Dark Days

It was a great day today overall, but a bit of a dark day in my Wikipedic Life. A friend's quip over email about tarring and feathering for me became a bit of the exploration into the history of vigilantism, mob violence, and domestic terrorism.

• Tar and Feather: As I mentioned, a friend made a quip over email about getting tarred and feathered. We seem so far from the days of actual tarring and feathering, that I wondered about a couple things:
  
  1) Was tarring and feathering more of a humiliating prank, or did it cause actual bodily harm?
  
  2) Was tarring and feathering inflicted upon black Americans, particularly in early pre-20th century American life?
  
  Sadly, yes, it caused physical harm. Hot tar cooling on the skin was enough to cause 1st degree burns on the victim. From my EMT days, I know that by the rule of 9s 1st degree burns over a significant part of the body or on vital areas including the face amount to serious medical risk.
  
  Another much more brutal practice called pitchcapping involving hot tar poured into a conical cap applied to a brutally shorn scalp - the shaving itself often resulted in avulsed skin and amputated ears. As if not brutal enough, the cap would be ripped off the victim. You can use your imagination to consider what happened then. Suffice it to say, excruciating pain, mutilation, and sometimes death were the result. During the 1798 Rebellion in Ireland this torture was commonly inflicted by the British against suspected and captured Irishmen.
  
  This leads me to my other question. Yes, tarring and feathering was one of many humiliations and tortures inflicted upon Black Americans especially in the ante-bellum South in order to terrorize Black citizens and their communities.
  
  Early documentation of tar and feathering showed the practice among Patriots before and during the Revolutionary War. Loyalists discovered by their communities would be subjected to this treatment at the hands of the mob, again humiliating and/or hurting the victim and sending a strong message to other would-be loyalists.
• Pillory: Though tar and feathering wasn't generally a state-sanctioned punishment for criminals and others deemed undesirables (though many accounts include elected officials participating in or leading intent mobs), the pillory was a very public symbol of official corporal punishment, discipline, and power. Usually in a town square or other central location (churches or market squares were also common sites) a pilloried criminal would be subjected to the taunting and missiles of crowds. Rotten eggs and vegetables on the benign side. Heavy stones on the more malicious if not lethal side.
  
  For all the folks look fondly on the good ole days or beat their chests about being tough on crime, there you go. But remember, even Jesus wasn't too fond of the good ole days. Otherwise, why would He have said let he who is without sin cast the first stone? And with that...unleash the ecumenical hounds! ;-)
• Lynching: Inevitably any foray into vigilante mob violence lead me to lynching. I thought specifically of a speech in the fantastic movie from last year, The Great Debaters. If you haven't seen it and it's still open somewhere, drop what you're doing and go see it. Even if it's the dollar theater with the sticky floors, just go! You can wash your shoes after.
  
  Anyhow, Denzel's character gives a stirring speech about the origins of lynching surrounding a certain Willie Lynch. He was supposed to be early America's answer to Torquemada advising slave owners on unleashing the darkest most abysmal tortures upon disobedient slaves while forcing the others to watch. A practice intended to break mind, body, and spirit. Practices whose wounds have yet to heal to this day.
  
  The story of Lynch and his ties to Lynch's Law and the practice of lynching are disputed by Wikipedia's entries, yet in some ways remained vague. Perhaps William Lynch's story is apocryphal. Perhaps it personifies the quiet brutality of a social standard, a cultural climate, a rule by mob. And just because we, in this country, have given up the implements of physical terrorism can we truly say we've defeated the mob? Has the mob merely gone to sleep for a while? Or has it found quieter tools?

There's been talk periodically about a growing anti-intellectual bent beginning to hold sway in our own society. Which is why I think it's okay to have a dark day every now and again. We need to look back and see the place and time we've progressed from, to understand where we've come to, and most importantly, why we left the old days behind.

It becomes clearer why at our best we opt for crime prevention and rehabilitation instead of humiliation and abuse. Why we have courts, attorneys, laws and legal precedent to help settle our inevitable disputes. Why the religious and secular lessons of seeing the planks in our own eyes, dropping the stones at to feet, and turning the other cheek are not just revered but holy. We can't be so quick to forsake our enlightenment. Not while there remains such a long trail of darkness with which we're yet to grapple.

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