And for
(36:49):
me, he's always been the modelfor what it means to be a good
writer, a good thinker. And ashe would say, a good man, too.
Yeah. And I think that if I cansay one last thing about your
book is that, you know, thisthing that I keep saying over
(37:10):
and over again, about the kindof the beauty and poetry of your
book, on this kind of horrifyingsubject is very Baldwin in in
that sense, I think that he hasthis gift of kind of making life
come alive in words, and you'vedone that as well here. So I'm
(37:34):
grateful for you. I'm gratefulfor this beautiful and brilliant
book. And I'd encourage everyoneagain, listening to really pick
it up and discover it foryourself. This book is my soul
as a witness, the traumaticafterlife of lynching. Thank you
so much, Marty.
Thank you for having me. This isa great conversation.
(37:59):
So thank you for listening tothis episode of speaking of
College of Charleston withtoday's guest Professor Marty
Crabtree. For more episodes andto read stories about our
guests, visit the College ofCharleston official news site,
the college today at today dot cof c.edu. You can also find
(38:21):
episodes on all major podcastplatforms including Apple
podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.
If you like what you hear,please subscribe and leave a
review. This episode wasproduced by Amy Stockwell from
the Office of marketingcommunications with recording
and sound engineering by JesseCollins from the Division of
Information Technology. Thanksagain, and we'll see you next
(38:43):
time.
Hello, and Welcome to Speaking of College of
Charleston. I'm Matthewkressler, associate professor
from the religious studiesdepartment. And on today's
episode I'm speaking with MariCrabtree associate professor of
African American studies abouther new book, My soul is a
witness the traumatic afterlifeof lynching published by Yale
(00:37):
University Press this January.
The book is an intimate look atthe afterlife of lynching
through the personal stories ofblack victims and survivors in
the South who lived through andbeyond its trauma. And first
off, I just want to thank Martyfor being in conversation with
me, this is such a powerful,it's actually hard to come up
(01:01):
with the right words, becauseit's powerful and beautiful.
It's troubling and disturbing.
It's deeply insightful. It'sprovocative, and I'm just really
grateful to be in conversationwith you about it. So thank you.
Well, thank you for doing thiswith me, I, I'm really glad that
(01:22):
you're the person I get to talkto about my book.
So I told you this before, andI'll say it again, I have a
thing about first lines ofbooks, I love to see how authors
how writers kind of invite kindof the, you know, make the first
impression and invite readersand I was particularly struck,
(01:43):
by the way you open yourintroduction. So the way you
open your book, particularlybecause it struck me as a really
interesting place to startspecifically a book on the
trauma of lynching and memory.
So I was wondering if we couldmaybe begin the conversation
with you reading for us thatopening paragraph and then I
have a question, I'd love to askyou about it.
(02:07):
Sure. The artist has much tooffer the scholar, beauty,
pleasure, and certainly adexterity with language and
sound and images, but also agift for reflecting the world
back onto us and revealing thenuances and mysteries of the
human condition. Art the goodstuff anyway, compels us to
(02:28):
pause and think more deeply. Itdemands the self reflection that
prompts us to ask who we are,and what we can become, and and
urges us to abandon stalequestions and imagine new ways
of seeing the world. Much of myown writing has been refracted
through art, especially as Iworked through this project on
(02:48):
the traumatic legacies oflynching in the US South. A turn
of a phrase and a use of commonyaka poem provided a flash of
insight into the impulse to trappainful memories inside and the
costs of carrying the burden ofthat pain to the grave. A scene
from a Toni Morrison novelprompted me to wonder if a place
(03:09):
a tree a courthouse, the landitself can really hold the
memories of the dead. A blueslyric, and the slow bending of a
blue note from a LightninHopkins song made me feel just
for a moment, the desperation ofsearching for relief when faced
with the limits of otherworldlyjustice.
(03:30):
Who thank you so much for that.
So I you know, I am friends withyou, I know your work well. And
I knew that this book was aboutthe trauma of lynching, not just
kind of as acts of violence, butas kind of memory carried in the
body, in the soul. And so thenwhen I read that first line,
right, the the artist has muchto offer the scholar, you know,
(03:53):
beauty pleasure. Those are wordsthat I you know, was kind of
surprised to read as the openingline. And I was wondering if you
could speak more about why youchose to open this book on the
afterlife of lynching, you know,this book on history and memory
of horror and trauma, with ameditation on art and beauty,
(04:14):
which I thought was a reallypowerful way to begin.
