- Announcer: Funding for this program has been provided
in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
and by the financial support of viewers like you.
[wind whooshing] [gentle music]
- Narrator: The jail is empty now.
The wind blows through broken windows
and the paint has blistered and peeled back with time.
The past has left its mark here.
Traces of stories are carved into walls,
suggested by what remains.
There is a history here that can be read
through the rust and stains, read by the shadows.
In this deserted prison in Marion, Indiana,
there is one story from these halls
that through its telling, peels back a larger story
in our country's history.
Seldom told, seldom acknowledged,
it is a shadow that falls to present day and beyond.
It is a common stain on our past,
our country's legacy of lynching.
- James Cameron: So the mob came back, told the crowd,
said "Cameron's not in here."
And they said, "Yes, he is, and we want him."
And then they began to chant for me like a football player.
"We want Cameron, we want Cameron, we want Cameron."
And I could feel my body feel like I was encased
in a ice suit.
I was just cold all over.
[gentle guitar music]
[fire crackling]
- Narrator: James Cameron,
one man's story of a lynching in Marion.
- It was in this spot right here that the lynching took place.
August 7th, 1930.
I was 16 years old, Tommy was 18, and Abe was 19.
- Narrator: August 7th, 1930.
Herbert Hoover was president,
it was Dust Bowl days in the Plains,
and the Depression was just beginning.
On August 7th, 1930, this man, James Cameron,
survived a lynching in Marion, Indiana.
His two friends did not.
It's hard to know exact figures, but certainly thousands
and thousands of Americans have been lynched in this country
in nearly every state of the Union, from the Deep South
to Duluth, Minnesota, for all matter of crimes,
real or imagined, from stealing cattle to consorting
with white women, from refusing to leave their land,
to asking a little girl to read a letter for them.
For all matter of offenses, justice was fractured
and fell to mob rule, and Americans were lynched.
Some describe it with the word "holocaust,"
a great destruction. [fire crackling]
This is James Cameron's story.
One entry in the ledger, one chapter in this larger story.
- Back in 1930, they was lynching us
all over the country, one or two every week, see,
in some parts of the United States.
And it wasn't nothing never done about it.
- Narrator: Cameron's story began
when he was a 16-year-old boy
out with his two older friends, Tommy Shipp and Abram Smith,
on a hot, sultry night in Marion, Indiana.
[wind whooshing]
He began the story for us miles from Marion
in an interview from his current home
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
- See, we, we had been pitching horseshoe that night.
Whole bunch of us out in the neighbor's backyard.
And it was August 6th, 1930.
And that night, the moon was shining as bright as day.
Those kind of Indiana nights, you know.
And I was just getting ready to go home,
and they asked me would I like to go for a ride?
And I said, I didn't mind that.
And then when we got in the car,
then they'd suggested that we hold up somebody,
and I wanted to get out of the car
and they wouldn't let me out.
So we got on out there and I kept following them
like I was tied to 'em.
And I got myself in a whole lot of trouble.
- Narrator: We all grow up with certain pictures
in our minds, images that hold our history,
stories told in black and white.
For generations of Black children
growing up in this country,
pictures like these told the story of racism.
These images served as a form of social control.
Pictures like these burned in a lesson: a lesson of fear.
[fire crackling]
- We parked the car,
and we got out of the car and I followed them,
just as if I was tied to 'em.
I could hear the fish jumping in the river
that ran alongside the Lover's Lane.
And you could hear the crickets singing their songs.
Shows you how stupid I was, how silly I was,
trying to keep up with my peers,
showing that I'm just as brave as they were, you know.
[crickets chirping]
- Narrator: Some 60 years ago,
this was a deserted Lover's Lane surrounded by farm fields,
where Cameron followed his friends into crime.
Some 60 years later, Cameron walks the site
just southeast of Marion, where as a 16-year-old boy,
who had never been in trouble before,
he listened to a friend's appeal and made an awful mistake.
He joined their plan to rob a couple on Lover's Lane.
- So like an idiot, I took the gun and went up to the car
and opened the car window, and I said, "Stick 'em up."
And when I said that,
the couple in the backseat of the car came out.
The man came out first
and then the young girl, they were both white.
Her face was lovely and pale and frightened.
And when I looked at this man, I said, "Holy smokes."
This was a man that used to come into the interurban station
where I worked, and he used to come in
and get his shoes shined all the time
and I was his shoeshine boy.
I mean, he tipped me and we'd laugh and talk and everything.
When I looked up and saw him, I said,
"Holy smokes, I got no business being here."
