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If you’re wondering how the history books will deal with Ferguson and Mike Brown, my guess is the same way they dealt with Rubin Stacy at Fort Lauderdale. You don’t know what I’m referring to? Exactly.”
On December 6, 1933 President Franklin Roosevelt used one of his first national radio addresses to call lynch law “collective murder” and to condemn those “in high places or in low who condone lynch law.” Alluding to the growing number of federal anti-
lynchinglegislation supporters, he stated that a new generation of Americans “seeks action . . . and is not content with preaching against that vile form of collective murder — lynch law — which has broken out in our midst anew."
Though Roosevelt spoke out against lynching, he still would not support the anti-lynching proposed laws.
On October 26, 1934
Claude Neal was lynched in Marianna, Florida. This
lynching had a traumatic effect on the nation’s approval of
lynching. The young black man was lynched after confessing to the murder of Lola Cannidy. The methods used to extract the confession cast doubt on its validity. Ms. Cannidy, a young white neighbor, was supposedly having an affair with Neal. To ensure Claude’s safety he was kept in an Alabama jail. The lynch mob took him from the authorities and subjected him to ten hours of excruciating torture before he was put to death.
A member of the
lynching party described the
lynching in great detail:
“After taking the ****** to the woods about four miles from Greenwood, they cut off his penis. He was made to eat it. Then they cut off his testicles and made him eat them and say he liked it. Then they sliced his sides and stomach with knives and every now and then somebody would cut off a finger or toe. Red hot irons were used on the ****** to burn him from top to bottom.” From time to time during the torture a rope would be tied around Neal’s neck and he was pulled up over a limb and held there until he almost choked to death when he would be let down and the torture begin all over again. After several hours of this unspeakable torture, “they decided just to kill him.”
Neal’s body was then tied to a rope at the rear of an automobile and dragged over the highway to the Cannidy home. Here a mob estimated to number somewhere between 3000 and 7000 from eleven southern states were excitedly waiting his arrival. when the corpse was rolled into the dust, it was horribly mutilated by the onlookers. It5 was then taken back to Marianna, where it was hung to a tree on the northeast corner of the courthouse square. Pictures were taken of the mutilated form and hundreds of photographs were sold for fifty cents each. Neal’s fingers were sold as souvenirs to the bloodthirsty crowd who arrived too late to witness the gory festivities.
What made this situation even more deplorable is the fact that the Florida press had advance notice of the
lynching and reported it in their newspapers. However, not one official at the local, state, or federal level tried to prevent the
lynching. Neal’s
lynching was followed by a race riot in the town of Marianna in which white rioters attempted to drive all blacks out of the city.
While the Neal
lynching may have been the last "spectacle"
lynching in the nation, many other
lynchings of a less publicized nature would follow. In fact, Marianna would be the site of another
lynching less than 10 years later.
On July 19, 1935, a woman named Marion Jones in Fort Lauderdale, Florida made a complaint against a black man who had appeared at her door.
In no time, Rubin Stacy was picked up by authorities and while he was being escorted to the Dade County jail in Miami, Florida, he was forcibly taken by a white mob. The mob returned the thirty-two year old man to Fort Lauderdale andhanged him outside Jones’ home. However, the investigation revealed that Stacy was nothing more than a homeless tenant farmer who had gone to the Jones home, asking for food. When Marion Jones saw him, she became frightened and screamed. The white mob had never even given Stacy the chance of discovering the facts before he died at the end of a rope.
Stacey left Georgia to go to Florida where there were more opportunities. Unfortunately, he was murdered.
In the foreground of the photo, you see—the bloodied body of—our Rubin hanging from a tree. In the background, you see a group of whites milling about looking on with glee at the
STRANGE FRUIT. In the group of children, you can see this little white girl smiling angelically up at the beaten, swollen and patently dead face of Rubin Stacy. In addition to the pain endured by Rubin, I want to focus on this white girl, her angelic smile, her Sunday’s best wears, and her clan of ‘law-abiding’ white folks. This iconic image captures what we collaboratively seek to forget in order to embrace this color-blind, post-racial and multi-culti society.
We seek to forget what James Allen and Philip Dray captured in their respective works
Without Sanctuary and
At the Hands of Persons Unknownthat the story of lynching is “a tale of ordinary White Americans perpetrating, in ritualized installments, the mass murder of Black Americans.”
Yeah, that’s right, ‘the white family next door’ was responsible for Rubin’s hanging not the Kl
an. What’s more horrifying to note is that in these lynching rituals the town’s people protected each other and often in the police and coroner’s records these crimes are often cited as killed “at the hands of persons unknown.” So how would you explain the little white girl’s smile when we can presume that she is not a child of a Klan member?
Rubin Stacey—the black body – pain, fear, horror, and for his—our –blood to spill.
Imagine as Rubin was marched, like Jesus, to that tree being jeered by onlookers, kicked, spat on, hit, and disfigured. But unlike Jesus, our Rubin hasn’t risen from death an iconic figured worshipped by white, brown, yellow and black folks. Instead he has been all but forgotten and again denied his humanity, because
his murderers’ were protected by the law, the government and ‘law abiding’ citizens.
To be totally alone, and staring (while your eyes are intact) into the eyes of your enemies/murderers, this was Rubin’s fate.
Even the appearance in the newspapers of these lynchings failed to change Roosevelt's mind on speaking out for another anti-lynching bill proposed after Stacey's murder. Though the proposed bill received more support than it had in the past, it was defeated. However, the national debate taking place over the issue helped to bring attention to the crime of lynching to the American public.