白细胞计数偏高是什么意思| 表现手法是什么| 梦见找对象是什么意思| 左眼屈光不正是什么意思| bf是什么牌子| 瘪是什么意思| 什么情况下要打破伤风| 二月二十五号是什么星座| 孩子是什么意思| 令郎是什么意思| 绝情是什么意思| 怀孕有什么反应| 牙龈肿是什么原因| 黑豆有什么作用| 八格牙路是什么意思| 眼霜有什么作用和功效| 门槛费是什么意思| 闪光点是什么意思| 锁骨疼挂什么科| 什么叫有格局的人| 醋泡姜用什么醋好| 卯时属什么生肖| 丑土代表什么| sid是什么| cd是什么| 男性乳头疼是什么原因| 夏天吃什么蔬菜好| 勾魂是什么意思| 核桃补什么| 代表什么意思| 女生吃什么可以丰胸| 桓是什么意思| 胆囊检查做什么检查| 龙葵是什么| 什么人什么目| 什么情况需要打破伤风针| 叶凡为什么要找荒天帝| 国债什么意思| 经常感觉口渴口干是什么原因| 一段奶粉和二段奶粉有什么区别| 鳞状上皮是什么意思| 晚上十一点多是什么时辰| 冰鱼是什么鱼| 为什么有些| 姜太公钓鱼愿者上钩是什么意思| 一个虫一个离念什么| 华西医院院长什么级别| 低回声斑块是什么意思| 黄曲霉菌是什么颜色| 转肽酶高是什么原因| 梦到自己被蛇咬是什么意思| 5.22是什么星座| 大便一粒粒的是什么原因| 男女更年期分别在什么年龄| 大暑是什么意思啊| 吃西红柿有什么好处和坏处| 乌鸡蛋什么颜色| 什么水果营养价值最高| 饭前饭后吃药有什么区别| 月全食是什么意思| 闪光眼是什么症状| 6月19日什么星座| 副检察长什么级别| 空调数显是什么意思| 霜降是什么意思| 频繁打哈欠是什么原因| 吃什么能减脂肪肝| 奇变偶不变是什么意思| 背水一战什么意思| a型血和b型血生的孩子是什么血型| 古人的婚礼在什么时候举行| 遗尿是什么症状| 毛豆烧什么好吃| 什么就是什么造句| 左侧卵巢囊肿是什么原因引起的| 北京豆汁儿什么味道| 串门是什么意思| 物竞天择什么意思| 基尼是什么货币| 开边珠牛皮是什么意思| 慢性宫颈炎吃什么药| 齁甜是什么意思| 减肥不能吃什么水果| 可见一什么| 吃什么可以治拉肚子| la是什么意思| 山楂和什么泡水喝减肥效果最好| 养鱼为什么养单不养双| 来月经为什么会腰疼| 丛生是什么意思| 为什么尿黄| 大驿土命是什么意思| 宫颈息肉有什么症状| 苏州古代叫什么| 查心电图挂什么科| 大米发霉是什么样子| qaq是什么意思| 你什么我什么成语| 梦见碗是什么意思| 胃窦小弯是什么意思| 血氧饱和度是什么| 黄柏是什么| 什么来什么去的四字词语| 颈椎病头晕吃什么药好| 士字五行属什么| 中医经方是什么意思| 常吃生花生有什么好处| 甲胎蛋白是什么意思| 范冰冰和洪金宝什么关系| 黄河水为什么是黄的| 梅毒查血查什么项目| 薄荷脑是什么| gn什么意思| 皮疹是什么原因引起的| 金融办是什么单位| 广义是什么意思| 人生感悟是什么意思| 法字五行属什么| 柔情似水是什么意思| 红曲米是什么东西| 中暑是什么感觉| 礼拜是什么意思| 为什么现在| 宝宝肌张力高会有什么影响| 皮疹是什么| 手指甲发紫是什么原因| 靶点是什么意思| 云南白药植物长什么样| 水浒传有什么故事| 贴图是什么意思| 地图舌是什么原因引起的| 八月六号是什么星座| 头疼嗓子疼吃什么药| 湿气重是什么引起的| 樊字五行属什么| 脾虚吃什么药| 欧米茄属于什么档次| 陶土色是什么颜色| 暖心向阳是什么意思| 缱绻旖旎是什么意思| 4月28日是什么日子| 2021属什么生肖| 腰疼是什么原因引起的女性| 清宫是什么意思| 什么是不动产权证| 低烧头疼吃什么药| 雪莲果什么季节成熟| 多愁善感是什么意思| eso是什么意思| 低盐饮食有利于预防什么| 十二生肖里为什么没有猫| 看客是什么意思| 诛是什么意思| 什么是顺时针| 辞退和开除有什么区别| 屁多又臭是什么原因| 湘字五行属什么的| 女攻是什么意思| 海狗是什么| live什么意思| 话糙理不糙是什么意思| 公蚊子吃什么| 口是什么感觉| rta是什么意思| 喉咙看什么科| 34岁属什么| 手抖是什么病的前兆| 天珠到底是什么| 早上8点到9点是什么时辰| 青灰色是什么颜色| 眼睛痒吃什么药| 大枕大池是什么意思| 脑供血不足用什么药| 腾空是什么意思| 鲜黄花菜含有什么毒素| 堆肥是什么意思| 八字桃花是什么意思| 麦乳精是什么| xo酱是什么酱| 所剩无几是什么意思| 美国为什么不建高铁| 办理身份证需要什么| 地西泮是什么药| 打呼噜吃什么药| 长痱子是什么原因| 脸过敏发红痒擦什么药| 火热是什么意思| 去取环前需做什么准备| 拔智齿第二天可以吃什么| 高血糖不能吃什么| 7月23日什么星座| 小生化是检查什么项目| 梨花压海棠是什么意思| 女人喝红酒有什么好处| 生理期肚子疼吃什么药| 中性粒细胞偏低是什么意思| 皮肤上有小白斑点是什么原因| 直接胆红素高是什么病| 什么书没有字| 蛀牙是什么样子的| 五台山是求什么的| 炖肉放什么调料| 宿醉是什么意思| 梦到吵架是什么意思| 胃胀是什么原因导致的| 证件照一般是什么底色| 为什么总是睡不着| 嘴巴里长血泡是什么原因| 灰指甲用什么药好| 鲁迅字什么| 手掌红是什么原因| 安静如鸡什么意思| a型血rh阳性是什么意思| 美妙绝伦是什么意思| 什么动物有四个胃| 款款是什么意思| 猪五行属什么| 日语莫西莫西什么意思| 漠河什么时候可以看到极光| 手脱皮擦什么药膏| 赟怎么读 什么意思| soda是什么意思| 紫色心情是什么意思| 什么叫丹毒| 手一直脱皮是什么原因| 斗破苍穹什么时候出的| 荨麻疹要注意些什么| 破釜沉舟是什么意思| 足石念什么| 穿刺活检能查出肿瘤是什么性质吗| 破除是什么意思| 什么穿针大眼瞪小眼| 荼什么意思| 嘴唇舌头发麻什么病兆| 更年期什么症状| 15岁可以做什么兼职| 生殖感染用什么消炎药效果好| 94岁属什么| ppe是什么| 苦瓜有什么营养| 肝风上扰会有什么症状| 为什么不能送手表| 木九十眼镜什么档次| 芒果与什么不能一起吃| claire是什么意思| gg了是什么意思| 柿子不能跟什么一起吃| 生菜是什么菜| 全套什么意思| 求知欲的欲什么意思| 小孩子腿疼是什么原因| 牙齿吃甜的就会疼什么原因| 最好的补钙方法是什么| 眼角膜脱落什么症状| 2014年属什么生肖| 6月16日是什么星座| 侧睡流口水是什么原因| 补肾吃什么药效果最好| 累赘是什么意思| 体温偏高的人说明什么| 茼蒿不能和什么一起吃| 牛肉不能和什么一起吃| 珩是什么意思| 大白刁是什么鱼| 百度Jump to content

