Lynching redefined in South Carolina

JENKINSVILLE, S.C. (May 17) - From the time his son was old enough to understand, Kamau Marcharia has been telling Ramon the story of an ancestor who was tied to the bumper of a Model T Ford and dragged to his death.

But Marcharia was not prepared for the call that came three years ago when Ramon and three other black boys got into a fight with a white boy at middle school and were summoned to court - to answer charges of lynching.

''I didn't even know there was a law like that,'' the veteran civil rights activist says. ''I was outraged. See, a 13-year-old fighting because somebody either pushed him or punched him is not lynching. ...

''When I hear that term, psychologically I cannot get that out of my mind, the picture of some horrible event.''

South Carolina's lynching law, the only one of four in the nation that is still routinely used, was enacted to end the state's long history of white vigilante justice against blacks. But that law has borne strange fruit.

Today in South Carolina, blacks are most often the ones charged with lynching - defined in the statute as any act of violence by two or more people against another, regardless of race.

Though they make up just 30 percent of the state's population, blacks account for 63 percent of the lynching charges, according to an Associated Press analysis of crime statistics.

For every 1,000 blacks in South Carolina, 2.07 were charged with lynching, compared with 0.46 charged per 1,000 whites - meaning blacks are charged with lynching at 4 1/2 times the rate for whites.

In all but two of the state's 46 counties, blacks are charged with lynching out of proportion to their representation in the population. In Oconee County, for instance, blacks comprise 8 percent of the residents but 44 percent of those charged with lynching.

Prosecutors and police argue there is no racial profiling behind the law's application, noting that blacks are charged with other violent crimes more often than whites. But its the use of the word lynching that trips Marcharia and others.

''Obviously, the law has outlived its purpose,'' says J. Wayne Flynt, a professor of Southern history at Auburn University. ''Its intent was to stop extralegal violence, essentially aimed at blacks.''

For many, the term ''lynching'' conjures specific images - of black men, accused of some real or perceived crime, pulled from jail cells by torch-carrying white mobs, strung up from trees and mutilated.

When South Carolina's legislature passed its anti-lynching law in 1951, it was responding to just such a case - the highly publicized murder of Willie Earle, who was dragged out of jail by a white mob and gunned down in retaliation for the death of a cabbie.

It was in Greenville County in the state's western Appalachian foothills that Earle's slaying occurred - and that is where the statute is invoked most often today.

Between 1998 and 2002, 446 people in Greenville County were charged with lynching. Blacks make up 18 percent of the county's population; they comprised 47 percent of the lynching defendants whose race was specified.

At the other end of the state lies Charleston, where nearly half of the black slaves entering the country arrived. Charleston County charges more blacks with lynching than any other - 271 in the past five years. That county is 34 percent black; blacks accounted for 69 percent of those charged.

Of the nearly 4,000 adults charged by police with lynching since 1998, only 136 have been convicted of that offense. Most such charges are amended to assault or dismissed in court. But of those convicted, blacks account for 67 percent - twice the rate of whites.

During the same five-year period, nearly 1,400 juvenile lynching charges were filed; it was unclear how many of those ended up in adult court.

Still, the statistics suggest the racial gap among minors is even wider than for adults. In 2002, the only year for which a breakdown was immediately available, 231 black youths were charged with lynching - more than 10 times the number of white juveniles.

''It's ironic at least,'' says William Gravely, a University of Denver history professor who was a 7-year-old boy living in Greenville County when Earle was lynched. ''In one sense it's a kind of denial of the large historical record going back to the late 19th century.''

It's worse than ironic to Tom Broadwater, a former attorney who travels the country with an exhibit of photographs showing the horror of lynchings.

When Broadwater practiced law in South Carolina, he represented many fellow blacks on lynching charges. Most, he says, stemmed from what he considered simple assaults.

''There's an attempt to minimize the seriousness which the word 'lynching' carries with it,'' Broadwater says.

Of course, some lynching charges in South Carolina have involved brutal attacks, and the penalties for convictions are stiff - up to 40 years for first-degree lynching, involving a death, and 20 years for second-degree. (The statute allows for the death penalty in first-degree cases, but prosecutors could not remember the last time it was pursued.)

In 1996, a white couple in Clarendon County were charged with lynching after allegedly tying a 9-year-old black boy to a tree, shooting a gun past his head, punching and kicking him, and tying a belt around his neck until he passed out. They were convicted of aggravated assault and served less than two years.

Three years later in North Charleston, several black high school students wielding pipes and trash cans were arrested on lynching charges after a 35-year-old white man was beaten into a coma and eventually had to have a portion of his brain removed. One of the attackers was allegedly heard saying: ''Yeah, we're going to get us a white boy.'' Six pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 20 years in prison.

