The Story of James Cameron

There have been many infamous photographs taken during America’s dark time of racism. Among one happened not in the South but in the heartland—Marion, Indiana.

This particular photograph had inspired poet, Abel Meeropol, to write the song Strange Fruit, which became one of Billie Holiday’s greatest hits. The emotions of Meeropol, perhaps, aren't different compared to anyone who views the picture today. You would not be human if it didn't spark an unnerving anger as you see someone’s son or brother hanging lifeless on a maple tree.

Worse, the crowd that swelled by the thousands stood proudly in front of photographer, Lawrence Beilter, which later sold the photograph for fifty cents. With boasting smiles and pointing fingers in the photograph as if they were at a County Fair, there was supposed to been a third person on that lone branch. Yet his life was spared.

On August 6, 1930—eighty-one miles from the capitol of Indianapolis—James Cameron (16), Thomas Shipp (18), and Abram Smith (19) were accused of armed robbery and murder of factory worker, Claude Deeter, and the rape of his companion, Mary Ball.

By Cameron’s accounts in a 2006 Washington Post article, he recalled Shipp and Smith wanted to rob someone and saw Deeter’s car parked at Lover’s Lane. Cameron remembered one of the teens placing a gun his hand but when he discovered the man in the car was the person he shined shoes in town, he refused and ran home. While in his pursuit, the sixteen-year-old heard ringing of gunshots. He continued his mission home without looking back.

The youths were later arrested and sent to jail, and the news of the murder and rape went rapidly through the small town—forming an angry mob. Indiana University Professor and the Author of, Lynching in the Heartland, James H. Madison wrote: “The mob broke into the jail and removed the prisoners. First Shipp was hanged through the bar windows and dragged to a maple tree to the town’s square and lynched.”

The facts if Shipp or Smith were already dead before the noose went around their necks were sketchy. In an online video, Marion Indiana 1930 Lynching, there were actual witnesses speaking in detail of that night. One of the witnesses had said Abram Smith was alive all the way to the tree. "As they placed the noose around his neck, he tried to loosen rope but the mob lowered him back down to break his arms and hoister him up again and lynched him."

Another witness from same video said the crowd began to sound like spectators at a football game by chanting: “We want Cameron!” In a February 2003 article with the Associated Press, Cameron vividly described the moment as he was led through the crowd: “Pearl-white glowing moon, the roar of the frenzied mob, and the rough hands forcing my head into the noose.”

While waiting for his demise, he began to pray to God for his sins. Cameron said a voice came from the crowd. “Take this boy back—he had nothing to with any killing or raping”. According to him the voice sounded angelic, almost as if came from Heaven. He also continued to say the crowd became quiet and obeyed. They released Cameron, and he returned back to the jail.

Cameron was later convicted and served four years in prison for the crime. And at the age of twenty-one he was released and began his new life with hope. He moved to Detroit and worked in a factory. As Cameron settled into married life, he returned to Indiana to live in the town of Anderson. Yvonne Shinhoster in a Washington Post article wrote that he owned the only black business in town—a combination of shoeshine parlor, record shop, and knickknack store.

James Cameron

 For ten years living the Indiana town, Cameron founded three Indiana chapters of the NAACP and served as Indiana State Director of the Office of Civil Liberties, but his passion for civil rights work grew difficult in the heavily-Klan state—so he moved his family North. Cameron’s initial intention was to go Canada but stopped in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for prospective job opportunities. He became a self-taught historian as well as working for a brewery and enrolled at a local trade school to become a boiler engineer. Cameron continued his civil rights quest by working with Father James Groppe to end housing discrimination in the city.

In the late-1970’s, he and his wife went to Israel and was inspired by a trip to Yad Vashem Memorial—a museum to remember the Holocaust victims. Cameron were so moved by what he saw that he told his wife it should be a museum in the United States to honor the lost lives of African Americans from racial injustice.

When he returned to Milwaukee he was determined to build the museum that told the stories of thousands of Americans—of whom were predominately black—lynched from 1882 to 1968. More importantly, it would be an institution to house the contributions and sacrifices of African Americans. “I wonder if God saved me for this mission” Cameron later said to the Associated Press. “It had to be. And I thank him for that”.

In addition of opening The Black Holocaust Museum, James Cameron published his memoirs in 1982 titled, A Time of Terror as well publishing articles and booklets; such as, What is Equality in American Life and The Lingering Problem.

In 1993, Cameron was pardon by the Indiana Governor, Evan Bayh and the Mayor of Marion, Indiana—the town that changed his life forever—by giving him the key to the city. In 2005 he went to Washington D.C. in frailty of his life, for the U.S. Senate apology for the failure to end lynching.

On June 11, 2006, James Cameron—the only person to have known to survived lynching—passed away at 92. He left a lasting legacy spanning from that sweltering night in Marion, Indiana, to neighboring town of Anderson leaving an imprint of his civil right causes, and to Milwaukee where a simple dream became a reality—the Black Holocaust Museum.

In a video titled “Marion Indiana 1930 Lynching, Cameron proved he was beyond the resentment from leftover scars from racism after his pardon: “Indiana forgave me, and I forgave Indiana”. 

Sources:

ChicagoReader.com – online article, Fredrick H. Lowe

Hypetext.com – online article, unknown author

NPR.com – online article, unknown author

NPR.com – online article, Abel Meeropol Biography, unknown author

Washington Post – online article, Yvonne Shinhoster, June 13, 2006

Youtube.com – Strange Fruit, Billie Holiday

Youtube.com – Marion Indiana 1930 Lynching

Youtube.com – James Cameron, Being Saved from Lynching

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Beauty: From the Inside and Out

Our self worth—it’s that main ingredient that makes us strong and a better person. Without it, self-pity can tame our true selves. However there’s one question to ponder—why do we as humans allow our pain to define us?

