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                 LYNCHING AND RACISM'S HISTORICAL MEANING

                 1. Tuskegee Archives Report

                 2. Essay on Lynching by Chairman HO CHI MINH (1922)

                 3. Text of 1929 Supreme Court Shrine Decision
                    (available on Masonic BBS's as egyptian.zip)

                 4. Report of Inter-recognition of MASONIC fraternalism.
                    (Current report as of 3/96)

    1.       TUSKEGEE ARCHIVES DOCUMENT OVER 5,000 HANGINGS
    ==================================================================
                            By Tina X Chism

          (Originally  published in THE FINAL CALL Feb. 8,1995 p.10)



    Every day that Daniel Williams, archives director at Tuskegee University,

Tuskegee, Alabamma, opens the doors of the school's main library, he must work

to preserve the nation's oldest archives documenting the conservative

estimate of over 5,000 lynchings in the South during the late 1800's and

early 1900's.  Mr. Williams also says he has had to keep his success

rate of piecing together the family history of those killed at the hands

of southern mobs a secret.

    Black familys feel a great deal of shame that a member of their

family, usually the head of the household, died in such a way." Mr.

Williams says.

    In 1881, officials at Tuskegee Institute, on of the nation's oldest

historically Black universities, created a department of records and

research to to solely document mob lynchings and study why they

Occurred.  Starting in 1902, Tuskegee published an annual lynching

report, documenting where the killings occurred and the circumstances

surrounding them.

    Although the University has been successful in answering the

questions of why the lynchings occurred, their documentation of the

lynchings has helped hundreds of Black women and children prove in court

that their husband or father was killed.

    "Oftentimes," says Mr. Williams, "families present our research in

court because the counties that they live in seek to prove that they are

not the natural descendants of the man lynched or that their husband or

father imdeed is not dead, but missing or something."

    If it were not for Tuskegee documentation, many Black women and

children would not have only suffered the blow of losing the head of

their household to a violent killing, but also be kicked off their land

and house for failure to prove that they were the descendants of the

owner.  Although many Black women were robbed of their rightful

inheritance for failure to prove their relation to the "mysteriously

disappeared" head of household.   According to Williams, Tuskegee has

helped hundreds of others fight the courts and win.

    "Our work does go unnoticed, mainly because after we succed in

uncovering the details of a lynching for a family, their lawyers ask

us not to publicize or disclose the details of their case because the

family feels ashamed.   To me it is a great misunderstanding of

history,"  says Mr. Williams.

    The same thing happened after the Tuskegee Experiment (a government

sponsored medical experiment where medical practitioners injected the

syphilis virus in Black men without their knowledge), Mr. Williams says.

    "To this day, many families have not come forward to receive the

money (repairation) that they are entitled to, because they don't want

people to know that their father or uncle or grandfather was a victim of

that experiment.  Somehow they feel ashamed," says Mr. Williams.

    He believes the more people expose themselves to the truth of

history, the less ashamed they will feel.  Although students come from

universities all over the country to use the research available at the

school, Mr. Williams is encouraging more people to take a look at this

often neglected aspect of American history.

    "You don't even have to come to Tuskegee," he says.   "You can go to

your community library and borrow our documents on microfiche using an

inter-library loan system.  It's so simple.  I wish more of us did that

because the more you know your history, the less likely you are to let

inaccuracies go uncorrected."

    One of the "inaccuracies" that Mr. Williams makes clear is exactly

what a lynching really is.  "Most people think a lynching is any illegal

hanging in which whites kill Black people," he says.  "Rather it is a

vigilante-style torture and murder at the hands of any citizen."

    Some of the cases documented at the Tuskegee library are ones that

tell the stories of Black men killed for "having an evil look in his

eyes when he talked to a blond-haired , blue-eyed, 10-year-old school-

girl."   Or the story of Jesse Slater, who was lynched in Brooks County,

Georgia, after he wrote a so-called "insulting" letter to a white woman.

    The papers documenting the 1949 lynching of Hollis Riles is also on

file at Tuskegee.   Mr. Riles was killed by a group of white men after

he asked them not to fish on his land.

