WHITE LIES AND THE MEANING OF THE NOOSE

I don't want to call anyone a liar. But I will. White people who claim that there are some in this country who don't understand what the noose means are liars. Try as I might, I couldn't find the article on Huffpo which convinced me of this. The gentleman stated that he lived in Jena and thought that the truth should be told. We had it all backwards. Those white youths who hung the noose from the tree didn't understand, he said, what that noose meant to black people. Liar. Those boys knew every bit of history behind the hanging of a noose. They have computers don't they? More to the point they have white male relatives, grandfathers, who were only too well aware of what a noose hanging from a tree meant. And you mean to tell me that some old men sitting around with a group of their young male relatives wouldn't tell them the story behind the noose? Might not have even shared a story or two of at least witnessing a lynching? You mean to tell me that those good ol' boys never sat around, recounting the days of when whites reigned supreme and the noose was king? You and I both know damned well that they did.

I am 53 years of age, and grew up not 20 minutes from Washington, D.C., and for all the world you would have thought it was the backwoods of Deliverance. I never really understood how southern Maryland really was until I got older. You would have thought the danged state was somewhere between Georgia and Mississippi. It was that bad. In 1965, at the age of 11 I witnessed something I will never forget. A cross burning. Have you ever seen how those things glow, horribly? It's like nothing you've ever seen. I have never seen a hanging. The pictures are enough to sear the soul. I knew what lynchings were though. I had heard all about them, understood them in all their heart wrenching hideousness. I knew they were used to keep black men in line, understanding where their "place" was.

A lynching is a thing of pure hatred. Don't believe otherwise. A noose hung from a tree, on a door, anywhere, is a symbol of hatred and control. It is a threat. It's statement is a snarled hiss of "I hate you, I hate who you are, and I am using this noose to tell you so." No one who sees a noose should ever believe otherwise, because those of us who are black know its' meaning. We know what those who leave the noose are saying. We know the hatred directed at us for whatever reason. There is no such thing as the noose is a joke. What kind of a joke? A very sick joke? Having hung the noose, knowing its' meaning, knowing what was meant when it was hung, how do you then declare, "oh, it was only a joke, a boyish prank, played by some children." Oh, really? Well black children, yes, they hung those nooses from the tree, they said I hate you, might even like to see you swinging from that noose but hey, they were only playing, why get so upset?

Should the young white boys who hung the noose from the tree charged and punished with a hate crime? Think about this; when black men where lynched no one wanted to see those who did the lynching punished, at least not other whites. Perhaps justice would have been served if those kids had been made to study the history of lynchings in this country, made to put together a packet which could then be shown throughout the school system in Louisiana, and they could also have been made to study the justice system in this country as it pertains to young black men and their incarceration rates. They should not have gone unpunished, and at the very least they should have been made to understand why their "prank" was not a "joke". At least not to black people who have seen such things.

No, the noose as a symbol is not a joke. The author of that piece knew it, and so did those young white boys in Jena, which is why they hung the noose. Why would you hang a noose and not know the meaning? And if they didn't know the meaning then surely this says that they created the same meaning as did their forefathers, doesn't it? I consider that a horrifying thought, don't you? No matter how you look at it, the noose still means hatred and death to black men.

PS:I did find this article again, and it was posted on Huffpo. Apparently, Media Myths About The Jena 6, by Craig Franklin, has been flying around the wed since it was written. Jack and Jill has an article here, taking the myth apart finely.