Mimetalker's Open Salon Blog

Lynchings in America-An Exhibit to Remember

Tue, 7 May 2013 10:05:29 -0400

I was on the committee to plan the "Searching for Racial Justice"* art exhibit, and to be honest, an exhibit on lynchings wasn't what any of us had in mind. I imagined paintings of unshackled hands, or colors swirled across a canvas. Or maybe black and white photos of faces, tears, and questioning eyes. If I were a visual artist that's what I would have done. But that would be safe and expected and easy to see.

A friend knew about Suellyn Woodall Scoon's work and suggested it. Suellyn was surprised we wanted it. It's rare to find places willing to exhibit "Strange Fruit: Lynchings in America”. People get upset when they view it and I'm glad they do. I would worry if they didn't.

Suellyn gave a talk about her work and the exhibit. She began with a statement I had not considered. “There were not lynchings during slavery because it makes no sense to destroy property.” Beat them, but let them recover or you've lost your investment. It is possible I heard or read that before. It had a familiarity to it, that “of course” feel like I knew but forgot, or heard without letting myself think about it for too long or too hard.

The lynchings began during reconstruction and continued until 1968, the year Dr. King was killed and I was in high school. I hadn't let myself think too long or hard about that either, but my husband's family did. His mother wouldn't let him or his brothers visit relatives in the South. They would have had to learn how to act around whites...step off the sidewalk, do what they ask without talking back, and never look at a white woman. "How could I teach them that and not make them feel inferior?"

Suellyn knows that lynchings are an odd theme for artistic expression, but once she became aware of it, it wouldn’t let her go. She heard a lecture by the president of a local chapter of the NAACP. The stories he told were sad and shocking and inspired her to research more. She read the historical accounts, and examined the photos with magnifying glasses. She became friends with the NAACP president who encouraged her to do the paintings, and dismissed her objection. “I’m a white woman, who am I to do this?”

Suellyn struggled through the work, emotionally and physically. She was essentially homeless and stayed with friends, and set up makeshift studios wherever she landed. She said it seemed right that she had no permanent sanctuary while painting people without sanctuary...the name of the book by James Allen that has the photographs.

After giving the stark historical introduction, Suellyn told the stories of the people she painted, the circumstances of the lynching, and the mob who did it. In one painting the mob is depicted, standing in posed positions for the camera. In another a lone 10 year old girl, imitates the lynched man's body and sticks out her tongue, mimicking his. The photo of this was taken in 1938 and Hitler used it in Germany to demonstrate how evil Americans were. "See how they teach their young?" Did it inspire him?

In the mob were farmers, doctors, bankers, lawyers, ministers, store owners, policemen, and churchgoers. They brought their wives and children. Teachers brought their students. There are accounts of the railroad company scheduling additional trains to accommodate the crowds.

I want to believe some couldn’t eat the picnic lunch they brought with them. Did it become a test of fortitude? Buy a bullet, shoot the body, cut off his toe, then see if you can still eat your ham sandwich?

I want to believe the teachers who brought students to the lynching as a field trip did it under duress and behind closed doors used it as an example of failed democracy.

I want to believe that those who took body parts and made necklaces and keychains from fingers, toes, and ears, were haunted in their dreams and woke every night drenched in sweat, crying and trembling and begging for a mercy they could never feel.

Suellyn tells the stories with a quiet, respectful voice. She knows them by heart, but has notecards to check herself, make sure she is giving the right name. She has told their stories so often, she did it without becoming emotional, except once. Her voice trembled when she said no one knew what happened to the two year old child of the woman hanged from the bridge with her 12 year old son. It was reported that the child had been seen on the bank of the river during the lynching, but no one bothered with it.

After the lecture I couldn’t talk with anyone. I went to a meditation room where we hung pictures of friends and family. In one picture my husband is singing with a young white woman. My granddaughter is hugging her blonde friend in another one. My oldest grandson is sitting on the lap of his white teacher and she is surrounded by children of every shade. When I could breathe again, I thanked my husband’s ancestors for surviving.

