James Cameron in Marion, Ind.
Going home to fight the Klan
By Phil
Wilayto
Marion, Ind.
"I can never forget the mobsters breaking into the jail.
They surged forward in one great lunge, knocking and trampling
the Black prisoners around me. Some of the mob got their hands
on me right away, three on each side, and then the merciless
beating began.
"I tried to break out of their grasp, but there were too
many of them. They beat and kicked me in the corner of my
cellblock for several minutes before dragging me out of that
part of the jail. Their grips were like bands of steel.
"They knew, now, how to hold me captive, because they had
just lynched Tommy and Abe, my two buddies. I was in the
clutches of the same murderers who had lynched them on a tree
on the courthouse lawn."
--from "A Time of Terror"
by James Cameron
Six of us recently drove from Milwaukee to Marion, Ind.,
with James Cameron, the founder of America's Black Holocaust
Museum in Milwaukee. He is an internationally known author and
lecturer and the subject of a documentary by the British
Broadcasting Corporation.
He's also the only known living survivor of a Ku Klux Klan
lynching. It happened on Aug. 7, 1930, in Marion.
This summer, on July 23, the Klan was coming back to Marion.
And so was Mr. Cameron.
In 1930, Indiana was a KKK stronghold. As many as 20,000
hooded Klan members would march in the streets. They elected
mayors, sheriffs, judges and state representatives, and helped
put the governor himself in office.
So when the Klan put out a call to come to Marion for a
lynching, 10,000 people from all over the state responded.
Before the day was over, two Black teenagers, Tommy Shipp and
Abe Smith, were hanging from a tree outside the county
courthouse.
You might have seen the picture. There's a pencil-mustached
white guy in front, pointing upward, smiling.
After the mob beat Mr. Cameron, they dragged him out to the
same tree and put a rope around his neck. By some miracle, the
crowd relented, and Mr. Cameron survived.
This time around, the local paper said three Klan factions
were sponsoring the rally. Pressed by the Indiana Civil
Liberties Union, city officials finally granted the rally
permit.
The site was the steps of the courthouse, about 50 feet from
the 1930 lynching.
When we got to Marion, the entire downtown area was roped
off. Police vehicles blocked the streets. A helicopter was
parked nearby. Seventy state troopers were on duty, plus
uniformed and plainclothes local cops, plus a SWAT team.
As we approached the rally site, two people from Marion
joined in. The young white woman and her boyfriend, a Latino,
had come out to protest the Klan. As we passed the old county
jail, Mr. Cameron pointed out the floors where he, Tommy and
Abe had been held.
The three had been arrested after a white man's shooting
death during an attempted robbery. Mr. Cameron had left the
scene before the shooting, frightened when he saw there was a
gun. The news media reported that the man's female companion,
also white, had been raped. She later denied this, but the
story helped the Klan whip up a lynch-mob atmosphere. The cops
fanned the flames by taking the victim's bloody clothes and
running them up the flagpole outside the police station.
On July 23, as we passed by the Municipal Building, the
doors opened and a whole crowd of reporters came out,
accompanied by police and the mayor. They must have just had a
news conference. We asked the reporters if they'd like to
interview Mr. Cameron.
Upset, the cops tried to hustle the reporters past him,
saying, "Come on, come on." A few reporters wanted to stop, but
the police moved them along.
Then the young woman from Marion recognized the mayor.
"That's the mayor," she said to us.
"What did you say?" yelled the mayor. "I can't hear you! You
got something to say, say it out loud!"
"Yeah, I got something to say," she answered. ""Why don't
you do something for the people of this town instead of holding
Klan rallies?"
That touched off a shouting match, with the mayor saying he
ought to put us all in jail. He left. Then he must have
reconsidered how this might play in the media. A few minutes
later he came back and sat down with us in the shade.
A former police officer, the mayor is now head of the
Indiana Conference of Mayors.
"I'm as much against the Klan as you are, James," he told
Mr. Cameron. The mayor looked to be in his late 40s. Mr.
Cameron is 85.
"But by you coming here, it just brings more publicity to
the Klan."
Somehow I got the feeling the media would have been there
with or without Mr. Cameron.
"And James, this all happened a long time ago. It's time to
put the injustices on both sides to rest."
Evidently by "injustices on both sides" he meant the alleged
murder by two teenagers on the one side and the double lynching
by a mob of 10,000 on the other. The symmetry escaped me.