So I gave the gun to Tommy and I said,
"I'm not gonna have anything to do with you guys."
And I left.
And soon as I left, about 5 or 10 minutes later
I'd run away from there, I imagine I'd gone about three
or four blocks when I heard some shooting, sort of
bang, bang, bang, just like that.
Well, I might've been foolish, but I wasn't crazy.
I wasn't going back to see who was shooting who.
- Narrator: Old newspaper accounts, grainy and faded,
show photos of 21-year-old Claude Deeter, shot four times,
and his fiancée, 19-year-old Mary Ball.
- I kept on running, and there was a car coming down
the Lover's Lane,
and the headlights was flooding the road.
I jumped over into some bushes and ducked down
so the headlights wouldn't see me
as I was running towards it.
And I was hoping some snake or something
wouldn't bite me as I lay there in the bush.
And when the car passed, I got up and ran across
the 38th Street bridge and hit the railroad tracks
and ran all the way home.
And when I got home,
it looked like I'd been dipped in Lake Michigan.
My clothes were just hanging there with sweat.
So my mother opened the door and said,
"What's the matter, you in some kind of trouble?"
I said, "No, Mother, I've been playing football
"at Old Man Henderson's field," I lied to her.
I think about that now, how I lied to my mother.
And she said, "You in some kind of trouble?"
I said, "No, Mom."
And she could tell I was lying, though,
'cause you know how mothers have a habit
of looking at children, they can tell what's happening.
She was that kind of a mother.
About 2 o'clock that morning, there was a big rap on the door,
and I knew it was the police, instinctively.
They wanted to know, did James Cameron live here?
She said, "Yeah, he's my son.
"What's happened, what's he done?"
And they said, "Where is he?"
And she said, "He's upstairs in bed."
So they came right on past her.
And she was screaming and hollering
and having hysterical fits.
That woman was going crazy.
Said, "What's he done, he's my only boy.
"What's he done, tell me, what's he done?
"What kind of trouble is he in?"
And then she said, "Lord, have mercy.
"Lord, give me a strength.
Jesus help me," and all that, see?
And I could hear all this
as the cops was coming up the stairs,
and they pulled the sheet back and said,
"You're James Cameron?" I said, "Yeah."
They said, "Get up, the chief of police wants to see you."
So I got up, sat on the edge of the bed,
and I started putting my clothes on.
And one of the cops said, "Did you tell your mother
"what you and the boys did tonight?"
I said, "I haven't done nothing."
And one of them said, "The hell you haven't."
Said, "You went out here and you raped a white woman
"and you killed a white man."
"Shot a white man," he said, not killed him.
Said, "You shot a white man."
And I said, "Oh no, I don't know nothing about that."
And I began to wonder what really had happened.
So they took me downstairs
and carried me right on out the door.
And my mother was begging them to take her instead of me.
She felt like it was somehow her fault
that I was in trouble.
And I can see my mother standing there
in the doorway right now,
crying and begging the police to take her instead of me.
You know, we had a kerosene lamp
and I could see the silhouette of her body at a door
as they took me out, and I looked back.
And I told Mom, "Don't worry, I'll be right back."
Biggest lie I ever told in my life.
- Narrator: The Ku Klux Klan,
the lynchings, the cross burnings,
often thought to be a Southern phenomenon
from after the Civil War.
But this footage is from the 1920s,
a time when the Klan was at its height.
In 1925, they were able to summon some 50,000 members
for a March in Washington.
They were a powerful force on our nation's political scene,
and the locus of their power was the state of Indiana.
Some historians contend that
up to 1/3 of the white male population of Indiana
belonged to the Klan, that they controlled the legislature
and other state offices.
In the 1920s, the National Grand Dragon of the Klan,
D.C. Stephenson, called Indiana home.
Stephenson said, "I am the law in Indiana."
[gentle guitar music]
Cameron was taken from his home
to the police station for questioning.
- I was frightened out of my wits.
And one policeman was standing on the back of my chair
and all at once, I was hit upside the head
and I saw a million stars.
I fell down on the floor and I was just laying there
like a fish out of water, just trying to gasp for breath.
And they were kicking me and beating me and everything.
And finally somebody said, "Halt, stop it."
And they stopped it, and they grabbed me and slammed me
back in the chair like I was a snake or something.
And then the sheriff put the paper in front of me
and said, "Sign this."
And my mother had always told us kids
before we sign anything, always read it.
And like an idiot, being foolish again,
I got down like I wanted to read
what it was that he's written,
and I got hit upside the head again.
And this cop that hit me said,
"Damn it," said, "the sheriff said sign it, not read it."