用车4S保密修车技术 写给所有不懂修车的门外

Coordinates: 35°25′46″N 96°24′28″W / 35.42944°N 96.40778°W / 35.42944; -96.40778
This is a good article. Click here for more information.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
百度 据了解,四川音乐季活动实施方案出炉,提出以成都为核心,以甘阿凉三州为重点,其他市州联动发展的1+3+N四川音乐季活动模式,通过开展四川音乐季活动,进一步扶持四川省优秀音乐原创作品、打造特色音乐季品牌、培育市场主体、延伸产业链、创新文化服务模式,推动跨界融合发展,推进音乐产业的提档升级,丰富人民群众精神生活,充分发挥音乐产业对四川经济结构转型,统筹推进全省经济、政治、文化、社会和生态文明建设中的重要作用。

Lynching of Laura and L. D. Nelson
Photograph no. 2899, one of four extant photographs of the lynching
DateMay 25, 1911 (2025-08-05)
PhotographerGeorge Henry Farnum
LocationSix miles west and one mile south of Okemah, Oklahoma, on a bridge, now demolished, across the North Canadian River.[1] (The replacement bridge became part of Oklahoma State Highway 56.)
Coordinates35°25′46″N 96°24′28″W? / ?35.42944°N 96.40778°W? / 35.42944; -96.40778
ChargesNone

Laura and L. D. Nelson were an African-American mother and son who were lynched on May 25, 1911, near Okemah, Okfuskee County, Oklahoma.[1][2] They had been seized from their cells in the Okemah county jail the night before by a group of up to 40 white men, reportedly including Charley Guthrie, father of the folk singer Woody Guthrie.[3] The Associated Press reported that Laura was raped.[a] She and L. D. were then hanged from a bridge over the North Canadian River. According to one source, Laura had a baby with her who survived the attack.[5]