    The Tuskegee library also preserves a 1936 study called *The Mob

Still Rides* which argues against the practice of not legally

prosecuting those who killed Black men in mob-style lynchings.  "Just

because a white person gets emotionally caught up in the illegal and

dastardly acts being instigated by his friends, does not and should not

excuse him from legal liability," the report states.

    It is these kinds of accounts that make a lot of the general public

uncomfortable, says Mr. Williams.   Tuskegee officials say that they get

calls regularly from Blacks and whites who think the promotion and

public display of records documenting lynchings is wrong.  But Mr.

Williams says the school is not considering making the records private.

Instead, the plans are to make the documents more known to the Black

community.   "Most people don't even know these papers are here.  We

want to change that," says Mr. Williams.

===============================================================================

    2.  LYNCHING by HO CHI MINH


        (First printed in La Correspondance Internationale No.59 1924)

                                LYNCHING
                                ========

             A Little-known Aspect of American Civilization
             ----------------------------------------------

    It is well known that the black race is the most oppressed and the

most exlploited of the human family.  It is well known that the spread

of capitalism and the discovery of the New World had as an immediate

result the rebirth of slavery which was, for centuries, a scourge for

the Negroes and a bitter disgrace for mankind.   What everyone does not

perhaps know, is that after sixty-five years of so-called emancipation,

American Negroes still endure atrocious moral and material sufferings,

of which the most cruel and horrible is the custom of lynching.

    The word "lynching" comes from Lynch.  Lynch was the name of a

planter in Virginia, a landlord and judge.  Availing himself of the

troubles of the War of Independence, he took the controll of the whole

district into his hands.   He inflicted the most savage punishment,

without trial or process of law, on Loyalists and Tories.   Thanks to

the slavetraders, the Ku Klux Klan, and other secret societies, the

illegal and barbarous practice of lynching is spreading and continuing

widely in the States of the American Union.   It has become more inhuman

since the emancipation of the Blacks, and is especially directed at the

latter.

    Imagine a furious horde.  Fists clenched, eyes bloodshot, mouths

foaming, yells, insults, curses.....This horde is transported with the

wild delight of a crime to be committed without risk.   They are armed

with sticks, torches, revolvers, ropes, knives, scissors, vitriol,

daggers; in a word, with all that can be used to kill or wound.

    Imagine in this human sea, a flotsam of black flesh pushed about,

beaten, trampled underfoot, torn, slashed, insulted, tossed hither and

thither, bloodstained,dead.

    The horde are the lynchers.  The human rag is the Black, the victim.

In a wave of hatred and bestiality, the lynchers drag the Black to a

wood or a public place.  They tie him to a tree, pour kerosene over him,

cover him with inflammable material.   While waiting for the fire to be

kindled, they smash his teeth, one by one.   Then they gouge out his

eyes.   Little tufts of crinkly hair are torn from his head, carrying

away with them bits of skin, baring a bloody skull.   Little pieces of

flesh come off his body, already contused from the blows.

    The Black can no longer shout; his tongue has been swollen by a

red-hot iron.   His whole body ripples, trembling, like a half-crushed

snake.   A slash with a knife; one of his ears falls to the

ground.....Oh! How Black he is!  How awful!  And the ladies tear at his

face.....

    "Light up," shouts someone.  "Just enough to cook him slowly," adds

another.

    The Black is roasted, browned, burned.  But he deserves to die twice

instead of once.   He is therefor hanged, or more exactly, what is left

of his corpse is hanged.   And all those who were not able to help with

the cooking applaud now.   HURRAH!

    When everybody has had enough, the corpse is brought down.  The rope

is cut into small pieces which will be sold for three or five dollars

each.   Souvenirs and lucky charms quarreled over by ladies.

    "Popular justice," as they say over there, has been done.   Calmed

down, the crowd congradulates the "organizers,"  then stream away slowly

and cheerfully, as if after a feast, make appointments with one another

for next time.

    While on the ground, stinking of fat and smoke, a black head,

mutilated, roasted, deformed, grins horribly and seems to ask the

setting sun, "IS THIS CIVILIZATION?"