And with a trembling hand, I signed what it was.
- Narrator: Accused through the confession
of attempted murder and the rape of a white woman,
Cameron was then taken here, the Grant County jail in Marion.
Cameron and his friends, Tommy and Abe,
were kept in separate cells, separate cell blocks.
- They had Abe in this cell block over here
and they had Tommy in this cell block over here.
Then they went upstairs and put me in the cell block
right up over Tommy's cell block on the first floor.
- Narrator: This prison was built like a fortress.
The brick walls are three feet thick.
Escape would seem impossible.
- Now this is the cell block where they had me incarcerated.
They had 29 Black men in here and 4 white men
crowded in this little space.
So I come in here and I lay down on that dirty tick mattress.
It didn't have any springs in it or nothing, you know.
And I cried till no more tears could come.
[gentle guitar music]
- Narrator: The lesson was fear.
It was taught by intimidation.
Lynching victims were seldom just lynched.
After a lynching,
their bodies were often used for target practice.
Sometimes thousands of rounds were fired.
Their bodies were often mutilated, often burned.
Sometimes when the Klan ran through Black neighborhoods,
they would leave small whips, miniature coffins,
as a kind of calling card.
They were truly scare tactics cloaked in rituals
of humiliation meant to impose their social order,
white over Black.
[gentle guitar music]
- I came in in the morning, about 2 o'clock in the morning,
and the crowd began gathering about 8 o'clock
that morning, about six hours later,
people began to form circles around the jail.
- Narrator: At 1:30 in the afternoon
on Thursday, August 7th, Claude Deeter died from his wounds.
- I was here when they came back and shook me and said,
"Hey, wake up, wake up.
"They're throwing bricks through the window.
"They're trying to break in."
I got up out of my cell block,
I ran up the cell block as quick as I could,
and I ran out into the bullpen here.
- Narrator: By 8:00 that evening,
a crowd of some 10,000 had surrounded the jail in Marion
and demanded the prisoners, Thomas Shipp,
Abram Smith, and James Cameron.
They stormed the jail, ignoring pleas and tear gas bombs,
to search for the prisoners.
They used wooden traffic signs and sledges
to beat down eight doors to reach the prisoners.
- I saw the mob when they brought Tommy and Abe
out through the front door of the jail.
They beat Tommy and drug him around to the side
and hung him on the jail window
where, the cell block where Abe was incarcerated.
And then they came back and they got Abe out and took him,
beat him to death, drug him up to the courthouse square,
which is just a block away.
Then they came back and took Tommy down
from the jail window and drug him through the streets.
I could see them dragging him through the streets.
The police, instead of clearing the street
of rabble-rousers, they were making the crowd get back
so they could take Tommy up to the jail
without any hindrance.
And then they came back to get me.
Now, the mob went over to this 16-year-old-boy
and asked him what his name was,
and he said, "My name is Charles Hands."
And they asked me my name,
and I said, "My name is Henry Burton."
I wasn't about to tell them my name was James Cameron.
So just then the sheriff came in, he had two guns.
One was in his holster and one was hanging down on his side.
It was hot that summer night, August 7th, 1930.
And he said, "Come on, let's get the hell out of here.
"So you done hung two of them,"
said, "That ought to be enough to satisfy you."
And then they said, "Cameron ain't in there anyway,"
said, "Come on, let's get the hell out of here."
So he went out with the mob.
So the mob came back, told the crowd,
said, "Cameron's not in here."
And they said, "Yes, he is, and we want him."
And then they began to chant for me like a football player.
"We want Cameron, we want Cameron, we want Cameron."
And I could feel,
my body feel like I was encased in a ice suit.
I was just cold all over.
And to think they wanted me that bad.
People whom I thought were my friends,
people whose lawn I'd mowed, and whose cars I'd washed,
and whose errands I'd run for 'em,
and whose shoes I'd shined.
People I knew were in the mob, neighbors.
- Narrator: Lynchings were not secret things
to be hidden away.
Often a public spot was chosen.
A tree that had been used previously or a railroad bridge,
so that everyone could see the body as they drove by.
Sometimes other Black people would be forced to watch
as a lynching victim's body was burned.
Lynching was not a private crime.
It was meant to be a public horror.
[gentle guitar music]
- But here was 10,000 to 15,000 people
out there, screaming for my blood.
And then they came back to get me.
And I could hear 'em coming up the stairs
and there was no place to hide.
I didn't even have time to pray.
The leaders of the mob broke into the jail,
opened the cell block where I was.
