Honoring Black Ancestors : STRANGE FRUIT:IN HONOR OF OUR ANCESTORS LYNCHED IN AMERIKKKA...

Other interesting facts...
Lynchings of Blacks by State (known and /or recorded)

Alabama 299
Arizona 0
Arkansas 226
California 2
Colorado 2
Delaware 1
Florida 257
Georgia 491
Idaho 0
Illinois 19
Indiana 14
Iowa 2
Kansas 19
Kentucky 142
Louisiana 335
Maryland 27
Michigan 1
Minnesota 4
Mississippi 538
Missouri 69
Montana 2
Nebraska 5
Nevada 0
New Jersey 1
New Mexico 3
New York 1
North Carolina 85
North Dakota 3
Ohio 16
Oklahoma 40
Oregon 1
Pennsylvania 6
South Carolina 156
South Dakota 0
Tennessee 204
Texas 352
Utah 2
Vermont 0
Virginia 83
Washington 1
West Virginia 28
Wisconsin 0
Wyoming 5

Total 3,442

Most hangings were in states of the Old Confederacy, with Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas the worst of the bunch.
 
CarrieMonet said:
Nease Gillepsie
John Gillepsie
"Jack" Dillingham
Henry Lee
and George Irwin

All hung together August 6, 1906. Salisbury, North Carolina.

Sister CarrieMonet, this is kinda heart-rending as it appears that this was probably an entire family that was viciously murdered... What in the world could an entire family have done to warrant that they all be rounded up and lynched??? Just a buncha devils being their demonic selves...

Peace!
Isaiah
 
Black Land and Lynchings Go Hand In Hand...

Land Often The Motive For Attacks On Blacks, Lynchings
By DOLORES BARCLAY, TODD LEWAN and ALLEN G. BREED
Dec 4, 2001
The Associated Press

As a little girl, Doria Dee Johnson often asked about the man in the portrait hanging in an aunt's living room - her great-great-grandfather. "It's too painful," her elderly relatives would say. A few years ago, Johnson, now 40, went to look for answers in the rural town of Abbeville, S.C. She learned that in his day, the man in the portrait, Anthony P. Crawford, was one of the most prosperous farmers in Abbeville County. That is until Oct. 21, 1916 - the day the 51- year-old farmer hauled a wagonload of cotton to town. Crawford "seems to have been the type of negro who is most offensive to certain elements of the white people," the wife of J.B. Holman would say a few days later in a letter published by The Abbeville Press and Banner. "He was getting rich, for a negro, and he was insolent along with it." Crawford's prosperity had made him a target. Racial violence in America is a familiar story, but the importance of land as a motive for lynchings and white mob attacks on blacks has been widely overlooked. And the resulting land losses suffered by black families have gone largely unreported. The Associated Press documented 57 violent land takings in an 18-month investigation of black land loss in America. Sometimes, black landowners were attacked by whites who just wanted to drive them from their property. In other cases, the attackers wanted the land. For many decades, successful blacks "lived with a gnawing fear ... that white neighbors could at any time do something violent and take everything from them," said Loren Schweninger, a University of North Carolina expert on black landownership.

SPLITTING A FAMILY

While waiting his turn at the gin that fall day in 1916, Crawford entered the mercantile store of W.D. Barksdale. Contemporary newspaper accounts and the papers of then- Gov. Richard Manning detail what followed: Barksdale offered Crawford 85 cents a pound for his cottonseed. Crawford replied he had a better offer. Barksdale called him a liar; Crawford called the storekeeper a cheat. Three clerks grabbed ax handles, and Crawford backed into the street, where the sheriff appeared and arrested Crawford - for cursing a white man. Released on bail, Crawford was cornered by about 50 whites who beat and knifed him. The sheriff carried him back to jail. A few hours later, a deputy gave the mob the keys to Crawford's cell. AT SUNDOWN, THEY HANGED HIM FROM A SOUTHERN PINE. No one was tried for the killing. In its aftermath, hundreds of blacks, including some Crawfords, fled Abbeville. Two whites were appointed executors of Crawford's estate, which included 427 acres of prime cotton land. One was Andrew J. Ferguson, cousin of two of the mob's ringleaders, the Press and Banner reported. Crawford's children inherited the farm, but Ferguson liquidated much of the rest of Crawford's property, including his cotton, which went to Barksdale. Ferguson kept $5,438 - more than half the proceeds - and gave Crawford's children just $200 each, estate papers show. Crawford's family struggled to hold the farm together but lost it when they couldn't pay off a $2,000 balance on a bank loan. Although the farm was assessed at $20,000 at the time, a white man paid $504 for it at the foreclosure auction, land records show. "There's land taken away, and there's murder," said Johnson, of Alexandria, Va. "But the biggest crime was that our family was split up by this. My family got scattered into the night."

