Bright day turns gray

The day was sunny. And though it was chilly, the sky was bright and clear.

We were in Cincinnati for a kind of mini-vacation to celebrate my wife's birthday.

That included a Reds-Cardinals game on the big day, and we were set for a night game as well.

In between, we had a free day to poke around the city, checking out art galleries and eventually ending up on a sunny afternoon at the museum dedicated to the Underground Railroad.

Both of us have often thought that Jay County's connection to the Underground Railroad gets too little attention. It's something the region should be incredibly proud of, that brave individuals took enormous personal risk to help those trying to escape human bondage.

The Levi Coffin House in Fountain City is a well-known state memorial, but too few folks have given much thought to the fact that runaway slaves leaving the Coffin residence often made their way north, staying at the Balbec cabin on their way to Canada and freedom.

So the museum looked like a great way to spend part of the afternoon, and we were not disappointed. The exhibits and scholarship were first-rate.

Then we climbed a staircase and encountered another exhibit, one which sent a cloud across the afternoon sun.

A guard was stationed at the door, cautioning those who entered that the material was emotionally difficult, urging those with children to pass by.

There was nothing flashy about the display. Nothing gaudy. Nothing risque. Nothing sensational.

But the subject matter could stop you in your tracks: Lynching in America, a photographic record.

The photos were small. There'd been no attempt to enlarge upon the enormous horror of their contents. Most were the size of a postcard. Many, in fact, were postcards, complete with horrendous messages scrawled on the back.

As we stepped past the guard, Billie Holiday's voice wafted from a speaker, singing those haunting lines, "Southern trees bear strange fruit."

Strange indeed. Shameful. Cruel beyond belief. Mind-boggling. Terrifying.

Photo after photo. A few details changed, but the scenario seemed to play itself out like a ritual. A black man, usually a young man, accused of a crime against white womanhood. In some cases, a crime had actually occurred. In others, the offense was something out of Kafka.

One was lynched because he stopped by the house and asked a woman if her husband was home. He needed to talk to the man, but the woman found his mere question a cause for panic and massive mob retribution.

One was lynched because he refused to dance when a white man ordered him to. Both were farmers. Both were landowners. Both were pretty well-off. But the black man wouldn't dance for the white man. So he was hanged.

The second part of the scenario was the ineffectual nature of the authorities. In a few cases, there were admirable acts of courage facing down a mob. But in most cases, officials acquiesced and turned a blind eye to injustice.

The third, and probably most disturbing, part of the scenario was that the lynchings were festive. It was as if every loon and knuckle-dragger in town had decided to indulge in blood lust for the night. Bodies were burned alive. Bodies were mutilated and defiled. All in an atmosphere of fun and frolic, with cheers and hurrahs shouted into the night.

The gallery stretched on and on. There seemed no end to the cruelty that had been inflicted. But it seemed disrespectful to pass by a single image without bearing witness. Each one had to be seen. Each sob had to be felt in the back of the throat.

And as we bore witness, we were not alone.

It's one thing to find oneself staring at a nightmarish photo of a lynched black man. It's another thing to find oneself staring at that photograph beside a young African-American man in his teens. What is he thinking? If you could say something to him, what in the world would it be?

Inevitably, toward the end of the exhibit, the gallery brought us to Marion and a lynching in the 1930s. The photo is especially chilling because there are so many children present. And because they are smiling gleefully while the bodies hang from the ropes.

Smiling.

The sun was still shining when we stepped out into the Cincinnati afternoon.

But smiling was the last thing on my mind.[[In-content Ad]]