Laura and L. D. were in jail because L. D. had been accused of having shot and killed Deputy Sheriff George H. Loney of the Okfuskee County Sheriff's Office,[6] during a search of the Nelsons' farm for a stolen cow. L. D. and Laura were both charged with murder; Laura was charged because she allegedly grabbed the gun first. Her husband, Austin, pleaded guilty to larceny and was sent to the relative safety of the state prison in McAlester, while his wife and son were held in the county jail until their trial.[7][8]

Sightseers gathered on the bridge on the morning of the lynching. George Henry Farnum, the owner of Okemah's only photography studio, took photographs, which were distributed as postcards, a common practice at the time.[9] Although the district judge convened a grand jury, the killers were never identified.[10] Four of Farnum's photographs are known to have survived—two spectator scenes and one close-up view each of L. D. and Laura. Three of the images were published in 2000 and exhibited at the Roth Horowitz Gallery in New York by James Allen, an antique collector.[11] The images of Laura Nelson are the only known surviving photographs of a black female lynching victim.[12][13]

Background

[edit]

Lynching in the United States

[edit]
Lynching of Jesse Washington in Waco, Texas, May 16, 1916

Historian Amy Louise Wood writes about lynchings:

Compared to other forms of terror and intimidation that African-Americans were subject to under Jim Crow, lynching was an infrequent and extraordinary occurrence. Black men and women were much more likely to become victims of personal assault, murder, or rape than lynching [...] Despite, or even because of, its relative rarity, lynching held a singular psychological force, generating a level of fear and horror that overwhelmed all other forms of violence.[14]

Lynching could involve victims being hanged furtively at night by a small group or during the day in front of hundreds or even thousands of witnesses; the latter is known as "spectacle lynchings". The whole community might attend; newspapers sometimes publicized them in advance, and special trains brought in more distant community members.[15] An audience of 10,000, including the mayor and chief of police, was said to have attended the lynching of Jesse Washington in Waco, Texas, in 1916.[16] As well as being hanged, victims were sometimes tortured first and burned alive; body parts were removed and kept or sold as souvenirs.[17][18] Almost all perpetrators were white and the victims were black. The political message—the promotion of white supremacy and black powerlessness—was an important element of the ritual, so that even the quieter lynchings might be photographed and the images published as postcards.[19][20]

According to the Tuskegee Institute, 4,745 people are recorded as having been lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1964; 3,446 (72.7 percent) of them were black.[21][22] Lynching came to be associated with the Deep South; 73 percent of lynchings took place in the Southern United States.[23][24] Between 1882 and 1903, 125 black-on-black lynchings were recorded in 10 southern states, as were four cases of whites being lynched by black people.[25] There were 115 recorded cases of women lynched between 1851 and 1946; 90 were black, 19 white, and six Hispanic or uncertain. Women were usually lynched as associates of men who were being lynched; of 97 incidents examined by historian Kerry Segrave, 36 were of women lynched alone.[26]

In Oklahoma

[edit]
Oklahoma within the US

Oklahoma Territory was said in 1892 by the governor of Oklahoma to be "about 85 percent white, 10 percent colored and 5 percent Indians". It was awarded statehood in 1907, with laws that enshrined racial segregation (Jim Crow laws).[27] In 1911 Okemah's school had 555 white students and one black student.[28] There were 147 recorded lynchings in Oklahoma between 1885 and 1930. Until statehood in 1907, most victims were white cattle rustlers or highwaymen. In all, 77 victims were white, 50 black, 14 American Indians, five unknown, and one Chinese.[29] Five women—two black, two white, and one other—were lynched in Oklahoma in four incidents between 1851 and 1946.[30]

People

[edit]

Nelson family

[edit]
photograph
West Broadway Street, Okemah, 2010. The county jail was located at 510 West Broadway.

The Nelsons lived on a farm six miles north of Paden, Oklahoma, a largely White town.[31][b] Austin Nelson was born in Waco, Texas, in 1873. According to historian Frances Jones-Sneed, his parents, Dave and Rhoda Nelson, had been born into slavery in Georgia; Dave Nelson worked as a molder in Waco.[27]

Austin and Laura married in 1896; L. D. was born around the next year.[27] (L. D. was regularly referred to after the lynching as L. W. or Lawrence.)[c] In 1900 the extended family moved to Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma. According to Jones-Sneed, Laura and Austin were listed in the 1910 census as having two children, L. D., aged 13, and Carrie, aged two. It is not known what became of Carrie. She was probably the baby one witness said survived the lynching; several sources said she was found floating in the river.[35]

George Loney

[edit]

Around 35 years old when he died, Deputy Sheriff George H. Loney had lived in Paden for several years and was held in the highest regard, according to The Okemah Ledger. Described by the newspaper as a fearless man, he was known for having helped to stop the practice of bootlegging in Paden, on behalf of supporters of the local temperance movement. Later he became a state enforcement officer, then deputy sheriff. He was buried in Lincoln County near Paden on May 4, 1911. The Ledger wrote that every office in the courthouse closed for an hour during his funeral.[32]

Death of Loney

[edit]

Shooting

[edit]
newspaper
Front page of The Okemah Ledger, May 4, 1911.

