It took a mob, a rabble, a group of several people to carry out the deed. To hold the victim. To toss the rope. To necklace the rope. To hoist the rope. To keep it taut while the body fought and then stiffened and then went limp and sodden. Heavy like coal. Dangling like earrings.
A lynching was loud, for a mob is never silent. The act itself was audible: The rope chafed against the bark. It tore open the skin. It suffocated and gagged, crushed the esophagus and snapped the neck. It made water, involuntary and foul, tricking past the knee, past the calf and the foot. A lynching was a fight against gravity. Desperate. Futile. Listless. And gravity always won.
A lynching was an act of community will. A community that showed up dressed for the outing, smiling, cheering, hoisting their children for a better view, preening for the cameras, for there were so often cameras to commemorate the occasion with postcards later sold as keepsakes. Postcards with swaying, charred bodies. Shoulders limp. Legs loose. Heads lolled backward in an odd contortion that made it seem that their souls were communing with God.
Lynching was the work of “good people.” People who held positions of stature and authority. Who went to church. Who taught their children the golden rule about Jesus loving all the little children. A rule with exceptions and bylaws and fine print. A rule that applied only to people with white skin.
A lynching was meant to send a message. Stay in line. This could be you or your son or your wife or your father. Your heart. Your pride. Your breadwinner. Your changemaker. Your dignity. Yes, there was a message. We are powerful. You are not.
A lynching was often accompanied by long-term amnesia. The people behind those acts would eventually forget this history, forget that this is what transpired in the town square or tobacco field, forget that they were engaged in what would now pass as evil because, jeez, who would want to claim that?
According to the NAACP, 4,743 people were lynched in the United States from 1882 to 1968. (Yes, 1968.) Of that number, 3,446 were black.