NYTimes Article on Lynching

A Lynching Memorial Unveiled in Duluth

Published: December 05, 2003

Nations deal with nightmares the same way people do -- by trying to forget them. Among the nightmares that had faded from public memory in the United States until recently, none are more ghastly than the campaign of racial terror that gripped this country from the 1880's to the 1930's, when thousands of black Americans were hanged, mutilated, burned alive or dragged to death while huge crowds looked on.

Sometimes called ''lynching bees'' or ''Negro barbecues,'' these events were cast as macabre carnivals, which drew crowds with children and picnic baskets from miles around. The victims' bodies were sometimes photographed for postcards, which were used as instruments of terror until mailing such postcards was barred in the early 20th century. Lynching was not always just random violence. It was sometimes semiofficial violence, directed by whites who feared business competition from emerging black entrepreneurs and who hated the crusading newspapers of the Negro press, which began pressing aggressively for full citizenship for black people around World War I.

Americans who know of the violence of this period at all tend to believe that it was confined to the segregationist South. But the fact that lynchings took place in many parts of the country was underscored recently in the northern Minnesota city of Duluth when the city unveiled a moving memorial commemorating the deaths of Elmer Jackson, Elias Clayton and Isaac McGhie, three young black men who were lynched in Duluth in 1920 while a mob of 10,000 looked on.

The dedication drew thousands of people from all over the area. The emotional high point came with a speech by Warren Read, a fourth-grade teacher from Kingston, Wash., who had learned while researching his family that his great-grandfather had helped lead the mob that stormed the local jail and took the three men, who were circus workers, from their cells. His voice choking with emotion, he apologized to the victims and their families.

The memorial in Duluth is part of a national journey that began in the 1990's, when scholars and museums began to pull back the covers on a shameful and horrific period. After nearly a half-century of turning away, the country now seems more ready to look its nightmare squarely in the eye.

A. Answer the following questions about the article:

1 According to the article, what do nations and people have in common?

2 What effect did the postcards have on the Afro-American community at the time?

3 Which event drew a bigger crowd – the lynching or the dedication?

4 When did the academic community begin to rediscover this period in American history?

B. True or false?

1 Americans were still sending lynching postcards in the 1950’s.

2 Lynchings took place exclusively in the South.

3 Americans have always been willing to deal with their history.

C. Find words in the text with similar meanings to the words below:

1 _______________ horrifying

2 _______________ held

3 _______________ gruesome

4 _______________ prohibited

5 _______________ businessmen

6 _______________ emphasized

7 _______________ honoring

8 _______________ angry crowd

9 _______________ ceremony

10 _______________ 50 years

E. What are the antecedents of the following words?

1 it (2nd paragraph) _______________

2 the city (3rd paragraph) _______________

3 the country (last paragraph) _______________

E. Which expression (idiom) in the last paragraph means:

1 to expose something that was hidden ____________________________

2 to deal with something honestly ____________________________

F. Find the TWO appositive phrases in this passage.

G. The last line of the article claims that "the country now seems more ready to look its nightmare squarely in the eye." Write a paragraph, which you will hand in, explaining how well you think our country is doing in facing the darker elements of its history.