George Loney formed a posse consisting of himself, Constable Cliff Martin, Claude Littrell, and Oscar Lane, after a steer was stolen from Littrell's property in Paden on May 1.[32][36] Littrell obtained a search warrant from A. W. Jenkins, a Justice of the Peace, which allowed the men to search the Nelson's farm. They arrived there on May 2 at around 9 pm, and read the warrant to Austin Nelson before entering the house.[31] The steer's remains were found in either the barn or house.[32][31]

When the men entered the Nelsons' home, Loney asked Constable Martin to take the cap off a muzzle-loading shotgun that was hanging on the wall. The Independent reported that, as Martin reached for the gun, Laura Nelson said: "Look here, boss, that gun belongs to me!" Martin said he told her that he wanted only to unload the gun.[31]

The Independent and Ledger offered different versions of events. According to the Independent, which was more sympathetic to the Nelsons, Laura grabbed another gun, a Winchester rifle hidden behind a trunk. L. D. took hold of the Winchester at the same time, and during the struggle for the gun, it went off. A bullet passed through Constable Martin's pant legs, grazing him in the thigh, then hit Loney in the hip and entered his abdomen. He walked outside and died a few minutes later.[31]

According to the Ledger, L. D. had grabbed the Winchester, pumped a shell into it, and fired. Austin had then taken hold of the rifle and tried to shoot Littrell, the newspaper said. During the ensuing gunfight, Loney had taken shelter behind a wagon. No one realized he had been hit until he asked for water; according to the newspaper, Laura responded: "Let the white ____ [sic] die." Loney reportedly bled to death within minutes. The Ledger described his death as "one of the most cold-blooded murders that has occurred in Okfuskee county".[32]

Arrests and charges

[edit]
Austin Nelson's charge sheet

Austin was arrested by Constable Martin on the evening of the shooting; he arrived with Martin in Okemah at 4 am on Wednesday, May 3.[31] The Okfuskee county jail was in Okemah, a predominantly white town. Laura and L. D., described by the Ledger as "about sixteen years old, rather yellow, ignorant and ragged", were arrested later that day.[32] Sheriff Dunnegan found them at the home of the boy's uncle. According to The Independent, they made no effort to escape and were brought to the county jail on the night train.[31]

Austin admitted the theft of the cow, saying he had had no food for his children.[31] According to his undated charge sheet, witnesses for the state were Littrell, Martin, Lane, and Lawrence Payne.[36] (Lawrence Payne was also the name of the jailer on duty the night the Nelsons were kidnapped from the jail.) Austin's account of what happened tallied with that of the posse, except that he said he was the one, not Laura, who had objected to the shotgun being removed from the wall. He said Laura had been trying to take the rifle away from her son when it was fired.[31]

newspaper
The Independent (Okemah), May 4, 1911, p. 7

During a hearing on May 6 before Justice Lawrence, Austin was held on a bond of $1,500, which he was unable to pay.[37] After pleading guilty to larceny, he was sentenced on May 12 to three years in Oklahoma State Penitentiary.[38] On May 16 he was sent to the state prison in McAlester 59 miles (95 km) away, which according to the Ledger probably saved his life.[39][40] On May 10, before the same judge, Laura and L. D. (named by the Ledger as Mary and L. W. Nelson) were charged with murder and held without bail in the Okemah county jail. The Nelsons hired Blakeley, Maxey & Miley, a law firm in Shawnee, to represent them.[37] The Ledger reported on May 18, under the headline "Negro Female Prisoner Gets Unruly", that on May 13 Laura had been "bad" when the jailer, Lawrence Payne, brought her dinner. She had reportedly tried to grab his gun when he opened the cell door, and when that failed she tried to throw herself out of a window. Payne "choked the woman loose", according to the newspaper, and after a struggle returned her to her cell.[40] The Ledger wrote on May 25 that during the incident she had "begged to be killed".[39]

May 25, 1911

[edit]

Kidnap

[edit]

Laura and L. D. were due to be arraigned on May 25.[1] Between 11:30 and midnight on May 24, a group of between a dozen and 40 men arrived at the jail. They entered it through the front door of the sheriff's office. Payne, the jailer, said he had left it unlocked to let in a detective from McAlester, who was looking for an escaped prisoner.[39] He said the men had bound, gagged and blindfolded him at gunpoint, taken his keys, and cut the telephone line. He was unable to identify them.[1]

The boy was "stifled and gagged", according to the Ledger, and went quietly; prisoners in adjoining cells reportedly heard nothing. The men went to the women's cells and removed Laura, described by the newspaper as "very small of stature, very black, about thirty-five years old, and vicious".[39] According to a July 1911 report in The Crisis (the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), and a female witness who said she had seen the lynching or its aftermath, the men also took the baby.[7][5]