The people who were lynched seldom had burials. The bodies were mutilated and parts taken for souvenirs. There was nothing left to bury. Suellyn paints them in their last recognizable human form. The colors are muted, not harsh like the black and white photographs. The bodies are weightless, and in each painting there is a subtle depiction of released spirit. This exhibit honors and remembers them.

African proverb: "A man is not dead until he is forgotten."

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*Searching for Racial Justice exhibit was sponsored by the Rockford Baha'i Community.

Suellyn Woodall (Scoon) website

http://www.suellynwoodall.com/Lynching%20in%20America.htm

Without Sanctuary

http://withoutsanctuary.org/

What gives me joy after writing about this...my granddaughter (left) and her best friend (right)

Tag-Team Writers

Wed, 1 May 2013 17:05:42 -0400

Today was an unexpected vacation day. A pipe burst at our office yesterday, there was a mini flood, and they shut off the water. We made it through the day while the repair men planned and prepared their attack. Today it will be too loud to hear or think. They promise it’ll be done by tomorrow. I hope like every repair job done at our house, they have underestimated the project. I know I should be grateful to have a job, and I will be. But one more day wouldn't hurt anyone.

I kind of slept in. My husband woke me up to say good-bye and my dog work me up to eat, but I went back to sleep until I felt someone looking at me. My six year old grandson was staring at me about to cry. “I don’t know where mommy is. Nobody is here”.

I didn’t laugh at the obvious error. I’m “someone”, but not who he needs. He got sick during the night and his mom didn’t wake him up this morning. “She probably took the kids to school.” He climbed into bed with me and stared at the ceiling until three seconds later when we heard her come home. I went back to sleep until the dog barked again for no reason.

My daughter asked me what I was going to do with my free day and she had the smile that means she wants something. She has a house down the street, but she and the four kids stay with us most of the time. Her husband is Malik Yusef, a Grammy winning lyric writer in the hip-hop music industry and he's gone a lot. This past month he has been in Paris twice, LA once, Dallas twice, Orlando, and now New York. Their marriage seems to be working but it's complicated and interesting, and not my story to tell. Maybe one day she will because she is a writer, and that is what she wanted today.

“I'm guessing you want to go and write...but what would you say about part of the time staying with the kids so I can go write somewhere too?"

My daughter has always been a writer. In pre-school she dictated stories so beautiful her teacher cried. I worked as an artist-in-residence at a private progressive school so my kids could go there. They believed in nurturing a child’s strengths so she spent hours writing stories at school and home. When she was nine she became fascinated with Vietnam. Her favorite movie was "Platoon" and then documentaries on Vietnam. She began writing a novel about a boy who volunteers to go to Vietnam. He’s an innocent and thinks it’s his patriotic duty. He also thinks it will impress a girl he is secretly in love with and it does.

Her middle school teacher asked her to read aloud excerpts from her novel. She rarely joined in serious discussions during class. With her friends she was fun-loving and giggly. Her teacher wanted them to know this other side of her.

Her friends were stunned when she read about a boy who goes to Vietnam, and discovers it isn’t what he thought, and he does things he never imagined doing, and how it makes him hate himself into madness where he becomes his own enemy and stalks himself. She was outed as a pre-teen with depth.

Her teacher said her writing so sophisticated and intricate, she wondered if we had ever discussed this...especially the complicated thoughts this young man had. “How can she know this?”

I asked her, and she gave me the creepy look possessed children give in Stephen King movies. “I don’t know how I know it. I just know it.”

She wrote this book for three years. She wrote first in notebooks and then the computer. Occasionally she let me read some of it. As a book-lover I was impressed, as her mother I was appalled. “You are eleven years old. You can’t curse.” She cried and said it won’t be authentic. I told her a good writer can make it authentic without cursing. It’s a crutch. “When you are 18 you put in the curse words, but not now.” She hated me, but I think she obeyed. She didn’t show me her work after that. By the time she was 18 she had abandoned the novel. The hard drive crashed and she was more interested in boys. She planned to become an elementary teacher because she loved kids. She ignored my lament that she was wasting her talent, so I only said it once, maybe twice. After that I resorted to silent encouraging thoughts as she planned her future.