Well, there are a couple reasonsfor this. I think the first is
that so much of my work isreally refracted through the
work of artists, especiallyother writers, but also visual
artists, musicians and otherfolks. And so I wanted to pay
(04:41):
homage to the people who inspireme who provide me with a lot of
the ideas at the core of my ofmy work. And the other part of
this too is that I think, on abook about lynching, which
necessary really is going to bea book about violence is
(05:02):
necessarily going to be adisturbing book to read. I
wanted to prepare readers forthe other things that I'm doing
in this book, because as much asthis is a book about lynching,
it's really a book about blacksoutherners how black
(05:22):
southerners made it through andbeyond lynching and the real
beauty that is revealed in sucha study, you know, when you
actually asking a slightlydifferent question from what we
tend to ask about lynching, wetend to ask, why did people do
this? You know, what were theconsequences for white and black
(05:44):
southerners of lynching? Andthose are all legitimate
questions to ask them that havebeen asked, I think in answered
quite well by a lot of otherscholars, but I wanted to send
your black people I wanted tocenter the black cultural
tradition. And I wanted tocenter the grace and beauty that
issues forth from black people,black communities, and that
cultural tradition.
(06:05):
Yeah, and I think that that'sone of the things, one of the
many things that I love aboutyour book so much, is precisely
what you were just saying abouthow you're taking this, the
subject that in some senses,those of us who are awake to the
world and our past, feel like weknow so much about but giving it
(06:28):
to us, inviting us into anentirely different way of
approaching that right. And soactually, my my second question
kind of dovetails very well withthat kind of first one, because
in the first chapter, so chapterone is titled an anatomy of a
lynching. There are these tworemarkable moments that I don't
(06:49):
think I've ever seen anythingquite like in a work of history,
because so the book, or sorry,the chapter is an anatomy of a
lynching. And you kind of tostart off the book breaking down
for us kind of how lynching kindof in broad brushstrokes
operated in history, so you'rebreaking down the mobs and the
(07:12):
rituals and the myths thatdefined these horrifying
spectacles in that moment, so asyou're doing this, and as you're
kind of leading us through thesereally, really difficult,
disturbing kind of descriptionsof, of, of lynching, you have a
(07:32):
paragraph break. And then youliterally instruct us as readers
breathe. You know, when I wasreading it, it was like, almost
like having you turn to thecamera. If this were a movie and
insisting that we pause and gono further. You even say like,
at one point, this is a quote,you say breathe, and then you
(07:54):
say, let our, let your eyes losefocus, let them wander from the
page, you're reading this book,you know, I was reading this
book, and then you as author aretelling me, now you need to stop
reading. I don't want you to goany further yet. Which just
totally blew me away. And so Iwas wondering if you could talk.
(08:16):
And I think again, this kind oflike rhymes with that first
question about art and theartist and what the artist has
to say. But he talked more aboutthis choice you made as an
author, and how it connects tothe ethics that you are kind of
insisting that we take up asreaders and that you are taking
(08:37):
up as scholar and writer becauseI think that this is a kind of
narrative choice. It's anauthorial choice. But it's, it's
one that's deeply informed bythe ethics of your work as a
scholar and writer. Soyeah, the first chapter is, was
a very difficult chapter towrite because of the extended
descriptions of violence. It wasI imagined very hard for someone
(09:04):
to read as well. And I did getsome feedback and one of my book
manuscript workshops about howhard Chapter One was to get
through because of the notbecause I was unnecessarily
talking about violence. It'skind of unavoidable in a book on
lynching. But that it wasunrelenting in some ways. And so
(09:25):
I wanted those linebreaks thosepauses, the instruction to
breathe, to be there for thereader. And to also recenter the
focus away from what the lynchmob did because that's what
those sections that precededthem. Were talking about. I
(09:47):
think it was because the book isreally about black communities
in the South. I wanted to talkabout black families, black
communities. I wanted to talkabout them again. And, and
remind the reader as they werepausing and breathing, that
that's what this is reallyabout. I had really good advice
from Tara Hunter, my mentor atPrinceton, who said that you
(10:13):
shouldn't be writing for thevery worst reader out there. So
you don't need to be writingthis to convince someone who's
the worst person you canimagine, who doesn't think
lynching was that bad or needsto see every little bit of gore
on the page, and instead tothink about what you need to
convey about the gravity of thisact, in order to set the stage
(10:38):
for the analysis that you'redoing. And so that was also part
of that kind of thought process.