The jailer said that, after struggling for two hours, he escaped and raised the alarm at Moon's restaurant across the road from the jail. Sheriff Dunnegan sent out a search party to no avail.[39] According to the Ledger, a fence post suspended on two chairs across a window was found in the jury room just after the lynching, near the cell where Laura had been held. It was thought that the men had intended to hang her out the window but had been deterred by an electric light burning nearby.[39]

Lynching

[edit]
photograph
No. 2898
photograph
No. 2894

Laura and L. D. were taken to a bridge over the North Canadian River, six miles west and one mile south of Okemah; it was described as on the old Schoolton road and at Yarbrough's crossing.[41] According to the Associated Press and The Crisis, Laura was raped.[7][42] The Ledger reported that the men gagged her and L. D. with tow sacks and, using rope made of half-inch hemp tied in a hangman's knot and hanged them from the bridge.[39] They were found in the morning hanging 20 ft below the middle span. A local resident, John Earnest, reported the discovery to the sheriff's office.[1] The front page of The Okemah Ledger on May 25, 1911, said the lynching had been "executed with silent precision that makes it appear as a masterpiece of planning":

The woman's arms were swinging by her side, untied, while about twenty feet away swung the boy with his clothes partly torn off and his hands tided with a saddle string. The only marks on either body were that made by the ropes upon the necks. Gently swaying in the wind, the ghastly spectacle was discovered this morning by a negro boy taking his cow to water. Hundreds of people from Okemah and the western part of the county went to view the scene.[39]

The bodies were cut down from the bridge at 11:00 on May 25 by order of the county commissioner, then taken to Okemah.[39] The Nelsons' relatives did not claim the bodies, and they were buried by the county in the Greenleaf cemetery near Okemah.[12] Quoting the Muskogee Scimitar, The Crisis wrote that Laura had had a baby with her: "Just think of it. A woman taken from her suckling babe, and a boy—a child only fourteen years old—dragged through the streets by a howling mob of fiendish devils, the most unnameable crime committed on the helpless woman and then she and her son executed by hanging."[43] According to William Bittle and Gilbert Geis, writing in 1964, Laura had been caring for a baby in jail and had the child with her when she was taken from her cell. They quoted a local woman: "After they had hung them up, those men just walked off and left that baby lying there. One of my neighbors was there, and she picked the baby up and brought it to town, and we took care of it. It's all grown up now and lives here."[d]

Photographs

[edit]

The scene after the lynching was recorded in a series of photographs by George Henry Farnum, the owner of Okemah's only photography studio.[44] There are four known extant images taken from a boat. Photographs nos. 2894 and 2898 are close-up shots of L. D. and Laura; nos. 2897 and 2899 show the bridge and spectators. In no. 2899, 35 men and six women are on the bridge, along with 17 children, from toddlers to mid-teens.[45] The photographs are marked with the photographer's name: "COPYRIGHT—1911—G. H. FARNUM, OKEMAH, OKLA."[44]

It was common practice to turn lynching photographs into postcards. In May 1908, in an effort to stop the practice, the federal government amended the United States Postal Laws and Regulations to prevent "matter of a character tending to incite arson, murder or assassination" from being sent through the mail. The cards continued to sell, although not openly, and were sent instead in envelopes.[46][18] Woody Guthrie said he recalled seeing the cards of the Nelsons for sale in Okemah.[e] James Allen bought the photo postcard of Laura Nelson, a 3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inch gelatin silver print, for $75 in a flea market. The back of the card says "unmailable".[49][50][18]

Seth Archer wrote in the Southwest Review that lynching photographs were partly intended as a warning, in the Nelson's case to the neighboring all-black Boley—"look what we did here, Negroes beware"[44]— but the practice of sending cards to family and friends outside the area underlined the ritualistic nature of the lynchings.[51] Spectators appearing in lynching photographs showed no obvious shame at being connected to the events, even when they were clearly identifiable. Someone wrote on the back of one card, of the 1915 Will Stanley lynching in Temple, Texas: "This is the Barbecue we had last night My picture is to the left with a cross over it your son Joe."[52]

Aftermath

[edit]
newspaper
The Independent, May 25, 1911

The Independent wrote on May 25, 1911, that "[t]here is not a shadow of an excuse for the crime", and later called it a "terrible blot on Okfuskee County, a reproach that it will take years to remove".[1] The Okemah Ledger took the view that "while the general sentiment is adverse to the method, it is generally thought that the negroes got what would have been due them under due process of law."[39] One newspaper, the Morning Phoenix, apparently tried to blame the black community, writing that the Nelsons had been "mobbed by Negroes".[7] African-Americans expressed outrage. One black journal lamented:

Oh! where is that christian spirit we hear so much about

– What will the good citizens do to apprehend these mobs

– Wait, we shall see – Comment is unnecessary. Such a crime is simply Hell on Earth. No excuse can be set forth to justify the act.[53]

