The New York Times published an interesting piece on Wednesday about today's opening in Montgomery, Alabama, of The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, commemorating the lynching of thousands of black Americans between the 1870 and 1950. Here's a link to the article for those who would like to read it in full. Or just click on the the memorial's name to explore further.
To the best of my knowledge, no racially motivated lynchings occurred in Iowa during that period although the 1919 lynching in Omaha of Will Brown hit dangerously close to home. But that does not mean Iowans were unaware of the practice during those years. And in some cases, Iowans actively endorsed it.
Case in point, is the following --- written by Chariton Democrat editor Dan Baker and published on May 8, 1875, in his weekly column of commentary on state and national affairs.
"Two negroes were hung by mobs last week in the South --- one for the murder of a policeman in Memphis, and the other for attempt at outraging a white woman," Baker wrote. "Mob law, under any form or under any circumstances, is to be deplored, but self-preservation against the lawless, indolent black savages of the South, who render both life and property of decent people insecure, impels good citizens to resort to the last remedy --- lynch law --- as the only safeguard against their outrages.
"Nine out of 10 of all the Ethiopians who have ornamented the gallows in the South for the past ten years, have committed, or attempted to commit, the horrible crime of rape upon defenseless white girls and white women, and in many instances have added murder and arson to that accursed crime. The right to indulge in a lawless criminal life is supposed by many to be ceded to them in the infamous Civil Rights bill, especially when they know they can be tried by black juries; hence, crime of all kinds is on the increase among them.
"In all such cases, swift and speedy retribution sooner or later overtakes them, and justice, stern and salutary, is meted out to them by an outraged public. Let justice be done, though the heavens fall."
By 1875, Dan had picked up and was repeating the myth of "black menace" invented in the South as a way of justifying the laws, practices and campaign of terror sometimes known as Jim Crow. A primary component of this was the myth that free black men somehow presented a collective threat to the virtue of white women, a myth that Baker embraces here.
Baker was by no means alone in this campaign of disinformation among the editors and publishers of Iowa newspapers that identified as Democrat during those years.
His predecessor at the helm of The Democrat had been John V. Faith, a virulent racist who had founded the newspaper during 1867 in part at least to campaign against ratification during 1868 of an amendment to Iowa's constitution that removed "white" from voter qualifications in the state, extending in theory at least suffrage to all male citizens.
Dan himself, although witty, accomplished and widely liked, was himself what we might today call a draft-dodger. When the Civil War broke out, rather than enlisting to fight for the Union cause as a majority of Iowa's young men did, he fled west and spent the war years adventuring, returning home only after peace had been restored.
After Baker had packed up his family and headed to California during the 1880s, The Democrat was purchased by Chariton's leading citizen --- and most visible Democrat --- Smith H. Mallory. Mallory installed as editor his secretary, Samuel S. King, whose racist rantings made Baker's seem mild by comparison at times.
None of this means that Lucas Countyans were any more racist at the time than their fellow citizens elsewhere in the state or that a majority of Lucas Countyans endorsed the editorial views of The Democrat, later rechristened The Leader. The Patriot, our oldest newspaper, was staunchly Republican through all of this and did not engage in race-baiting.
But the reign of terror commemorated in the new memorial in Alabama certainly is part of our collective heritage --- and worthy of remembrance in both an historic and a cautionary sense, even in Iowa.
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