Survivor of racist lynch mob dies

Dr. James Cameron, founder of the Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, Wis., died June 11. His funeral will be held on June 19—June teenth. It is a fitting tribute to both Cameron and the holiday. He was a staunch fighter for Black liberation, and Juneteenth is the holiday that celebrates Black people’s freedom from chattel slavery. Juneteenth actually commemorates the day of June 19, 1865, when slaves in Texas and other areas were finally freed, but it has come to symbolize freedom for Black people.

James Cameron, Jeff Rivera of Zapatista Movement and WW’s Monica Moorehead at Black Holocaust, Museum in 2000. Photo: A Job Is A Right Campaign

Dr. Cameron was 92 when he died. He had lived through every ill of racism in this country, even a lynching. At 16, Cameron and two friends were kidnapped by a racist mob from a local jail, for supposedly having killed a white man during a robbery and raping his companion. The companion would later say that no rape took place.

The mob severely beat the young men and hanged the other two. They were about to hang Cameron when someone shouted out to let him go.

In 1988, Dr. Cameron would found the Black Holocaust Museum, displaying the hundreds of years of chattel slavery, rape and murder of Black people.

Rarely does history speak of the thousands who were lynched by the Klan or other racist groups, or of how big the Klan was. But when Dr. Cameron watched as his friends were murdered, there were nearly 10,000 people cheering rabidly for the young men’s death.

Dr. Cameron would remember: “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.”

He dedicated his life to the fight against racism. He helped organize numerous protests against the Klan in Milwaukee and in Marion, a town in a state that was a base for the Klan. At one point in Indiana in the 1930s there were 20,000 registered Klan members.

He also was a proponent of armed self-determination for Black people, feeling that Black communities had a right to defend themselves from racist violence. At a rally against the Klan in 1998 he said, “The only way we’re going to get rid of the Klan is if the people do it themselves…. rip their robes off and kick their asses out of town.”