There were rumors that the nearby black town of Boley was organizing an attack on Okemah. Okemah's women and children were sent to spend the night in a nearby field, with the men standing guard on Main Street.[54] Oswald Garrison Villard of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), wrote in protest to Lee Cruce, governor of Oklahoma. Cruce assured Villard he would do everything he could to bring the Nelson's killers to justice. In a reply to Villard dated June 9, 1911, Cruce called the lynching an "outrage", but he defended the laws of Oklahoma as "adequate" and its juries "competent", and said the administration of justice in the state proceeded with little cause for criticism, "except in cases of extreme passion, which no law and no civilization can control".[55] He added:

There is a race prejudice that exists between the white and Negro races wherever the Negroes are found in large numbers. [...] Just this week the announcement comes as a shock to the people of Oklahoma that the Secretary of the Interior [...] has appointed a Negro from Kansas to come to Oklahoma and take charge of the supervision of the Indian schools of this State. There is no race of people on earth that has more antipathy for the Negro race than the Indian race, and yet these people, numbering many of the best citizens of this State and nation, are to be humbled and their prejudices and passions are to be increased by having this outrage imposed upon them [...] If your organization would interest itself to the extent of seeing that such outrages as this are not perpetrated against our people, there would be fewer lynchings in the South than at this time [...][55]

The NAACP argued that nothing would change while governors like Cruce sought to excuse lynching as the product of the "uncontrollable passion" of white people.[56] District Judge John Caruthers convened a grand jury in June 1911 to investigate, telling them it was the duty of people "of a superior race and of greater intelligence to protect this weaker race from unjustifiable and lawless attacks", but no one would identify the lynchers.[f]

Legacy

[edit]

Photographs

[edit]
No. 2897

James Allen, an Atlanta antique collector, spent years looking for postcards of lynchings for his Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America (2000). "Hundreds of flea markets later," he wrote, "a trader pulled me aside and in conspiratorial tones offered to sell me a real photo postcard. It was Laura Nelson hanging from a bridge, caught so pitiful and tattered and beyond retrieving—like a paper kite sagged on a utility wire."[50]

The book accompanied an exhibition of 60 lynching postcards from 1880 to 1960, Witness: Photographs of Lynchings from the Collection of James Allen, which opened at the Roth Horowitz Gallery in New York in January 2000.[57] Allen argued that lynching photographers were more than passive spectators. They positioned and lit the corpses as if they were game birds, he wrote, and the postcards became an important part of the act, emphasizing its political nature.[50]

Allen's publication of the images encountered a mixed reception. Julia Hotton, a black museum curator in New York, said that with older black people especially: "If they hear a white man with a Southern accent is collecting these photos, they get a little skittish."[58] Jennie Lightweis-Gof was critical of the "profoundly aestheticized readings" of Laura's body, arguing that writers tried to garner empathy for the Nelsons by focusing on Laura's appearance, producing empathy qua eroticism. Allen, for example, referred to Laura's "indissoluble femininity". Leightweis-Gof offered this as an example of "the Gaze": "the sense that every function of the female body is sexualized and aestheticized".[59] Wendy Wolters argued that whenever Laura Nelson is viewed as a "fetishized and feminized object", she is violated again.[60]

Guthries

[edit]
photograph
Woody Guthrie (1912–1967)

One of the lynchers may have been Charley Guthrie (died 1956), father of the folk singer Woody Guthrie, who was born in Okemah in 1912,[61] 14 months after the lynching. Charley was an Okemah real-estate agent, district court clerk, Democratic politician, Freemason, and owner of the town's first automobile.[62] According to Joe Klein, he was also a member of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.[63] There is no documentary evidence to support this;[64] the allegation stems from his younger brother, Claude, whom Klein interviewed on tape in 1977 for his book Woody Guthrie: A Life (1980).[65] Klein published that Charley had been part of the lynching mob, but without referring to the interview.[48][66] Seth Archer found the tape in 2005 in the Woody Guthrie Archives in New York, and reported Claude's statement in the Southwest Review in 2006.[66] During the interview, Claude Guthrie told Klein:

It was pretty bad back there in them days [...] The niggers was pretty bad over there in Boley, you know [...] Charley and them, they throwed this nigger and his mother in jail, both of them, the boy and the woman. And that night, why they stuck out and hung [laughter], they hung them niggers that killed that sheriff [...] I just kind of laughed [laughter]. I knew darn well that rascal [Charley] was—I knew he was in on it.[66]

Woody Guthrie wrote two songs, unrecorded, about the Nelson's lynching, "Don't Kill My Baby and My Son"[67] and "High Balladree". The songs refer to a woman and two sons hanging.[g] His work was not always historically accurate; for example, he wrote elsewhere that he had witnessed some of the Nelsons' troubles, although he was born 14 months after their death.[70] Guthrie recorded another song, "Slipknot", about lynching in Okemah in general. In one manuscript, he added at the end of the song: "Dedicated to the many negro mothers, fathers, and sons alike, that was lynched and hanged under the bridge of the Canadian River, seven miles south of Okemah, Okla., and to the day when such will be no more" (signed Woody G., February 29, 1940, New York).[71] He also sketched a bridge in 1946 from which a row of lynched bodies hang; the sketch is held by the Ralph Rinzler archives in the Smithsonian.[72]