Two years into her education degree, she calls me at my office. I cannot see her face, but can hear that look through her voice. “Can you talk? I’ve had an epiphany. I need to change my major to Creative Writing. If I don’t do this now, I never will. I just know it.”

That decision took her to Columbia College and eventually to a Kanye West concert and an after-party where she reconnected with Malik who she had a crush on since she was fifteen and saw him recite a poem. He was on the concert tour with his friend Kanye. She and Malik have been together ever since.

She has finished the memoir she has been working on for eight years. Most nights she writes after the kids go to bed. We often sit in the same room, both on our laptops with the television in the background. We watch stupid stuff we don't care about and make fun of it. Neither of read aloud our work to each other. She’s doing revisions and working with a writing coach. Being a memoir, I am nervous, but she’s says there's no nothing to worry about. “It’s more about the dumb boy choices I made, than you.” But she is glad my parents aren't around to read it.

Whatever she wrote, is fine with me. I gave her permission and a prayer-push and I knew it was a dangerous request. If ever a choice had to be made between her being a writer, or me I’d step aside. Lucky for me, that is nothing but my imagination.

So yes, I am writing until it’s time to pick up my grandson from school, and then it’s her turn until the kids' bedtime. The six year old won’t be able to sleep until his mommy is home.

***

Below is an excerpt from a story published in a literary magazine...it was written eight years ago, so now she thinks it's horrid. But I still love it, even though I'm portrayed as a dork.

http://www.furthermucker.com/bronx_biannual/12/the-story-of-my-hair

This one she slyly told me was there. Mentioned it in passing. It's one she didn't want her grandparents to read.

http://toskamag.com/2012/06/14/this-is-what-youll-remember/

Fighting for Joy

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 17:04:07 -0400

I overheard a woman in the health food store tell her friend she hoped someday "joy" would become her "default" emotion. I lingered in the muscle enhancement section, which seemed out of place in a store dedicated to a natural life style. I wanted to hear her elaborate but the friend sympathetically agreed, then asked how to prepare beans so her husband won't fart. I didn't stay for the instructions. I don't cook.

The idea of joy as a default emotion stayed with me all day. I recognize this. It's the way I am. I don't push it out there much because so many people are not, and it feels like bragging.

But it isn't constant. Sometimes I sink and feeling sad is the only thing that makes sense... like the time my high school "friends" rejected me because I gave a black boy a ride in my car and allowed him to sit in the front seat...or when I lost two babies within a year and had a doctor who didn't care because he was against mixed race children... and when both parents died within twenty seven days of each other. And there have been worse things that took me down so hard and fast I lost myself.

But with every sinking there came the moment when it was time to stop and fight my way back.

Eventually the bad is good.

Discovering my doctor was racist led me to a better doctor who had helped hundreds of women like me have babies. I have two children in this world and two children beyond. I communicate with all four and when someone I love dies I ask my "spirit" children to go introduce themselves.

My parents were married for 63 years and didn't want to live without each other. How can I be sad about what they wanted? It’s why I danced around my father’s hospital bed as he lay dying. “Soon, Daddy. You’ll be with her soon.”

The " lost friends" trauma is laughable. Had I not been willing to lose them, I would never have my husband, my children and grandchildren. If I knew where they were I would send a thank-you note. Maybe this will find them...

Dr. Brené Brown is a social scientist who studies human emotions and our need for connection which gives us joy. After years of study and her own personal crises as she saw where the research was leading, she came to a conclusion. Those who are able to feel love and belonging believe they are worthy of it.

I feel worthy. It almost feels rude to admit it. But I always have felt worthy. I did not have parents who ever said that to me. But maybe their silence was enough. They never called me names, or said I was born a sinner. Sometimes, they expressed disappointment because they believed I was capable of doing better. It made me want to prove them right.

When I was a kid, if people didn't like me, I thought it was because they didn't know me. When I grew up I decided it was because they didn't like the things I did. They thought any white woman married to a black man was a degenerate. Or any Christian who converts to another religion is going to hell. Or mimes are just asking to be despised. But it was never personal.

I’ve decided this isn’t conceit because it isn't only me. We are all worthy.