And the writing was, how do Iachieve that balance where I am
imagining a reader who I want tostay with me, who I don't want
to hurt while they're reading.
While I also want to notminimize the true harm? The true
(11:01):
terror, the true trauma thatissued from lynchings. Yeah,
yeah. And I think to say alittle bit more about it, like
it just and it's so this is inchapter one. So you're still
early on as a reader, you know,you're still early on in the
(11:22):
book. And it almost kind of Ithink one of the reasons that it
was so striking for me is italmost kind of not almost it did
insist that this isn't that youshouldn't engage this book, as
you perhaps we're kind ofconditioned to engage it right
like that we're conditioned, youknow, when we're reading a
scholarly work working conditionto kind of particularly a work
(11:42):
of history, to approach it as akind of text through which we
absorb new information, right,that we are learning about, you
know, the facts for lack of abetter term, right? And it and
those brief moments reallyinsisted that like, No, we're
not dealing with facts. I mean,we are but but but like that,
(12:06):
what you really, as you werejust saying, like, what you're
really doing is kind of invitingus to, to inviting us into the
lives of these black families,these survivors, often of
lynching or the threat oflynching. And inviting us to
kind of be with them almostright there is there's a kind
(12:28):
of, I'm kind of failing forwords on it, but it's a kind of
meditation, you know, there is akind of, I'm a religious studies
scholar, so I'll just go there,right, there's a kind of like
spiritual kind of like,component to that part of the
book, which I thought was reallypowerful. And, you know, for
the, for the listeners, thisbook is part of a series called
(12:52):
net new directions and narrativehistory. And so I felt like that
was a moment in particular,among many others, where I felt
you kind of, in a sense, saying,like, you know, inviting us, you
know, of course, to think aboutlynching in particular ways, but
also to kind of think about whatwe're doing as historians or as
(13:14):
scholars, or as just readers ofhistory, like you're kind of
insisting that we relate to thepast in ways that are different
than how we're accustomed to. Idon't know if you have more
thoughts on that. Butyeah, because again, there's
been wonderful work, wonderfulscholarship done. Wonderful work
by the Equal Justice Initiativein compiling names and numbers,
(13:36):
places of or lynchings tookplace. And that work is
absolutely indispensable. I wantin my book, to be kind of
resting on the foundation ofthat work, and focus on stories
focus on individual people,because individual people lives
are the reason why the numbersmatter, ultimately, right. And
(13:58):
that was something I didn't wantto lose. So that's why I wanted
to invite the reader into theseparticular communities, and kind
of weave those communities thesestories, these families into the
book, instead of it being anattempt at like covering every
single lynching that happened inthe south, which would be
impossible, really diving intothese stories because I wanted
(14:21):
people to feel the full, fullweight or as much of the weight
as they could carry of thepersonal side of these of these
lynchingsYeah, and speak I guess I'm this
whole podcast is speaking tolisteners, but directing this to
the listeners. You know, this islike one of the real gifts of
this book and why I'd reallyencourage you to read it the
(14:42):
lives that that materi that youbring to the page, or lives that
you really feel like you come toknow. And correct me if I'm
getting the name wrong. JamesPennington is a Jesse Jesse
Jesse Pennington is one of thesepeople who survives a lynching.