                         Some Statistics
                         ---------------

    From 1889 to 1919, 2600 Blacks were lynched, including 51 women and

girls and ten former Great War soldiers.

    Among 78 Blacks lynched in 1919, 11 were burned alive, three burned

after having been killed, 31 shot, three tortured to death, one cut into

pieces, one drowned, and 11 put to death by various means.

    Georgia heads the list with 22 victims, Mississippi follows with 12.

Both have also three lynched soldiers to their credit.  Of 11 burned

alive, the first State has four and the second two.   Out of 34 cases of

systematic, premeditated and organized lynching, it is still Georgia

that holds first place with five.  Mississippi comes second with three.

    Among the charges brought against the victims of 1919, we note: one

of having been a member of the League of Non-Partisans (independent

farmers);  one of having distributed revolutionary publications; one of

expressing his opinion on lynchings too freely; one of having criticized

the clashes between Whites and Blacks in Chicago; one of having been

known as a lead3er of the cause of the Blacks; one for not getting out

of the way and thus frightening a white child who was in a motorcar.

In 1920, there were fifty lynchings, and in 1923, twenty-eight.

   These crimes were all motivated by economic jealousy.  Either the

Negroes in the area were more prosperous than the Whites, or the black

workers would not let themselves be exploited thoroughly.   In all cases

the principal culprits were never troubled, for the simple reason that

they were always incited, encouraged, spurred on, then protected by the

polititicians, financiers and authorities,  and above all, by the

reactionary press.

    When a lynching was to take place or had taken place,  the press

siezed upon it as a good occasion to increase the number of copies

printed.   It related the affair with a wealth of detail.   Not the

slightest reproach to the criminals.   Not a word of pity for the

victims.   Not a commentary.

    The *NEW ORLEANS STATES* of June 26, 1919, published a headline

running right across the front page in letters five inches high: "TODAY

A NEGRO WILL BE BURNED 3000 CITIZENS."   And immediately underneath, in

very small print:  "Under a strong escort, the Kaiser has taken flight

with the Crown Prince."

    The *JACKSON DAILY NEWS*  of the same date published across the

first two columns of its front page in big letter: "NEGRO J.H. TO BE

BURNED BY THE CROWD AT ELLISTOWN THIS AFTERNOON AT 5:00 P.M."

    The newspaper only neglected to add: "The whole populaton is

earnestly invited to attend."   But the spirit is there.




                         A FEW DETAILS
                         -------------

              This evening at 7:40 P.M.  J.H. was tortured with a red
         hot iron bar, then burned.....A crowd of more than 2,000
         people.....many women and children were present at the
         incineration.....After the Negro had been bound from behind,
         fire was kindled.   A little further away, another fire was
         kindled in which an iron bar was placed.   When it was red-hot,
         a man took it and aplied it to the Black's body.   The latter,
         terrified, siezed it with his hands, and the air was immediately
         filled with the smell of burning flesh.....The red-hot iron having
         been applied to several parts of his body, his shouts and groans
         were heard as far away as in the town.   After several minutes of
         torture, masked men poured petrol on him and set fire to the stake.
         The flames rose and enveloped the Negro who implored to be finished
         off with a shot.   His supplications provoked shouts of derision.

                             - * CHATTANOOGA TIMES * FEBRUARY 13, 1918




              15,000 people, men, women, and children, applauded when
         petrol was poured over the Negro and the fire lit.   They struggled,
         shouted,, and pushed one another to get nearer the Black.....Two of
         them cut off his ears while the fire began to roast him.
              Another tried to cut off his heels.....The crowd surged and
         changed places so that everyone could see the Negro burn.   When the
         flesh was entirely burned, the bones laid bare and what had been a
         human being was but a smoking and deformed rag curled up in the
         flames, everyone was still there to look.....

                             - * MEMPHIS PRESS *  MAY 22,1917




              .....men of all social classes, women and children, were
         present at the scene.   Many ladies of high society followed
         the crowd from outside the prison,  others joined it from
         neighboring terraces.....When the Negro's corpse fell, the
         pieces of rope were hotly contended for.