FROM LYNCHING TO LAND-TAKING

The former Crawford land provided timber to several owners before International Paper Corp. acquired it last year. A company spokesman said International Paper was unaware of the land's history, and added, "It causes you to think that there are facets of our history that need to be discussed and addressed." Other current owners of property involved in violent land takings also said they knew little about the history of their land, and most were disturbed when told.

The Tuskegee Institute and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People have documented more than 3,000 lynchings between 1865 and 1965. Many of those lynched were property owners, said Ray Winbush, director of Fisk University's Race Relations Institute. "If you are looking for stolen black land," he said, "just follow the lynching trail." Some white officials condoned the violence; a few added threats of their own. "If it is necessary, every negro in the state will be lynched," James K. Vardaman declared while governor of Mississippi (1904-1908). "It will be done to maintain white supremacy." At the start of the 20th century, Birmingham, Ky., a tobacco center with a predominantly black population, became a battleground in a five-year siege by white marauders called Night Riders.

On March 8, 1908, about 100 armed whites tore through town, shooting seven blacks, three of them fatally. The AP documented cases of 14 black landowners who were driven from Birmingham. Together, they lost more than 60 acres of farmland and 21 city lots to whites - many at sheriff's sales, all for low prices. John Scruggs and his young granddaughter were killed in Birmingham that night. Property records show that the lot Scruggs had bought for $25 in 1902 was sold for nonpayment of taxes six years after the attack. A white man bought it for $7.25 (about $144 today). Today, Birmingham lies beneath a flood way created in the 1940s.

'THE LAW WOULDN'T HELP'

In Pierce City, Mo., 1,000 armed whites burned down five black-owned houses and killed four blacks on Aug. 18, 1901. Within days, all of the town's 129 blacks had fled, never to return, according to a contemporary report in The Lawrence Chieftain newspaper. The AP documented the cases of nine Pierce City blacks who lost 30 acres of farmland and 10 city lots. Whites bought it all at bargain prices.

Sometimes, individual black farmers were attacked by bands of white farmers known as the Whitecaps. Operating in several Southern and border states near the turn of the 20th century, they were intent on driving blacks from their land, said historian George C. Wright, provost at the University of Texas at Arlington.

"THE LAW WOULDN'T HELP," HE SAID. "THERE WAS JUST NO ONE TO TURN TO."

Whitecaps often nailed notes to the doors of black landowners, warning them to leave or die.

The warning to Eli Hilson of Lincoln County, Miss., came on Nov. 18, 1903, when Whitecaps shot up his house, The Brookhaven Leader newspaper reported at the time. Hilson ignored the warning. A month later, the 39-year- old farmer was shot dead. His wife, Hannah, struggled to raise their 11 children and work the 74-acre farm, but she could not manage without her husband. She lost the property through a mortgage foreclosure in 1905. Land records show the farm went for $439 to S.P. Oliver, a county supervisor. Today, the property is assessed at $61,642.

PART II : A legal maneuver is used to strip black Americans of their land. Dec 4, 2001
Legality Used To Take Land From Blacks
By TODD LEWAN and DOLORES BARCLAY
The Associated Press

Lawyers and real estate traders are stripping Americans of their ancestral land today, simply by following the law. It is done through a court procedure that is intended to help resolve land disputes but is being used to pry land from people who do not want to sell. Black families are especially vulnerable to it. The Becketts, for example, lost a 335-acre farm in Jasper County, S.C., that had been in their family since 1873.

And the Sanders clan watched helplessly as a timber company recently acquired 300 acres in Pickens County, Ala., that had been in their family since 1919.

Alvie Marsh of Choudrant, La., believes 80 acres belonging to his family was taken unfairly. "I've lived with that for 45 years," he said. Today, he lives in a shack on that part of the estate his family was able to keep.