escapes to Chicago. And so Ikind of get to know him in this
(15:03):
early moment in his life. Andthen later in the book, he shows
back up again, because he, heended up because he was in
Chicago attending the funeralfor Emmett Till. And it was this
moment where, you know, if youare familiar with African
American history, you've you'veheard, you know, the funeral of
Emmett Till, you know, describedin so many ways in so many
(15:26):
times. But there was this kindof very human connection where
it's this this person, I feellike I now know so many of the
people that you that youdescribe in the book and
understand that that's a real areal gift and why, you know, one
of the many reasons that I'dencourage people to really pick
up my soul as a witness and, andsit with it. So I'm going to
(15:48):
take us to a different moment inthe book now, the middle of the
book, Dara is, you know, again,we're friends. So we've talked
about this. So I was gonna say,dare I say, maybe both of our
favorite chapters if we have tochoose a favorite chapter, which
is chapter three, the title ofwhich is haunting. And in this
chapter, you tell ghost stories,in a sense, you tell ghost
(16:13):
stories, but ones that very muchchallenge the kinds of
romanticized ghost stories thatyou might hear on a kind of
ghost tour in downtownCharleston, right? You and this
is a quote from the book younote that throughout the South
African Americans have toldstories about haunted
courthouses, inexplicableafflictions, mysterious deaths,
(16:38):
and agonized deathbedconfessions that resurrected the
ghosts of local lynchings. And Ijust, you know, I was so kind of
captivated by this chapterhaunted by this chapter, that I
was wondering if you might tellus a ghost story. If you if you
(16:58):
might just choose maybe one ofyour favorites, or a one one
moment that really stands out toyou to give again, you know,
listeners a sense of how thisbook is, you know, doing
something a little different inthe ways that we think about
lynching and memory.
Yes, the one I'll talk aboutthen is the one that James Reed
(17:22):
told me and the way I even foundJames Reed is interesting,
because I had been working on mydissertation, talking to my
district, one of my dissertationcommittee members, Robert
Harris, and he was like, Oh,well, you know, my brother in
law, James Reed, has this ghoststory, he told me that about a
haunted courthouse where a manhad been lynched. And so that's
(17:44):
how I came across. It was verymuch kind of by accident. But
this is what how I describe it,at least in part in the book.
From a second story window ofthe small brick courthouse in
Pickens County, Alabama, a faceetched onto the windowpane piers
out onto the tiny town ofCarrollton. For the locals, that
(18:06):
pane of glass has become thestuff of legend, or to be more
precise legends. Mostexplanations for the apparition
in the courthouse involve thelynching of a black man. But the
differences between black andwhite memories of the haunting,
reveal how these disparatememories of the apparition in
the window served very differentpurposes for each community.
(18:30):
Growing up in Hattiesburg,Mississippi during the 1940s and
1950s, James Reed hurt his greataunt Maggie, Maggie rose
Barnett, read, tell all kinds ofstories about living in rural
Mississippi at the height of JimCrow. When the extended family
came over to visit, they talkedabout everything from Klan
violence, the daily humiliationsof segregation. But one story in
(18:53):
particular stuck out a storyabout a face that would appear
in a courthouse window,remembered it this way, quote,
growing up, my great aunt whoraised me used to tell me of a
story of a situation that tookplace back in the oh, I guess,
early 20s of an African Americanbeing lynched in some part of
(19:13):
Alabama, which was actually itwas right across the river.
Let's see. Noxubee county iswhere we were our family was,
and it was right across theriver. So it had to be the
Tombigbee River in Alabama. Sowhatever is close to Noxubee
County in Alabama is where thistook place. The story goes,
(19:33):
there was this African Americanthat was allegedly dating a
white woman, and he was arrestedand killed. And he said that he
was not guilty of anything. Hehadn't raped. It was a rape
situation. They had not rapedthis woman. But they took him
out and killed him anyway. Thestory goes is that he said,
quote, you will see my face inthe courthouse window once a
(19:55):
month or something to thateffect. And according to the way
it was told to me They triedchanging out the window and
everything. And regardless ofthe number of times they tried
to change out the window, hisface would appear, as he
predicted.
I so I have a few things I wantto say. The first is that I
(20:15):
remember you giving apresentation on this chapter
before well, before it was abook chapter, when it was still
in progress. And you had animage of that front of the
courthouse. And I'm, as you'rereading the story, I'm seeing
the image like that, that hasnever left me like that has
stuck with me that face. And soI'm just, I'm blown away by
(20:35):
that. But I also, you know, asyou were reading that particular
story, I was struck by kind ofone of the, I think signatures
of the book, which is that it'sa storytelling book, or it's a
book where you are allowing kindof, or inviting all of these
people to tell their ownstories. And the way you're
(20:55):
doing that is very much, youknow, not like what will happen
in post production of thispodcast, where arms and ands and
you know, coughs are taken out,but you're really attentive to
the silences, the pauses, thekind of stop start nature of
these stories, and, and, youknow, so not only do you keep
(21:18):
them in the book, but you attendto them as kind of moments that
demand that we listen, right?