                             - * VICKSBURG EVENING POST *  MAY 4, 1919





         .....someone cut off his ears, another removed his sexual
         organ.....He tried to cling to the rope,  his fingers were cut
         off.   While he was being hoisted to a tree, a giant of a man
         stabbed his neck;  he received at least twenty-five wounds.
         .....he was several times hoisted up, then pulled down into
         the brazier.   Finally a man caught him in a lasso,  the end of
         which was attached to a horse which dragged the corpse through the
         streets of Waco.   The tree on which the hanging took place was
         right under a window of the mayor's house.   The latter looked on
         while the crowd was in action.   All along the way,  everyone took
         part in the mutilation of the Negro.   Some struck him with shovels,
         pickaxes, bricks, and sticks.   The body was covered with wounds from
         head to foot.   A shout of joy escaped from thousands of throats when
         the fire was kindled.   Some time after, the corpse was hoisted up
         high in the air,  so that everyone could look at it,  so that every-
         one could look at it,  which raised a storm of applause.....

                             - * CRISIS *  JULY 1916




                         WHITE VICTIMS OF LYNCHING
                         -------------------------

    It is not only the Blacks, but also the Whites  who dare to defend

them, such as Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe - author of *UNCLE TOM'S CABIN*

- WHO ARE ILL TREATED.   Elijah Lovejoy was killed,  John Brown hanged.

Thomas Beach and Stephen Foster were persecuted, attacked & imprisoned.

Here is what Foster wrote from prison, "When I look at my damaged limbs,

I think that, to hold me, prison will not be necessary for much longer.

.....These last 15 months,  their cells have been opened to me four

times,  24 times my compatriots have dragged me out of their churches,

twice they have thrown me from the second floor of their houses;  they

have damaged my kidneys once;  another time they tried to put me in

irons;  twice they have made me pay fines;  once 10,000 people tried

to lynch me,  and dealt me 20 blows on my head, arms and neck....."


    In 30 years, 708 Whites, including 11 women, have been lynched.

Some for having organized strikes,  others for having espoused the cause

of the Blacks.

    Among the collection of the crimes of American "civilization",

lynching has a place of honor.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------


                          THE KU KLUX KLAN
                          ================

(Originally printed in La Correspondance Internationale  No. 74 - 1924)
This article may well have been part of a pamphlet on the Negro question
which Ho published in Moscow, and which was not included in the *Selected
Works* as published in Hanoi.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


    The place of origin of the Ku Klux Klan is the Southern United

States.

    In May, 1866, after the Civil War, young people gathered together in

a small locality in the State of Tennessee to set up a club.   A

question of whiling away the time.   This organization was given the

name KUKLOS, a Greek word meaning club (or circle).  To Americanize the

word, it was changed to KU KLUX.  Hence for more originality, KU KLUX

KLAN.

    After big social upheavals,  the public mind is naturally unsettled.

It becomes avid for new stimuli and inclined to mysticism.   The K.K.K.

with its strange garb,  its bizarre rituals,  its mysteries, and its

secrecy,  irresistbly attracted the curiosity of the Whites in the

Southern States and became very popular.

    It consisted at first of only a group a snobs and idlers,  without

political or social purpose.   Cunning elements discovered in it a force

able to serve their political ambitions.

    The victory of the Federal Government had just freed the Negros and

made them citizens.   The agriculture of the South - deprived of its

Black Labor - was short of hands.   Former landlords were exposed to

ruin.   The Klansman proclaimed the principle of the supremacy of the

White race.   Anti-Negro was their only policy.   The agrarian and

slave-owning bourgeoisie saw in the Klan a useful agent,  almost a

savior.   They gave it all the help in their power.   The Klan's methods

ranged from intimidation to murder.   In the space of three years it

committed so many crimes and misdeeeds that a number of those who

supported it left it in horror.