THE PROCEDURE IS CALLED PARTITIONING, AND THIS IS HOW IT WORKS: Whenever a landowner dies without a will, the heirs - usually spouse and children - inherit the estate. They own the land in common, with no one person owning a specific part of it. If more family members die without wills, things can get messy within a couple of generations, with dozens of relatives owning the land in common. Anyone can buy an interest in one of these family estates; all it takes is a single heir willing to sell. And anyone who owns a share, no matter how small, can go to a judge and request that the entire property be sold at auction. Some land traders seek out such estates and buy small shares with the intention of forcing auctions. Family members seldom have enough money to compete, even when the high bid is less than market value. "Imagine buying one share of Coca-Cola and being able to go to court and demand a sale of the entire company," said Thomas Mitchell, a University of Wisconsin law professor who has studied partitioning. "That's what's going on here."

This can happen to anyone who owns land in common with others; laws allowing partition sales exist in every state. However, government and university studies show black landowners in the South are especially vulnerable because up to 83 percent of them do not leave wills - perhaps because rural blacks often lack equal access to the legal system.

Mitchell and others who have studied black landownership estimate that thousands of black families have lost millions of acres through partition sales in the past 30 years. By the end of the 1960s, civil rights legislation and social change had curbed the intimidation and violence that had driven many blacks from their land over the previous 100 years. Nevertheless, land loss did not stop. Since 1969, the decline has been particularly steep. Black Americans have lost 80 percent of the 5.5 million acres of farmland they owned in the South 32 years ago, according to the U.S. Agricultural Census. Partition sales, Pennick estimates, account for half of those losses. PARTITION SALES 'EASY' FOR JUDGES A judge is not required to order a partition sale just because someone requests it. Often, there are other options.

When the property is large enough for each owner to be given a useful parcel, it can be fairly divided. When those who want to keep the land outnumber those who want to sell, the court can help the majority arrange to buy out the minority. In at least one state, Alabama, the law gives family members first rights to buy out anyone who wants to sell. Yet, government and university studies show, alternatives to partition sales are rarely considered. When partition sales are requested, judges nearly always order them. "Judges order partition sales because it's easy," said Jesse Dukeminier, an emeritus professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Appraising and dividing property takes time and effort, he said. Partition statutes exist for a reason: to help families resolve impossible tangles that can develop when land is passed down through several generations without wills. In Rankin County, Miss., for example, the 66 heirs to an 80-acre black family estate could not agree on what to do with the land. One family member, whose portion was the size of a house lot, wanted her share separated from the estate. Three other heirs, who owned shares the size of parking spaces, opposed dividing the land because what they owned would have become worthless. So in 1979, the court ordered the land sold and the proceeds divided. Even when the process works as intended, it contributes to the decline in black-owned land; the property nearly always ends up in the hands of white developers or corporations. The Rankin County land was bought at auction by a timber company.

But the process doesn't always work as intended. Land traders who buy shares of estates with the intention of forcing partition sales are abusing the law, according to a 1985 Commerce Department study. The practice is legal but "clearly unscrupulous," declared the study, which was conducted for the department by the Emergency Land Fund, a nonprofit group that helped Southern blacks retain threatened land in the 1970s and '80s.

Blacks have lost land through partitioning for decades; the AP found several cases in the 1950s. But in recent years, it has become big business. Legal fees for bringing partition actions can be high - often 20 percent of the proceeds from the land sales. Families, in effect, end up paying the fees of the lawyers who separate them from their land. CAN'T ALWAYS TRUST THEIR LAWYERS

Moreover, black landowners cannot always count on their own lawyers. Sometimes, the Commerce Department study found, attorneys representing blacks filed partition actions that were against their clients' interests. The Associated Press found several cases in which black landowners, unfamiliar with property law, inadvertently set partition actions in motion by signing legal papers they did not understand.

Once the partition actions began, the landowners found themselves powerless to stop them.

The AP studied 14 partition cases in detail, reviewing lawsuit files and interviewing participants. The cases stretched across Southern and border states. In nearly every case, the partition action was initiated by a land trader or lawyer rather than a family member. In most cases, land traders bought small shares of black family estates, sometimes from heirs who were elderly, mentally disabled or in prison, and then sought partition sales. All 14 estates were acquired from black families by whites or corporations, usually at bargain prices
 

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