And that guy said, "Cameron's in here," and said,
"if you don't tell us where he is," said,
"we're gonna lynch every goddam one of you."
Said, "We're gonna take you out and lynch you all."
Finally, he gave the order to take all of us out and hang us.
So this boy's father, this 16-year-old boy's father,
he fell down on his knees and he said,
"No, Mr. White Folks, please don't do that."
And this white man took and hit him
and knocked him down on the floor and told him,
said, "Damn it," said, "you bastard,
"you better tell us where he is.
"You don't, we're gonna lynch every damn one of you."
That goes on for 5 or 10 minutes, just a regular bedlam.
Confusion.
Oh, it was awful.
You had to see it, to have lived it, to believe it.
[sniffling]
Finally, this man, the father of the 16-year-old boy,
beaten out of his senses,
scared to death of white people.
He raised up off the floor,
he said, "There he is right there."
And his hand was shaking just like that
when he said, "There he is."
And when he said that, the mob turned towards me
and they began to close in on me, and all hell broke loose.
- Narrator: The mob turned on Cameron.
As the crowd beat him and dragged him through the halls,
he noticed the police cleared a path
so he could be more easily moved to the courthouse square.
- I look into the faces of the people
as they were beating me up there,
and I was pleading for help
and nobody offered help or nothing.
And they finally got me up to the tree
and there was Tommy and Abe hanging on the tree.
And then they said, "Where's the rope?"
They got the rope, and they put the rope around my neck
and I kind of blacked out momentarily.
I remember my mother had told us to always pray to God,
and she brought us up that way, to pray.
And I still pray to this very day
the way my mother taught me to pray.
And she said, "Always ask for forgiveness."
And I said, "Lord, forgive me of my sins
"and have mercy on me."
And just then, after they had pushed me up onto the tree
where Tommy and Abe were hanging and were getting ready
to hoisten me up, a voice, a mysterious voice,
rang out from heaven and said, "Take this boy back.
"He had nothing to do with any killing."
And instantly, it seemed like everything stood
perfectly still, like I was in a petrified forest.
And I could see strips of, like rolls of wallpaper,
like in a negative photography studio.
And I could see images through these strips of negatives
that was hanging all around me.
And I couldn't tell whether the people were white or Black.
And that happened just like an eternity
and then back to consciousness again.
And then all at once,
the hands that had killed became soft and kind and tender,
and they removed the rope from around my neck,
and I was able to stagger back to the jail.
[gentle guitar music]
- Narrator: From news accounts about August 7th, 1930:
"After the hanging, the mob attempted to burn the body
"of Shipp, hanging 25 feet in the air.
"Rubbish and packing boxes
"were piled under the corpse and ignited.
"His body hung too high to be touched by the flames.
"The bodies, almost nude and stiffened,
"were lowered to the ground at 5:26 this morning
"by Sheriff Campbell and his deputies.
"Earlier in the night, Coroner O.L. Stout of Upland
"had started to cut the bodies down,
"but was warned away.
"The bodies were to be left hanging there until noon today,
"as an example, he was told."
After he was returned to the jail,
Cameron was hustled to the side entrance
and taken to Huntington, Indiana for safekeeping.
[wind whooshing]
History is, in part, an exercise in remembering
what we choose to remember,
how we place events in our common past,
how we place events.
Some news accounts placed the uncle of Mary Ball,
Claude Deeter's fiancée, at the scene.
They claim he had called out to intercede to save Cameron.
Here is how the events in Marion concluded.
Cameron served four years
as an accessory to the murder of Claude Deeter.
Mary Ball stated during the trial
that Cameron had fled the scene before the shooting started.
She also said that she had never been raped.
No one in the lynching mob ever served time
for their crimes.
The sheriff was exonerated.
And in the end, Cameron moved from Marion
to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he married, had a family,
and was never again in trouble with the law.
But the memory of Marion persisted.
- Cameron: You have to know what happened in the past,
of what's happening now so you can plan for the future.
If you don't know your past, you're a nobody.
You're a nobody if you don't have a history.
- Narrator: Cameron wrote a book about his experiences
called A Time of Terror,
and he hopes to document the experiences of others
with the creation of what he calls
America's Black Holocaust Museum.
It will be centered in Milwaukee
and it will be a permanent record,
a way of remembering this awful history.
Cameron hopes to open a branch of the museum here
to let this jail stand witness
to the events of August 7th, 1930, a lynching in Marion,
one chapter in a larger story.
[gentle guitar music]
[light music]
- Announcer: Funding for this program has been provided
in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
and by the financial support of viewers like you.