Not that they're just kind oflike someone who hasn't quite
got the words, right, but thatwe can actually learn something
about those ellipses, you know,those things that might in a
normal text just show up as anellipsis. Right. And so I'm
(21:38):
wondering, like, you know, inthat, you know, since you read
that story, and you've broughthim into the room, if you could
maybe say a little bit aboutthat kind of choice, because I
think that that is, again, akind of distinctive way that you
bring these people's lives intoour lives through the book.
Yeah, I think it was reallyimportant in both the
(21:59):
transcription process for oralhistories that other people
recorded, and the transcriptionprocess for my own oral
histories that I did, to thinknot just about what they were
saying, but how they were sayingit. Trauma is something that
operates by having sometraumatic episode, return, often
(22:22):
on by uninvited. And yeah, like,of course, you never know when
it's going to show up. And theways in which people were
recalling stories. So often,we're most easily understood
through the the framework oflike, what trauma is on in terms
(22:44):
of psychology, right? Like, whatdoes a post traumatic stress
response look like? And so asmuch as I was obviously
interested in, like, how did theface appear? Or what did they do
to the Windows or, you know,what did the town do in the
aftermath? Those details areobviously really important, but
(23:04):
also the ways in which peopletold stories, especially stories
that were from their own directexperience, was just as
important as what they weresaying, really the how they're
saying it. And I kind of closeChapter Three with a close
reading of an interview thatPaul or tease as a historian of
Florida, did with many Weston,this black woman in Mississippi
(23:27):
in the 1990s, through DukeUniversity. And I am very
attentive to what she's sayingabout, you know, lynchings that
happened in her family and hertown, but also, her reluctance
to return to some of thosehorrific memories, and also the
ways in which she was able tocompartmentalize those memories
(23:48):
from the rest of her life as away to just continue to live.
And that's just as much of thestory as what happened to her,
like, how does she come to termswith or if she can't come to
terms with how does she handleand survive this?
Yeah, and many Weston along withJesse Pennington are two of the
the people like the the thehuman beings that you can bring
(24:08):
into our lives through the bookthat like I'm never going to
forget, like that moment at theend of chapter three is one of
my favorites. And I actuallybefore I want to transition to
another question, but before weleave, I have to chime in as the
religious studies professor,because one of the things that I
love and it's throughout thebook, but it's specially there
in this haunting chapter is howyou let the stories be there and
(24:31):
be true and not kind ofimmediately start to
psychoanalyze or like, offersome kind of explanation of
what's actually going on. So youopen you know, and I won't read
the passage, but you openchapter three with the story of
a theodicy of kind of God andkind of coming down through in
the form of a tornado to kind oflike rip through this town where
(24:52):
waco where there's been alynching and you you share these
stories and then the last linein this opening part is or So
the story is went right, like asa wait, like, as a way of I hear
you saying like, and I'm notgoing to comment on like whether
God actually sent a tornado downbut like, this is what they say
and like, we need to hear whatthey say, Right? Which I just
(25:14):
love. And again, you know, in Ithink much of history as a
discipline kind of like ifyou're not attuned to kind of
religious studies scholarship,you might be inclined to be
like, well, this is what, youknow, they said, but like, let
me tell you what's actuallygoing on. And you're just like,
you know, this is what they say,and why don't we sit with this?
Yeah, yeah. Because I'm I'm muchless. As well, I'm not trained
(25:38):
as a historian to figure outwhich ghosts are real. But also,
I don't care in a certain way,because I care much more about
why the ghosts appear. Like, whydo they tell the ghost story?
And that's a much moreinteresting question to me than
like, was there? was God's handright at play in this tornado?
(25:59):
Or was the face in the window?
The face of this? This man, youknow?
So I have, I have two morequestions. One is for one is for
our students, and one is for me.