See also

[edit]

Notes

[edit]
  1. ^ Associated Press, 1911: "At Okemah, Oklahoma, Laura Nelson, a colored woman accused of murdering a deputy sheriff who had discovered stolen goods at her house, was lynched together with her son, a boy about fifteen. The woman and her son were taken from the jail, dragged about six miles to the Canadian River and hanged from a bridge. The woman was raped by members of the mob before she was hanged."[4]
  2. ^ According to The Okemah Ledger, the Nelsons were "a portion of the Lincoln County Nelsons that were terrors in their colony, and have lived north of Paden but a short time".[32]
  3. ^ The Okemah Ledger called him "L. W. Nelson",[32] as did James Allen in his Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America (2000).[9] Several secondary sources called him "Lawrence", without citing their sources.[33]

    Several primary sources referred to Laura as "Mary".[34] The Okemah Ledger called Austin Nelson "Oscar".[32]

  4. ^ William Bittle and Gilbert Geis (The Longest Way Home, 1964): "Mrs. Nelson had cared for an infant while in jail with her older son, and had taken the child with her when the mob came. She had put the baby on the ground when she was forced onto the bridge by the crowd.
    "A woman who witnessed the scene painfully described it: 'After they had hung them up, those men just walked off and left that baby lying there. One of my neighbors was there, and she picked the baby up and brought it to town, and we took care of it. It's all grown up now and lives here. [...]'"[5]
  5. ^ Woody Guthrie: "It reminded me of the postcard picture they sold in my home town for several years, a showing you a negro mother, and her two young sons, a hanging by the neck stretched tight by the weight of their bodies and – the rope stretched tight like a big fiddle string."[47]
    Klein wrote in 1999 that the Okemah Ledger published one of the images, but he did not give a date.[48]

    Jones-Sneed (2011): "Unlike other lynching photographs, the one of Laura Nelson and her son was not published in any newspapers or made into postcards. The photographer, G. H. Farnam, kept the negative and may have provided copies for those who wished to have a memento of the mother and son."[8]

  6. ^ District Judge John Caruthers (June 1911): "The people of the state have said by recently adopted constitutional provision that the race to which the unfortunate victims belonged should in large measure be divorced from participation in our political contests, because of their known racial inferiority and their dependent credulity, which very characteristic made them the mere tool of the designing and cunning. It is well known that I heartily concur in this constitutional provision of the people's will. The more then does the duty devolve upon us of a superior race and of greater intelligence to protect this weaker race from unjustifiable and lawless attacks."[10]
  7. ^ Woody Guthrie, "Don't Kill My Baby and My Son" (1966): "Then I saw a picture on a postcard / It showed the Canadian River Bridge, / Three bodies hanging to swing in the wind, / A mother and two sons they'd lynched."[68][69]