The question looms in my debut novel (titled to be announced later) about my main character’s self-worth. She suffered many storms including years of domestic abuse—and when that chapter of her life had ended—she moved on but did the suffering as battered woman define her? The brutal beatings, the name calling, and the unwanted forced desire upon her spouse all left a burden in her heart for years. My character’s psyche—unknowingly—allowed one person’s act to define of who and what she was. And unfortunately, there are millions of women like her.

I won’t get into the details if my character’s strength has helped overcome her demons—you just have wait this summer until the release of my book. However, there are women you may know, or it could be you, or it could be me that has allowed our pain to define us.

Beauty is more than just wearing short dresses, Mac products, and Maybelline—beauty is an inner glow that shine of our confidence. It’s the ingredient that brews our self worth. We know we deserved to be loved and yet choose to stay in questionable relationships. Or become bitter from heartbreak because our pain is too great to love again.

Love is not supposed to hurt you, or strip you from your true self. Love is not meant to be used as a weapon for guilt and shame. Love shouldn't be used as rage, or inflate one’s person ego while leaving another in tears.

In essence, self worth doesn't discriminate. There are men that walk with prominent scars of abuse. Their invisible tears hide behind their pain, confusion, and guilt from their childhood, or suffered heartbreak from a woman’s bitterness all because she would rather hurt them before she’d get hurt. It’s a mere reciprocation of pain.

In a blog I wrote years ago about bitterness, anger, and pity—and how it would lead to heartache and pain. I've taken this quote from the text because it rings so true: We are KINGS and QUEENS of our destiny; the Authors of our own story, and the Painters of our canvasses. We can fight it, we can do it, and we can be it!

So, again, are you going to let your past define you, or learn from it to manifest it into the person you are meant to be?


Courtesy: Put A Wedge In It (Katrina Gurl, Inc). This blog is a must follow!

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AN OPEN LETTER....

In a recent news story, MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry recited a powerful open letter to Indiana’s Senatorial Candidate, Richard Murdoch toward the end of her self-titled show on his recent remarks of how it was God’s will for a woman to get rape and pregnant by her attacker. The video of Ms. Perry was so inspiring that I've decided to express the same sentiment. Yet my open letter is not to Mr. Murdoch but to a group of people that I've met during my lifetime—my attackers.

Dear Sad and Unfortunate Ones,

After going through years of counseling and prayers, I've come to terms as to why every relationship I've been in went awry; or why I end up in inappropriate affairs, or why I accepted being the second option, the backup, and the two a.m. booty-call. Every relational decision I've made, every tear I've cried, every how-did-I-get-into-this-situation rant, every self-loathing, suicidal thought and guilt, all stems back to you—the cowardly attacker.

However, I won’t give you the satisfaction of placing all of my bad choices firmly on you because the key word in this sentence is CHOICE. The backbone I should’ve grown to end that madness was a part of me. The only thing I place squarely on you is most likely you've been abused yourself—either sexually, physically, or suffered some type of neglect—but it doesn't matter. What you've endured on me, I didn't inflict on someone’s child—I didn't continue an ugly cycle of lifetime pain and mistrust. I'd chose to move on with my life the best way I knew how, despite carrying that shame and guilt. My personal hell was mine alone, but that was less I can say about you. Your choice was based on selfishness, and didn't give a flying fuck about the consequences.

But that wasn't what it was about, wasn't it? Rather, it was a few minutes of lust to sooth your pleasure. To make you feel superior next to my vulnerability. Just because you suffered abuse with the images of whomever had hurt you playing your head, you chose to inflict that same hurt on the defenseless. Releasing your anger and rage by fondling my sacred parts or elevating it by penetrating deep into my innocence--you flat out didn't care as long as you got it. Then after you reached your shameful point, you knew how much you've hurt me—the window to my soul was transparent. You went your way and I went mine, as if nothing had happened.

The salutation in this letter, however, is plural, and yet I’m treating this as one act because the guilt and shame I wore for years. At the tender age of eight I was confused with her inappropriate touch that left me wondering, this is wrong but why does it feel good? Then my confusion turned into fear two years later when he crushed any trust I had in men—and then that mistrust turned into self-hatred when I was sixteen…I became the train at a party.

So to you, Sad and Unfortunate people, please don’t take this open letter as pity. My words are my strength. Your few minutes of perversion only gave me temporary grief. I chose not to swim in your bullshit but gathered any strength I had to not let the past define me—or you define me. I chose to wake every morning and rejoice on the future; I chose writing as my therapy to blossom into something more; I’ve chosen happiness; I’ve chosen the free will God gave me to use my gift as awareness for lost souls like you—and more importantly, I’m choosing not to be the victim or just surviving but to thrive. I’m holding the keys now and not you.

Sad and Unfortunate one, this may come as a shock to you but I do forgive you. Though, I’m not doing this for your benefit but for mine. I have to free myself from your psychological bondage to love myself the way I should’ve done years ago. You, however, need to do the same to whoever hurt you. That person had planted your seed of a pedophiliac life. So I’ll ask you this, when will it ever stop? When will you fight those personal demons and stop the cycle? Although you cannot go back in time and return my innocence, you should rectify the wrongs by opening your eyes at you've created. At least facing them is a start and to understand what you've become.

As an author of Zion’s Road I do believe in second chances—everyone no matter how much they screwed their lives or to others—they, too, deserves a chance to get their life right. So, I’m going to leave it up to you with your thoughts and the past. There’s nothing you can do to me. I’m too empowered to even worry about the yesterdays because your selfishness didn't break me; it only strengthened me.

You see, I’m still standing.

Sincerely,

Imani Wisdom

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