What Do You Do After Surviving Your Own Lynching

February 16, 2017 12:53 PM

On August 7, 1930, three black teenagers were lynched in Marion, Indiana. James Cameron was one of them. He lived.

Cameron, the only known survivor of an American lynching, lived to 92 and committed his life to antiracism work, including founding the American Black Holocaust Museum. (Cameron previously on MetaFilter.)
posted by Etrigan (7 comments total)

This is a very powerful article and worth your time today. Thank you for sharing it. As painful as it is to read, its both a portrait of a remarkable person and of a terrible time (and a time we seem to have collectively forgotten in the USA).
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:12 PM on February 16, 2017 [11 favorites]

Holy cow. That was a difficult read, but I feel better for having gained important information about American history and the tenacity of one amazing human being. Thanks for sharing, Etrigan.
posted by holyrood at 6:43 PM on February 16, 2017 [4 favorites]

What a treasure James Cameron is. was. is.

I'll be posting this to my various social networks to keep his legacy alive.
posted by desuetude at 10:22 PM on February 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

I worked at the newspaper in Marion for the decade of the '90s. We did our own story with Cameron sometime in that era. What I found both interesting and frustrating was that our managing editor wouldn't allow us to use that famous photo of the lynching: there were still too many people in the photo living in Marion and recognizable from it. Some of us argued that was all the more reason to run it, but we were outvoted by the boss.
posted by bryon at 3:28 AM on February 17, 2017 [12 favorites]

I'm a college librarian. We put up a display of relevant books for African-American History Month. I'm going to print this and add it to the display.
posted by mareli at 5:58 AM on February 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

What a powerful piece, and what a man. Thanks for sharing.
posted by imperium at 7:51 AM on February 17, 2017

Thank you for sharing, I needed to read that. I moved to the US as an adult and shamefully only have a superficial knowledge of the terrors of lynchings. I realize now that I truly need to educate myself, this is not a subject that deserves superficiality.
posted by lydhre at 8:41 AM on February 18, 2017