So this one goes out to all ourstudents, you know, both of us
teach classes and AfricanAmerican Studies. And I think,
you know, and you can, you know,share a little bit if you if you
(26:22):
think differently, but you know,I think a lot of our students
come to African American Studiesand stay because they find in
African American Studies, thistradition of critique of
resistance, and of protest,right to systems of oppression,
that so much of the world ignoreus, right? They find in our
(26:42):
classes, this kind of refreshingrecognition of the dominance of
white supremacy, and antiblackness and colonialism and
the ways that they shape ourworld that are so often ignored,
right. And so that's, you know,what I think draws a lot of our
students to our classes, maybeeven what keeps a lot of our
(27:03):
students in our classes. Andyet, you know, in your book,
you're offering an importantcritique of the dominance of the
resistance paradigm, as you callit. And you're drawing on the
works of other scholars as well,who really want to challenge
this assumption that the end allbe all of African American life
and living is resistance, right?
(27:26):
That we always have to readAfrican American history through
the lens of resistance. I'mthinking especially about your
your chapters on protest, andthe blues where you kind of push
us to kind of move beyondthinking that protest is just a
synonym for the civil rightsmovement or a social movement.
And yeah, so I'd love to hearyou reflect a little bit on on
(27:49):
why you think it's important tochallenge this dominant paradigm
and how challenging it kind ofinvites us to reframe how we
think of African American life.
Yeah, I think that the, the kindof focus on protest has to also
be historically situated. Sowithin us society and within
(28:14):
academia, there for a very longtime was a truly distorted
narrative about black life. Iffocused on kind of black
facility, it was one that kindof played up the Sambo or other
(28:37):
kinds of caricatures ofblackness, that denied
resistance existing. It was onethat criticized African
Americans for not having thesame forms of resistance that
you saw in places like Haiti, orin Jamaica, which had, again,
also much larger blackpopulations percentage wise
than, than the United States.
And so the focus on resistancewas initially especially like in
(29:00):
the 1960s, let's say, inacademia, and also in, you know,
our social movements was areflection of a desire to show
that no, people are not okay.
With Jim Crow. No, people werenot okay with slavery, no,
people are not okay, withoppression, and therefore we
(29:23):
have to do something about it.
So that's where a lot of that iscoming from. And I think that's
where a lot of the students arealso coming from is that they
have seen an absence of reallytalking about not just the fact
of the injustice, but what weshould do about it. And that's
what I do agree, you know, thestudents come to our classes to
learn about. I also wantHowever, my students to
(29:45):
appreciate that black people'slives are not just about
suffering, or resistance, thatthere are so many other facets
and nuance senses of blackculture and kind of black
communities that don't have todo with what white people are
(30:08):
doing to you, right. And so Iwanted to leave room for in the
book. And I hope I do this in mycourses to, to think about what
it means to have a fullerunderstanding of black life
that's not simply reactive towhite supremacy. And so I think
(30:29):
that it's important to then onthe one hand, have a broader
definition of protests and notjust think about, you know,
people in the streets,protesting and marches or just
people boycotting or peoplemaking political speeches, but
to also think about it and someof the everyday ways that people
(30:49):
resist and even resistancethrough or protest through
mourning, right, affirming thethe value of the person who has
you have lost is a form ofprotest, even though it's not
public. It's not directed bywhite people, it is directed
within right within thecommunity, and to yourself. But
I also think, again, like thebook is about a kind of beauty
(31:14):
and grace, that can't be reducedto just what white supremacy
forced to be created. And that'salso just an important lesson
for all of us to be reminded ofwhen we're thinking about black
people's lives. There aren'tonly two stories, it's not only
(31:36):
suffering, or resistance,there's so many more things we
should be talking about, even ina book about lynching.
That's right. That's right.
Well, I mean, and I actuallythink that this dovetails
perfectly with my last question,which again, is the question for
me, because, you know, we beganthis conversation talking about
your opening sentence, right,your opening paragraph and about
(31:59):
how you kind of invite us intothis conversation on the trauma
of lynching through the artistright through beauty through
pleasure. And there arecountless poets, novelists,
musicians that you're quotingthroughout your book, in other
words, like artists are all overthe pages. But one artist in
(32:22):
particular, who you and I, youknow, adore and have learned so
much from is James Baldwin.
Right? Baldwin looms very large.
He's there in chapter epigraphs.