"If you want to put it behind you," said Mr. Cameron, "you
should take this old jail and turn it into a monument to all
the people, Black, white and every color, who have fought and
died for justice!"
The mayor wasn't having any of that, but at least he wasn't
threatening to have us arrested.
Just then a cop came up and said, "You can come in now."
As at most Klan protests, the area in front of the
courthouse steps was divided into two penned-in areas, one for
supporters, one for opponents. We had to surrender everything
in our pockets, keeping only one key and one piece of
identification. No cameras, pens, or wristwatches. Even our
belts were taken.
"Anything that could be used as a weapon," one cop said,
taking my notebook.
Slowly the pens began to fill up. Altogether, there were
less than 20 Klan supporters, but over 70 opponents. Both sides
were overwhelmingly young people from Marion.
"There's so-and-so," said one youth, pointing to the Klan
supporters' side. "I knew that guy was a jerk."
I asked some of the anti-Klan protesters why they had come.
After all, the mayor and all the officials had asked them not
to. And there was even some kind of "peace" event being held on
the other side of town.
"The Klan is stupid," said one young white woman. "I just
hate them"
A young white man hesitated before answering, "Both my
stepparents are Black."
"My sister's half Black and Puerto Rican," said his friend,
also white. "And I know these people. My bro ther's in the
Klan."
Why did people join the Klan?
"My brother joined because his friends were in it. And they
joined because their dads were in it, and their grandfathers.
It goes way back."
So how come so many young people were there to protest the
Klan?
"Cause now the Blacks and whites hang out together, we
listen to the same music. We're more together. I still say
hello to my brother, but he knows I hate him being in the Klan.
I've been in fights with them myself."
Just then, 10 robed and hooded Klanners came out onto the
courthouse steps. They'd been inside the courthouse. They had
signs, banners and flags. And video cameras.
Two Black teenagers started yelling and laughing at the
Klan. One had a sign that read: "Are you gonna burn a cross
tonight? We brought the marshmallows!"
Two young white women came up and put their arms around the
Black youths and yelled, "Hey, look at this, you morons! We
like each other!"
Somebody started singing "All we are saying is give peace a
chance." But little by little the anger started growing. A few
middle fingers were raised. A few obscenities were shouted.
Some formed a group and shouted in unison at the Klan,
"1-2-3: SHUT THE F--- UP!" Others dared the Klan to come down
off the courthouse steps.
Then a whole row of Black and white youths formed a line,
holding hands together up high. They started singing "We Shall
Overcome." They got the words wrong, and were singing it to the
tune of "We Shall Not Be Moved," but the conviction was
there.
All this seemed to be getting to the Klan speakers. They
were trying so hard to look tough, to impress their potential
recruits. But here were all these young people, taunting them,
swearing at them, holding their hands together in the air, a
white hand with a Black hand, shaking their combined fists in a
deep insult to the "white power" rants.
Throughout all this, Mr. Cameron stood in the middle of the
front row, holding his heavy wooden sign that read "Stop the
Klan!"
The reporters in the special media area were still shooting
pictures, filming and taking notes. The Klan was still ranting.
But the Klan speaker was directing all his insults to our pen,
pretty much ignoring his supporters.
I reminded myself that that was the main reason we had come.
Without the protesters, there would have been no barricades.
The Klan recruiters would have just come down off the steps and
talked with their potential recruits.
Thanks to the protests, the Klan doesn't hold marches in the
Midwest--only rallies, behind barricades. When I lived in the
South, they marched.
I wondered if one of the young Klan supporters could be the
next Benjamin Smith, the former Indiana college student who
just murdered the former basketball coach of Northwestern
University. The coach was Black. Smith also killed a Korean
man. He shot at a group of Hasidic Jews outside Chicago and a
group of Asian students in Indiana.
For the life of me, I don't see how a "peace" rally on the
other side of town would help convince these disturbed white
youths not to join an outfit like the Klan. But it was good to
see them nervously look over to our pen and recognize the faces
of other kids from town. I'll bet it was an interesting Monday
at Marion High School.
Finally it was time to go. Mr. Cameron was interviewed by
NBC, the Village Voice and a slew of Indiana media.
As we made our way back to our cars, we passed the old
county jail. The county has a new, fortress-like jail to hold
its youths, but the old jail still stands there, its broken
windows staring out at the courthouse like the eye sockets of
an old skull.
Now, 69 years later, Mr. Cameron is still being assaulted by
the Klan. But at least now, he doesn't have to stand alone.
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