Just Act: A Mandate to Talk about the Lynched

Abstract

Some who read this publication might assert, and correctly so, that a Christian ethic of resistance is not contingent on an evaluation that considers the connection between historical representations of lynching and twenty-first-century injustices in the United States. I am convinced though, especially given recent events in which nooses were hung in public places, such as the door of an African-American faculty member at Columbia University in New York City in October 2007, that a study of lynching can function as a platform or a basis to ferret out ethical issues that are inherent in a system built on and sustained by tyranny in order to avoid a dismantling of the master’s house. To borrow Audre Lorde’s oft en-quoted concept¹ is to remember that the work of resistance necessitates a change in perspective. To become acquainted with lynching—its meanings, its justifications, its techniques, its culture—is to gain a broader understanding of this country’s past and present and in so doing to become intentional in eradicating behaviors that threaten to permeate the future.

We recover stories from our past in order to identify survival strategies that are crucial to developing insight into how to navigate systems sustained on the interlocking cycle of race, gender, class, and other fragmentary constructs.

—Angela D. Sims