    Toward 1869,  under the pressure of public opinion,  the Klan was

given the sack by its "Emperor."   It had an Emperor, who, nevertheless,

had only a purely nominal authority.   The local Klans carried on their

own existence and crimes.   Professor Mecklin - to whom we owe these

details - said that every page of the thirteen big volumes containing

the investigations into the acts of the KLAN in 1871-1872,  recorded

beatings-up of both Blacks and Whites.   These acts of violence were

often done out of pure Sadism.   They were a favorite entertainment of

the Klansman.

    A better knowledge of the Klan can be gained and a better judgement

formulated by quoting the speech made by Senator Sherman of Ohio in the

Senate in March, 1871.   "Is there," asked Sherman,  "a Senator who can

name - in searching through the crimes committed through the ages - an

association or gang whose acts and designs are more diabolical or

criminal than those of the KU KLUX KLAN?    The Ku Klux Klan is a secret

association, formed on oath, and whose members murder, steal, pillage,

bully, insult and threaten.   They commit these crimes not against the

strong and the rich but against the poor, the weak, the harmless, and

the defenseless."

    Yet the Klan lived and "worked" for forty-odd years without too much

sensation.


                          The New Klan
                          ============

    It was in October 1915, that William Joseph Simmons, the new

"Emperor" of the Klan, together with thirty-four of his friends, brought

the K.K.K. to the American scene again.  Its program was 100% Americanism

that is to say, anti-Catholic, anti-Semite, anti-worker, and anti-Negro.

    It is to be noted that it was following the Civil War and the

Emancipation of the Blacks that the old Ku Klux Klan saw the light of

day, its aim being to bar the freed people's way to a social life.

During the World War, America enlisted in its army and navy hundreds of

thousands of Blacks who were given promises of social and political

reforms, and who, having made the same sacrifices as the Whites,

timorously claimed the same rights.   A situation equivalent to "second

emancipation."   Thereupon the new Klan sprang up.

    It was again in the Southern United States - region of big planters

and anti-abolitionists,  the cradle of serfdom and lynching, the

motherland of the old Klan -- that "Emperor" Simmons founded the new

"Invisible Empire."   To an interviewer, William Joseph Simmons said

regarding its objectives,


           "We are convinced that to ensure the supremacy

            of the white race, we must wrest from the Blacks,

            the franchises which have been granted him.   The

            Lord's Will is that the White race shall be superior

            and it was by a decree of Providence that Negroes were

            created slaves."


    Soon after the resurrection of the Klan,   more than eighty

beatings-up were recorded in the state of Texas alone,  in one year,

and ninety-six lynchings.

    The Klan flourished especially in Georgia, Mississippi, Texas,

Alabama, and Arkansas.   It was in those states that the victims of

lynching were most numerous.   In 1919,  the Ku Klux Klan burned alive

four Negroes in Georgia, two in Mississippi, and one in Texas.   It

lynched twenty-two Negroes in Georgia,  twelve in Mississippi,  ten

in Arkansas,  eight in Alabama, and three in Texas.

    It attacked or pulled down jails to lynch the Negroes who were

kept in custody there, five times in Georgia,  three in Alabama,

three in Mississippi, three in Texas, and twice in Arkansas.   It

lynched twelve women in Mississippi,  seven in Alabama, six in Texas,

five in Arkansas, and five in Georgia.   It burned, hanged, drowned,

or shot down nine Negro former Armed Service personnel.   The Klan

carried out other lynchings in other States, but we want to quote only

definite figures.



                 The Decline of the KU KLUX KLAN
                 ===============================


             The KLAN is for many reasons doomed to disappear.  --

    1. The Negroes, having learned during the was that they are a force

if united, are no longer allowing their kinsmen to be beaten or murdered

with impunity.   They are replying to each attempt at violence by the

Klan.   In July, 1919, in Washington, they stood up to the Klan and a

wild mob.   The battle raged in the capital for four days.  In August,

they fought for five days against the Klan and the mob in Chicago.

Seven regiments were mobilized to restore order.   In September,  the

government was obliged to send federal troops to Omaha to put down

similar strife.  In various other States the Negroes defended themselves

no less energetically.