He's there in quotes, but ofcourse, he's you know, if your
first sentence is, the artisthas much to offer the scholar,
(32:45):
the first words that anyone willread, are actually Baldwins. The
title of your book comes from aBaldwin quote, as you know, near
the quote is my memory stammers.
But my soul is a witness. Andso, you know, I actually think
you're probably touching on thisa little bit in that last
answer. But I was wondering ifyou could reflect kind of as a
final question on what insightsBaldwin offers you, in
(33:08):
particular, you know, why hisvoice is so singular? You know,
which is not to say that likeover and against other artists,
but there seems to be aparticular thing or set of
things, we're way of sayingthings and thinking about, you
know, race and violence, andmemory and trauma and the blues
(33:29):
and these things. And just likewhat it means to be human, that
that Baldwin offers you. And soI just, your title opens with
Baldwin. And so maybe we can fitin that we close with him as
well. So,yeah, we're actually right now
I'm teaching a seminar onBaldwin, which I will be
(33:49):
teaching next spring, if any oneof my students have any students
are interested in taking it. Andhe's someone who was a real
seer. You know, he wrote in themiddle of the 20th century, late
20th century, but was but haswritten things that very much
(34:09):
speak to the President continueto speak to the present. And
he's also someone who's aliveduring a lot of the period that
my book is about. And I thinkboth of those things make him
such an important thinker for meto think with and through. The
idea for the book came in manyways from him, I read a short
(34:34):
story called going to meet theman, which is about a white
deputy sheriff in the south, whois made to feel something is has
changed because of the civilrights movement. And to reassure
himself of his place as a whiteman in the south, goes back to
this memory of a lynching thathe attended as a child. And so
(34:56):
even though my book is Not aboutwhite Southerners, although they
are in chapter four, and inparts of chapter two, two, it's
really a book that is thinkingabout memory, how does that
memory continue to shape who weare? And how do we go return to
memories as a way of kind ofpositioning ourselves. And so it
(35:18):
was through his short story thatI came to ask the scholarly
question about the afterlife oflynching for black Southerners.
And also, in part through hisand others, work on the blues,
his that that got me to thinkingabout the centrality of the
(35:40):
sensibility of the blues, inunderstanding black responses to
trauma. And his essay, the usesof the blues is a really
beautiful job of articulatingwhat it is that the blues are
about, right? You know, life ishard, you will suffer. There's
no way around that. But you haveto make a way for yourself to
(36:02):
get through that. And that'swhat that sensibility is right.
And it's one that he thinks thatis often not a part of the more
general American consciousness,right? We try to avoid thoughts
of suffering and death and tryto live in like this happy place
without the reality that lifedoes involve suffering. And we
(36:27):
have to still find a way eventhough it seems impossible to
get through it. And so there'sso many of these kinds of
insights from Baldwin. I lovewhat he can do with language. I
can't do what he does withlanguage. I don't think anyone
can. But I do appreciate what hecan do with language. And for
(36:49):
me, he's always been the modelfor what it means to be a good
writer, a good thinker. And ashe would say, a good man, too.
Yeah. And I think that if I cansay one last thing about your
book is that, you know, thisthing that I keep saying over
(37:10):
and over again, about the kindof the beauty and poetry of your
book, on this kind of horrifyingsubject is very Baldwin in in
that sense, I think that he hasthis gift of kind of making life
come alive in words, and you'vedone that as well here. So I'm
(37:34):
grateful for you. I'm gratefulfor this beautiful and brilliant
book. And I'd encourage everyoneagain, listening to really pick
it up and discover it foryourself. This book is my soul
as a witness, the traumaticafterlife of lynching. Thank you
so much, Marty.
Thank you for having me. This isa great conversation.
(37:59):
So thank you for listening tothis episode of speaking of
College of Charleston withtoday's guest Professor Marty
Crabtree. For more episodes andto read stories about our
guests, visit the College ofCharleston official news site,
the college today at today dot cof c.edu. You can also find
(38:21):
episodes on all major podcastplatforms including Apple
podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.
If you like what you hear,please subscribe and leave a
review. This episode wasproduced by Amy Stockwell from
the Office of marketingcommunications with recording
and sound engineering by JesseCollins from the Division of
Information Technology. Thanksagain, and we'll see you next
(38:43):
time.
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