In Beaufort County last year, two middle schoolers were charged with second-degree lynching when a 14-year-old boy collapsed after being repeatedly punched in the chest as part of a new-kid initiation. When the boy died, the charges were upgraded to involuntary manslaughter.

The only other states with lynching statutes still on the books are California, Virginia and West Virginia, though the laws are rarely used.

South Carolina's law was adopted amid the Truman administration's efforts to pass a federal anti-lynching statute - and under the long shadow of Willie Earle's slaying.

On Feb. 15, 1947, taxi driver Thomas W. Brown was found outside Pickens, about 500 yards from his cab. He had been stabbed three times and robbed. Earle was picked up the next day and lodged in the local jail.

The following day, a mob of white men - many wearing taxi drivers' caps - stormed the jail and took Earle. He was found about two hours later in neighboring Greenville County; he had been beaten, stabbed and shot in the face with a shotgun.

Then-Strom Thurmond ordered a vigorous investigation, and 31 men were quickly rounded up and charged. Despite confessions from 26 of the defendants, all were acquitted.

Federal officials launched a civil rights investigation, but nothing came of it. Earle's widow received $3,000 in state compensation.

Although Greenville County is home to civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, it remains the only county in the state without an official Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Whites there are charged with lynching more often than blacks, but a 1994 case involving black youths is notable.

Kevin Garnett, who would go on to star in the NBA, was 1994's Mr. Basketball when he and four other black youths at Mauldin High School were charged with second-degree lynching for a fight in which the white victim suffered a fractured ankle. After they went through a pretrial intervention program for first-time offenders, the charges were dropped. Soon afterward, Garnett's mother moved her family to the Chicago suburbs.

So when Garnett became the first player in 20 years to go straight from high school to the NBA, it was from Chicago's Farragut Academy, not Mauldin High.

Betty Strom, deputy solicitor for Greenville County, says many of the charges are amended or dropped before trial because of the difficulty in proving premeditation.

''If I'm prosecuting it, obviously I feel they meet the elements of the statute,'' she says. Race plays no role in the decision, she adds.

Charleston Police Chief Reuben Greenberg isn't surprised that blacks are charged with lynching twice as often as whites. In his jurisdiction, it's like that with just about all crimes.

Greenberg - a descendant of Southern blacks and Russian Jews - says he was surprised at the term lynching's local usage when he arrived in Charleston 22 years ago. But now he's been enforcing the law for two decades, mainly as a tool against gang activity.

''I'm not consumed by the race issue,'' says Greenberg. ''The historical meaning of the thing has no effect on me whatever. We're beyond it.''

Gravely thinks the state's anti-lynching law was passed as a pre-emptive strike against the feds, as much a ''states' rights move'' as a moral imperative.

Marcharia has approached legislators about amending the lynching law to better reflect the word's historical meaning, but to no avail.

Trey Walker, a spokesman for state Attorney General Henry McMaster, says that while McMaster is ''sensitive and sympathetic to feelings associated with the term,'' there is nothing racial about the lynching law's construction or its application.

''There no reference to race in the statute, so it applies to anyone, any two or more people who commit an act of violence,'' Walker says. ''The law is colorblind.''

But Marcharia says the law as it has come to be used in South Carolina is an affront to blacks.

''That law was passed, in my judgment, to make sure that African-Americans, two generations from now or two decades from now, will lose the memory of their history, what happened to them,'' says Marcharia, whose full name is Swahili for ''black warrior.'' ''That kids born in that period of time will see lynching as a fist fight, when we know that lynching is murder and killing, burning people and evil.''

Re: Post #9. I was outraged to hear of your treatment by that harasser in your agency. Unfortunately, state and federal agencies are setup in a military-style chain of command, and the people on the power grid are protected by those above them.

In fact, maybe this harasser was instructed to make your life difficult. That's one way to "convince" you to move out, bid out, transfer, etc. Maybe they wanted to open up your slot for one of their friends, relatives, boyfriends/girlfriends, nieces/nephews (who have different last names so you don't notice the family connection).

This is the reality in federal service today. Trust me, it's an ingrown-toenail of a hierarchy, and it can get pretty nasty trying to retain your job.

murderer and war criminal Bedford Forrest

I presume you mean the Confederate general generally considered to be the best cavalry leader on either side of the Civil War (by Phil Sheridan, no less), who closed down the KKK (an organization that he founded) after the election of 1876 since, with the ending of Reconstruction it served no valid political purpose and because he disliked the fact that it was turning into an organization that existed simply to assault Blacks, and who, in later life, joined with the NAACP in denouncing racial violence. I think that he is a bit more complex than you suggest (Sherman and Sheriden were, however, by their own admission, war criminals by the international standards of the day)

By the the way, I think that Lapis is a fine name. I tended toward Old Testament for my kids (Jeremiah, Joshua, etc.) but it's tough to go wrong with Latin. Just my opinion.