    2. Like its predecessor, the new Klan has so shocked public opinion

by its exesses that those who had approved of, or joined it at the

beginning are leaving it.   Its internal quarrels, its scandals and

financial frauds ended by sickening even the most indifferent and most

tolerant people.   The Senate has been compelled to prosecute it.  Even

bourgeois newspapers such as the *NEW YORK WORLD*,  *THE CHICAGO

DEFENDER*, etc., are attacking it.


    3. Its "100 per/cent Americanism" and its anti-workerism group it

against 20 million American Catholics, 3 million Jews,  20 million

foreigners,  12 million Negroes,  all decent Americans, -- ie. THE

WHOLE WORKING CLASS OF AMERICA!

       At the last CONGRESS OF NEGRO ASSOCIATIONS, the following motion

was carried:


            "We declare the KU KLUX KLAN an enemy of Humanity;

            we declare that we are determined to fight it to

            the end,  and to make common cause with all the

            foreign workmen in America as well as with all

            those who are persecuted by it."


    On the other hand, the emigration of Negroes from the agricultural

South to the industrial North, has forced the planters -- threatened

with ruin through shortage of manpower --  to alleviate the lot of the

black workmen, and consequently, to condemn more and more often the

methods and acts of violence of their agent: the Klan.


    4. Finally, the Ku Klux Klan has all the defects of clandestine

and reactionary organizations without their (good) qualities.

    It has the mysticism of Freemasonry --

       the mummeries of Catholicism --

          the brutality of Fascism --

             the illegality of its 568 various associations,

but it has neither doctrine, nor program, nor vitality, nor discipline.



                           fini
                           ====


===============================================================================



         IV. CURRENT NEWS ON RECOGNITION OF PRINCE HALL FREEMASONRY
         ==========================================================


    In 1947, the (white) Grand Lodge of MA extended recognition to the

Prince Hall Grand Lodge of MA but later rescinded this recognition after

a number of white Grand Lodges - including Texas (of course*) -

threatened to sever fraternal relations.  Since October 1989, eleven

white Grand Lodges have established fraternal relations with a number of

Prince Hall Grand Lodges.  Massachusetts did so in March 1995.  The

latter action was precipitated by the recognition of the Prince Hall

Grand Lodge of WA by the Grand Lodge of England in December 1994.  This

in turn was set off by a series of events on the West Coast that this

editor has had a hand in for almost 5 years.  An article in Phylaxis

Magazine by Kit Hafner suggested that WA petition England directly after

it was recognized by the WA white G.L.  Other jurisdictions will follow,

limping along, but the previous articles on racism will show that the

same states that led the country in lynchings, are the same states that

are fighting recognition.


    It is no accident that the same 5 states who are listed in the

lawsuit against the A.E.A.O.N.M.S. Shrine Temple in 1916, which they

LOST in 1926 by a Supreme Court Decision, are the same 5 States that

are discussed in the articles about lynching.  This is a travesty in

a fraternal order dedicated to the Brother-Hood of Man under the Father-

Hood of God.  Freemasonry only needs to think and move as ONE to be into

the information-age.  This matter is important enough to get everyone

involved.



    I think that this country's Grand Lodges should put the 5 most

troublesome southern Grand Lodges in some kind of coventry untill they

try and make up for the harm they've done to the whole country. Not to

mention that this racial question has almost DESTROYED FRATERNALISM in

the U.S.A.  White men only have to be reminded what the South did in

Andersonville Military Prison during the Civil War and they might take

this seriously as a way of seeking justice for the majority.




    I suggest some kind of action of apology by the majority, to the

Prince Hall family, thensome kind of fraternal paddy-wacking for the

Grandmasters of the offending southern jurisdictions.




    It would make every one (almost) feel better, AND it's the right thing

to do.  It would be one of those things we could make into a ritual of

confession & forviveness.  Get the churches involved, like the recent

resolving of racial divisions by the various Pentacostal sects, including

the C.O.G.I.C. & the Assemblies of God who have both disolved in favor of

a multi-racial church structure.   The Baptists are still split along

racial lines, as the Southern Baptist Convention (white) and the Baptist

National Convention (black).


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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