    Guthrie, "High Balladree": "A nickel postcard I buy off your rack / To show you what happens if / You're black and fight back / A lady and two boys hanging / down by their necks / From the rusty iron rigs / of my Canadian Bridge."[70]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c d e f "Woman and boy lynched", The Independent, May 25, 1911.
  2. ^ Davidson 2007, pp. 5–8.
  3. ^ Archer 2006, pp. 502–503.
  4. ^ Mintz & McNeil 2016.
  5. ^ a b c Bittle & Geis 1964, p. 56.
  6. ^ "Deputy Sheriff George H. Loney". The Officer Down Memorial Page (ODMP). Retrieved June 9, 2022.
  7. ^ a b c d The Crisis, July 2011, pp. 99–100.
  8. ^ a b Jones-Sneed 2011, pp. 64–65.
  9. ^ a b Allen 2000, pp. 179–180.
  10. ^ a b Davidson 2007, p. 8.
  11. ^ Moehringer 2000.
  12. ^ a b Collins 2011.
  13. ^ Jones-Sneed 2011, p. 64.
  14. ^ Wood 2009, p. 1.
  15. ^ Apel & Smith 2007, p. 44.
  16. ^ Wood 2009, p. 179; Freeman 1916, p. 5.
  17. ^ Apel & Smith 2007, pp. 44, 47.
  18. ^ a b c Moehringer 2000, p. 2.
  19. ^ Apel & Smith 2007, p. 1.
  20. ^ Wood 2009, pp. 1–3.
  21. ^ "Lynching, Whites and Negroes, 1882–1968" Archived 2025-08-05 at the Wayback Machine, Tuskegee University.
  22. ^ Zangrando 1980, p. 5.
  23. ^ Wood 2009, p. 4.
  24. ^ Kennedy 1998, p. 42.
  25. ^ Thurston 2013, pp. 35–36.
  26. ^ Segrave 2010, pp. 18–19.
  27. ^ a b c Jones-Sneed 2011, p. 63.
  28. ^ Menig 1998, p. 176.
  29. ^ Everett 2007.
  30. ^ Segrave 2010, 20.
  31. ^ a b c d e f g h i "A Deputy Sheriff Killed", The Independent (Okemah), May 4, 1911.
  32. ^ a b c d e f g h "Deputy Sheriff Loney Murdered", The Okemah Ledger, May 4, 1911.
  33. ^ For example, see Klein 1999, p. 10.
  34. ^ For example, "Woman Lynched by Side of Son", The Daily Oklahoman, May 26, 1911.
  35. ^ Jones-Sneed 2011, pp. 63, 65.
  36. ^ a b File:Austin Nelson charge sheet, May 1911.jpg.
  37. ^ a b "The Nelsons Have Examination", The Independent, May 11, 1911.
  38. ^ "Appearance Docket". lauranelsonlynching.weebly.com. May 12, 1911. Archived from the original on July 8, 2019.
  39. ^ a b c d e f g h i j "Lynchers Avenge the Murder of Geo. Loney", The Okemah Ledger, May 25, 1911.
  40. ^ a b "Negro Female Prisoner Gets Unruly", The Okemah Ledger, May 18, 1911.
  41. ^ For Yarbrough's crossing, and "six miles west and one mile south of Omekah", see The Independent, May 25, 1911.
  42. ^ Kennedy 1998, p. 44.
  43. ^ The Crisis, July 2011, p. 100.
  44. ^ a b c Archer 2006, p. 505.
  45. ^ Archer 2006, pp. 504, 509.
  46. ^ Rushdy 2012, pp. 68–69.
  47. ^ Kaufman 2011, p. 147.
  48. ^ a b Klein 1999, p. 10.
  49. ^ "The barefoot corpse of Laura Nelson. May 25, 1911, Okemah, Oklahoma", withoutsanctuary.org.
  50. ^ a b c Allen 2000, p. 204.
  51. ^ Archer 2006, p. 506.
  52. ^ Postcard of the lynched Jesse Washington, front and back.jpg; Allen 2000, p. 174.
  53. ^ Shepard 1983, p. 7.
  54. ^ Klein 1999, pp. 10–11.
  55. ^ a b The Crisis, August 2011, pp. 153–154.
  56. ^ Kidada 2012, pp. 193–194.
  57. ^ Apel 2004, p. 8.
  58. ^ Moehringer 2000, p. 3.
  59. ^ Leightweis-Gof 2011, p. 126.
  60. ^ Wolters 2004, pp. 414–415.
  61. ^ Archer 2006, p. 502.
  62. ^ Cray 2006, p. 5.
  63. ^ Klein 1999, p. 23.
  64. ^ Kaufman 2011, p. 145.
  65. ^ Archer 2006, pp. 508–509.
  66. ^ a b c Archer 2006, p. 509.
  67. ^ Woody Guthrie- "Don't Kill My Baby & My Son" via YouTube
  68. ^ Guthrie, Woody (1966). "Don't Kill My Baby and My Son" (lyrics), woodyguthrie.org.
  69. ^ Archer 2006, p. 515.
  70. ^ a b Kaufman 2011, p. 146.
  71. ^ Archer 2006, p. 513.
  72. ^ Jackson 2008, pp. 158–160.

Works cited

[edit]

Contemporaneous articles

Further reading

[edit]

35°25′46″N 96°24′28″W? / ?35.42944°N 96.40778°W? / 35.42944; -96.40778

所以我求求你别让我离开你是什么歌 甲床是什么 标王是什么意思 益是什么意思 男性尿道疼痛小便刺痛吃什么药
苦不堪言是什么意思 照影是什么检查 横行霸道的意思是什么 a型血与o型血生的孩子是什么血型 同型半胱氨酸查什么
天珠是什么做的 lemon是什么意思 邪不压正什么意思 12年是什么婚 肌酸激酶什么意思
hpv感染有什么表现 雪白雪白的什么 月经来有血块是什么原因 月经什么颜色的血是正常的 二尖瓣少量反流是什么意思
哺乳期妈妈感冒了可以吃什么药hcv8jop5ns8r.cn 逻辑性是什么意思hcv8jop6ns8r.cn 9月3号是什么节日hcv8jop0ns5r.cn 吃什么可以补气血hcv8jop2ns0r.cn 人乳头瘤病毒39型阳性是什么意思hcv8jop3ns8r.cn
为什么会得焦虑症bfb118.com 肚子胀气用什么药hcv9jop0ns8r.cn 尿里带血是什么原因女性hcv9jop3ns4r.cn 脚底疼痛是什么原因hcv9jop6ns7r.cn 男人趴着睡觉说明什么cl108k.com
心意已决是什么意思hcv7jop6ns0r.cn 云南的特产是什么hcv9jop5ns2r.cn 心绞痛是什么原因引起的hcv8jop9ns6r.cn 黄金有什么用hcv9jop0ns1r.cn 超导体是什么hcv9jop8ns1r.cn
煮虾放什么hcv8jop2ns3r.cn 越来越瘦是什么原因jingluanji.com 慢慢地什么hcv8jop8ns0r.cn 救星是什么意思hcv7jop6ns8r.cn 什么叫心律不齐hcv7jop9ns0r.cn
百度