....we need a lynch law in here in Maryland....to protect blacks AND whites against urban street gang violence......last week in Baltimore a black man was beaten to death on a city street corner at 3 o'clock in the afternoon......three black assailants using baseball bats killed him because he complained they were using the corner as an open air drug market....Baltimore is the HQ of the NAACP and they like to wring their hands about the lynchings of blacks 100 years ago....but yet in Baltimore 300 blacks are murdered every year.....no telling how many more are killed in Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, New Orleans, Houston, Los Angeles ect.

I'm sure there are plenty of laws that could be used there, the acts that are being committed are already illegal, I just think its stupid to have a lynching law, when the reality is, is that's there problems a few dozen laws that already apply. A bunch of guys beating somone to death with a baseball bat is not something that can't be prosecuted.

The NAACP doesn't give a damn about actually getting real results, they just want money, and fame and some kind of political pull. They get by with publicity, not results, they are the african american version of PETA.

I just think its stupid to have a lynching law...

Please explain why it is stupid to have a specific law against group violence against one person?

This seems utterly sensible to me. Instead of the current vogue to make it a "hate crime" if a member of a protected class is harmed, we take a race-neutral stand against a group of thugs attacking a lone victim.

More states should have this kind of law.

I am pleased to learn that B. Forrest was not an unmitigated scoundrel. I will put him in the class of Mitigated Scoundrel. Lots of us there, in under the catch all rubric "too soon old, and too late smart". Ft Pillow still needs a lot of answering, but that he learned later in life, well, I am glad of that at least.

Unlike JEB Stuart, he promulgated the use of the repeating pistol rather than the Saber. That let him dominate much larger conventional forces. Compare Patton who wasted his time developing sabers and tactics.

Thank you for kind works on Latin names. I enjoy old testament names too, but any name with a J is not based on ancient old testament, but rather on English Medieval tranliteration. The names sound good anyways.

Having done some brief research on Bedford Forrest, I found it asserted that he did not order the massacre, but that his men carried it out without his orders. On the other hand, if he was a brilliant commander, then he should have had control. Montcalm always claimed to have lost control of his forces at Ft William Henry. I would love to hear of the disciplinary actions he took after the Ft Pillow Massacre. If none, then it means that he approved of it.

It was also asserted both that he had never been a part of the KKK and that he disbanded it (in 1869!). I am the first to understand that scum like the KKK (both versions) would use his name without attribution.

Certainly he was a brilliant leader of cavalry, who regrettably supported oppressive state governments instead of legitimate federal authority.

If that's the case, then why do so many of them adopt these made-up names under the pretense of not wanting to use their "slave name"?

By "made-up" names, are you referring to first or last names? The last names would be the "slave name" that a few African-Americans drop in favor of other last names, primarily those of the Muslim variety. If you mean first names, well, that's part of the whole separatist tradition of unusual first names for blacks, started by white people.

Ironically, when I was in grade school 30 years ago in Illinois, we didn't call it lynching. We called it nig*** fighting. Thats the way they fought, by ganging up on white students. Its true. At my highschool, at lunch time, the black students would all sit on the benches that lined one of the halls and try to pick fights with a white student as he walked down the hall.

Wow, your description brought back a horrible memory. I was in junior high.

I am white. Another boy, I forget his name (my memory is beginning to fail), who was someone I considered a friend. He was black. We had gone to the same schools since kindergarten.

I came to school one day. He walked up and sucker punched me. I sank to my knees and he began to pound me like a ten-penny nail. I remember the crowd around us. THey were all black. Instead of taking the time to fight back, I used my strength to ask, "Why are you hitting me?"

The fight was stopped by a teacher and we were dragged to the principal.

The principal, who was also black, asked what the fight was about. I was sobbing. Not because I was hurt...although I was...I was crying because someone I looked to as a friend, has just ripped a piece of my heart out by attacking me with such violence. I replied, "I don't know."

The other kid said I had my dogs attack and kill his puppy a week before. This was impossible as I was away at camp.(I later found out he did not have a dog...never had one.)

The principal asked if I wanted to press charges. I said, "No, I forgive him."

Because I refused charges, the principal deduced I was partially to blame and chided me for provoking the kid to a fight.

Now, I know why the kid started fighting with me. I had no idea until now. Thank you for revealing something that has been hidden to me until now.

It does not make me mad. It made me sad, until now, I know why it happened. Nor, does it change my attitude on race. People should never be judged by their color. Judge people on their attitude, if you judge them at all.

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