“Noble have I created thee, yet thou hast abased thyself. Rise then unto that for which thou wast created.” Bahá’i Writings

People fight to survive because at our core, we seek the joy in being alive. I choose to think that is the reason, not fear.

May those in Boston and West, Texas and every place on the planet where people are enduring the unbearable, fight their way back to happy.

It is there, waiting for them.

Beauty Confessional

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:04:50 -0400

“You are beautiful to me. You always have been, you always will be.”

My husband told me this last Thursday. He doesn’t remember telling me forty years ago he was glad that I wasn’t beautiful. I didn’t know how to react when he said it. He didn’t seem concerned at my silence and explained if I was beautiful he might be fooled by my looks. But since I wasn’t, he knew he loved me for me. I nodded and smiled and didn’t tell him how much that hurt because then he would know I wasn’t the person he thought I was.

I know I am not ugly. I wasn't called that to my face, even as a kid. People have said I'm attractive, or cute. Sometimes pretty. But as imaginative as I can be, I am also a realist and know I am not beautiful. My teeth are too big for my mouth, my chin disappears, my nose has an odd bump, and I have cankles.

Once when I was working as a mime statue, a woman approached with her daughter. “Look at this lady. Isn’t she beautiful?” The little girl stepped close and I felt her hand on mine. “She is, Mommy.” Every time I put on my mime face, I remember that. My husband has a framed picture of me as a mime in his office. He says it's his favorite because the photo captured my spirit. I think it’s because I felt free behind the mask.

I dreamed of being the romantic lead in every movie, but if I had become an actress I would have been cast as the old maid aunt, or the smart, unattractive friend. At the Academy Awards those character actresses are almost unrecognizable. They look familiar but not right. And then you hear the distinct voice, or recognize the smile. Designer dresses and fake eye-lashes do not change bone structure, or symmetry.

My parents didn’t talk about our looks. The emphasis was on how smart we were and our character. But I noticed mom always wore lipstick, even when she cleaned the house, and she died with curlers in her hair. Dad told the cemetery plot salesperson how he met my mother and added something I had never heard him say. “She was so pretty.” I wondered if he ever told her that. I look like my mother, so I guess my father thought I was pretty too.

I love people of all shapes, sizes, colors, and degrees of attractiveness. I don’t judge people based on looks. If any of my friends expressed concern about that I would tell them how silly that was. Yet, I hate having my picture taken. The person I see in the photo is not the one in my mind, or the one in my mirror. My mirror is kinder than the ones in stores. They spotlight flaws I try to forgive.

I work at not caring, and can almost believe it is better to have become beautiful to someone who forgot she wasn’t.

"Why Are They Smiling?" a six year old's question

Sat, 6 Apr 2013 14:04:25 -0400

The "Searching for Racial Justice" Art Exhibit is disturbing. During non-exhibit hours, the paintings by Suellyn Woodall are draped with black cloth. My ten year old grandson chose not to go because the paintings portray lynchings. His younger brother, chided him. “But it’s your history, Nasir!”

Woodall had found pictures of lynchings from the 1930’s taken by the then newly invented “Brownie Camera”. People gathered at the lynchings and brought picnic lunches. They took pictures and made them into postcards to send to friends and relatives. The number of lynchings across the country increased.

I’m glad Nasir didn’t come. He gets angry when he sees injustice especially about race and he hasn’t found the right words to expel the anger. He gets sad.

His younger brother is more philosophical. His mother walked through the exhibit with him, explaining.

Most of the paintings only depicted the person hanged. The artist lived with the photos for six months, intermittently staring and crying, and not sleeping until she could feel their spirits released from the photos. Suellyn then painted them as weightless. In each there is a subtle symbol of spirit, a splash of color, a single flower pedal. My grandson searched for the spirit in every painting and was delighted when he found it.

One painting confused him. There was a crowd of bystanders.

“Why are they smiling?”

I don’t have the right words to explain. I don’t think there are any.

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NOTE: "Searching For Racial Justice" was an exhibit sponsored by the Baha'i Community of Rockford, IL The idea for the exhibit was inspired by a presentation at a recent Baha'i Conference by Michelle Alexander, author of "The New Jim Crow-Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindedness"