Essay Contribution by Edin Beslagic
March 30, 2006

Book Review of A Lynching in the Heartland

A Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in America.  By James H. Madison. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. Reviewed by Edin Beslagic.

This book analytically approaches an event that took place on August 7, 1930 in Marion, Indiana: one of the rare northern lynching that was both organized and afterwards legally unresolved. Crimes of murder and rape committed by three young African Americans landed them in jail; however, two of them would never see due process. Madison accounts that tragic day when their lives were brutally taken in great detail and then skillfully navigates through time to establish both preceding conditions and subsequent events. By following up on memories carried through time, he illustrates that the cause of this lynching was racism and presents proof that it was neither the start nor the end of it in Indiana but instead an indicator of dissonant racial relations from 1880s to late 1980s.

Madison clearly states that the entire nation somehow knows exactly what to do in a lynching and bases this conclusion on a mountain of secondary sources and analyses written by a number of reputable authors. He does a good job of making a comparison of a lynching to a theatrical performance and shows an inconsistency in the Indiana law enforcement handling of threatened racist lynching. Pointing out that a precedent has been set for protecting African-American prisoners, he fingers the sheriff who allowed the mob rule to take place but confuses the issue by falling short in his delivery of tying lynching to a gender role theory in which white women are meant to be protected from African Americans by their white men. Madison points out that this reasoning was very often invoked as a justification for many a lynching.

Further in the book Madison sets the stage and shows that African Americans had been both prosperous and naturally segregated in pioneering Marion. He lacks direction in his stating of a multitude of reasons as to why the scene was further complicated by automobiles, premarital sex, media coverage of murders and weak law enforcement. The well-documented roaring twenties phenomenon was accurate in description but did not necessarily tie into a rural Indiana town. He talks about the largely non-violent Ku Klux Klan formation in Indiana and praises their civic accomplishments until the moment of their disbandment but the effort is ultimately wasted as it weakens his focus on racist divisions and violence against African Americans.

Madison sharply recovers his energy by showing a 1917 Marion court case where instead of settling a legal case by interpreting the applicable law, an appellate judge circumvented touching a racial issue in refusing to consider an ice cream parlor to be “an eating place” and thus allowed African Americans to be legally forbidden access to it (Page 46). With crystal clarity, he points out that the original lawsuit had nothing to do with classifying an establishment but with human rights. This example is very useful for anyone to cite in studying technicalities as legal defenses or legislators fighting tooth and nail to preserve status quo.

As the plot thickens, the prior indicators of racism and race separations are thoughtfully listed, including formation of a nearby predominantly African American town, the local chapter of NAACP, the daily operation of segregated schools, restricted access to housing in white neighborhoods and a militant enforcement of an ordinance forbidding African American taxpayers from using a city owned pool. This helps prepare the reader for an ensemble of testimonies and accounts of irresponsible government reactions to the lynching. However, this dedication to the pursuit of truth is unfairly contrasted to his earlier character portrayal of the rape victim. Madison never explains why he spent so much effort painting her in shades of gray when the surviving third accused African American youth repeatedly confessed to being a participant in the accused crime.

Madison’s research efforts are Herculean; he dedicates approximately forty pages to end notes and bibliography listing a rich variety of primary and secondary sources used in the book. Because the subject is incredibly deep in historical account it is not very clear which particular selections of texts were used to formulate his own ideas for the book. Furthermore, his controversial coverage of the lynching survivor linking his and experiences of oppressed African Americans to the victims of the Holocaust weakens the credibility of his assertions for a number of reasons: First, the number of lynching of African Americans was infinitely smaller than six million Jews (and other minorities) lost in the Holocaust. Secondly, unlike in the case of lynching, terrifyingly large numbers of women and children were included in the Holocaust. Next, the concept of the Holocaust was formed and defined much later than the concept of a lynching and lastly, unlike with the Holocaust, not one international, political or religious entity denies that lynchings ever took place. To his credit, this weak point is overshadowed by the powerful use of interviews that can instill emotion even in our desensitized 21st century. The documentation of laws listed in end notes solidifies a conviction that Madison had an excellent understanding of all historical events surrounding his topic.

The entire book is well-written: organized, concise, and easy to read for anyone interested in the subject. Each character is briefly and eloquently introduced and their significance pointed out before a reader can lose focus. By keeping these characters both static and flat, Madison avoids splitting hairs in his arguments. The historical plot, although not chronological, explains the conditions leading up to and past the lynching and is used to follow his thesis with surgical precision. With great skill, Madison uses informal English to befriend his readers but keeps a level of sophistication to keep them on their toes. On the other hand, his few sardonic comments indicate a questionable motive in a few parts of the book, weakening his credibility as an objective writer.

With an excellent introduction and good writing, Madison presents a very strong case explaining why this 1930 lynching occurred. He proves that this lynching was merely an indicator of a racial separation and supports it with numerous examples throughout the book. His analogy of a theatre act illustrates that a lynching was recognized as a tool for racial oppression, his mention of a local law enforcement precedent in protecting African American prisoners shows that the Sheriff could and should have done more to prevent this tragedy. His ice cream case coverage shows that existing laws were interpreted to aid the side of racism and his rich variety of sources show that Madison was well aware of background information to qualify him in making generalizations that glued these topics together. His weak points were few but noticeable: he made assertions tying gender issues and lynching with little evidential backing, the role of the Ku Klux Klan in his book was largely unexplained, his sardonic comments took away from his serious work and the particular manner of portrayal of the rape victim took away from his objectivity. The best point of the book comes at the very end in form of poetic justice in that the first African American sheriff in Indiana was elected to position in Marion. Madison masterfully recalls the injustices of the past and quotes a few white voters, “they were pleased to have a chance to vote for him because it helped clear consciences,” and “they wanted to do the right thing this time” (Page 151).