1930 жылғы Индиана штатындағы қара нәсілділердің қырғыны

1930 lynching of African American prisoners in Marion, Indiana

J. Thomas Shipp and Abraham S. Smith were African American boys who were murdered in a spectacle lynching by a group of thousands on August 7, 1930, in Marion, Indiana. They were taken from jail cells, beaten, and hanged from a tree in the county courthouse square. They had been arrested that night as suspects in a robbery, murder and rape case. A third African American suspect, 16 year old James Cameron, had also been arrested and narrowly escaped being killed by the mob; an unknown woman and a local sports hero intervened, and he was returned to jail. Cameron later stated that Shipp and Smith had committed the murder but that he had run away before that event. The local chapter of the NAACP had tried, unsuccessfully, to evacuate the suspects from town to avoid the mob violence. The NAACP and the state's Attorney General pressed to indict leaders of the lynch mob, but, as was typical in lynchings, no one was ever charged for their deaths, nor for the attack on Cameron. Cameron was later convicted and sentenced as an accessory to murder before the fact. He served some time in prison, then pursued work and an education. After dedicating his life to civil rights activism, Cameron was pardoned by the state of Indiana in 1991.

The three suspects had been arrested the night before, charged with robbing and murdering a white factory worker, Claude Deeter, and raping his girlfriend, Mary Ball, who was with him at the time. A large crowd broke into the jail with sledgehammers, pulled out the three suspects, beating them and hanging them. When Abram Smith tried to free himself from the noose as his body was hauled up, he was lowered and men broke his arms to prevent such efforts. Police officers in the crowd cooperated in the lynching. A third person, 16 year old James Cameron, narrowly escaped death thanks to an unidentified woman who said that the youth had nothing to do with the rape or murder. A local studio photographer, Lawrence Beitler, took a photograph of the dead men hanging from a tree surrounded by the large lynch mob; the crowd was estimated at 5,000 and included women and children. He sold thousands of copies of the photograph in the next ten days. According to Cameron's 1982 memoir, the police had originally accused all three men of murder and rape. After the lynchings, and Mary Ball's testimony, the rape charge was dropped against Cameron. He said in interviews that Shipp and Smith had shot and killed Claude Deeter. Attorney General Ogden then brought charges against four leaders of the mob, as well as bringing impeachment proceedings against the Grant County sheriff who had refused to intervene. The song reached 16th place on the charts in July 1939, and has since been recorded by numerous artists, continuing into the 21st century. After years as a civil rights activist, in 1988 James Cameron founded and became director of America's Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, devoted to African American history in the United States. He intended it as a place for education and reconciliation. In 2007, artist David Powers supervised the creation of a mural, titled American Nocturne, in a park in downtown Elgin, Illinois. The mural depicts the bottom half of the Beitler photograph, showing the crowd at the lynching but not the bodies of Shipp and Smith. After it had been displayed without controversy for nearly a decade, in 2016 dissension was generated after someone posted images of the mural and lynching photo together on social media, and its origin was seen. The mural was moved from the park to the Hemmens Cultural Center. After hearing public comment, the Elgin Cultural Arts Commission recommended to the city council that the mural be permanently removed from public display. In 2021 the mural was replaced by one inspired by images painted on boarded up storefronts during protests following George Floyd's murder.