Torture, Mr. President?

Torture- Mr. President?

By Rev. Wayne Perryman


Torture? I’m so glad you brought up the subject. Mr. President and Attorney General Holder, Conservative African Americans have been waiting a lifetime to have this conversation. But before you and the sensitive members of the Democratic Party start with the Bush Administration, why don’t we review the torture tactic of the Democratic Party.

The chronicles of history reveal that in areas controlled by Democrats, Democrats used every form of torture to keep blacks in their place. Lynching, whippings, murder, intimidation, assassinations and mutilations were commonplace in jurisdictions where Democrats were in control. In addition to individual torture entire black communities were destroyed and burned to the ground in such places like: Wilmington, North Carolina, Rosewood, Florida, and the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to name a few. The one thing that all of these communities had in common, is what realtors often say: location, location, location. They were all located in states and counties controlled by Democratic officials. According to the renowned African American history professor, John Hope Franklin, the atrocities committed against African Americans in these regions, “were so varied and so numerous as to defy classification or enumeration.”

The Encyclopaedia Britannica reported that from the beginning, “Democrat resentment [of black freedom and equality under Reconstruction] led to the formation of the secret terroristic organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Knight of the White Camelia. The use of fraud, violence and intimidation helped Southerns... regain control of their state governments, by the time the last federal troops had been withdrawn in 1877, the Democratic Party was back in power.”[1]

Other noted history professors also wrote about these atrocities, including:

a. Professor James McPherson of Princeton University
b. Professor David Herbert Donald of Harvard University
c. Professor Allen W. Trelease of North Carolina University
d. Professor Howard O. Lindsey of DePaul University.


Professor Allen Trelease said: “Klansmen in disguise rode through Negro neighborhoods at night warning Negroes either to cast Democratic ballots or stay away from the poll. The Klan also sent notices to Republican office holders, warning them of death and telling them to either resign or leave the vicinity. Similar notices went to active Republicans of both races and often to the teachers of Negro schools as well. Klan activities created a reign of terror in many localities and sometimes had the desired effect of demoralizing Negroes and Republicans…. Republicans of both races were threatened, beaten, shot, and murdered with impunity. In some areas Negroes stopped voting or voted the Democrat ticket as the Klan demanded. “Democrats by a kind of tortured reasoning, sometimes accused Negroes and Republicans of attacking each other so that the crimes would be blamed on the Democrats; investigations revealed that Democrats had committed the acts themselves.”

Professors John Hope Franklin and Alfred Moss, authors of From Slavery To Freedom tells us that, “The Camelias and the Klan were the most powerful of the secret orders. Armed with guns, swords, or other weapons, their members patrolled some parts of the South day and night. They used intimidation, force, ostracism in business and society, bribery at the polls, arson, and even murder to accomplish their deed. Depriving the Negro of political equality became, to them, a holy crusade in which a noble end justified any means. Negroes were run out of communities if they disobeyed orders to desist from voting; and the more resolute and therefore insubordinate blacks were whipped, maimed, and hanged. In 1871 several Negro officials in South Carolina were given fifteen days to resign and they were warned that if they failed to do so, then retributive justice will as surely be used as night follows day. For many white Southerners violence was still the surest means of keeping the Negroes politically impotent, and in countless communities they were not allowed, under penalties of reprisals, to show their faces in town on Election Day. It had looked as though the Civil War would break out anew as the Democrats resorted to every possible device to over throw the radicals.64

Professor Franklin went on to say, “It was reported that in North Carolina the Klan was responsible for 260 outrages, including 7 murders and the whipping of 72 whites and 141 Negroes. In one county in South Carolina 6 men were murdered and more than 300 were whipped during the first six months of 1870. The personal indignities inflicted upon individual white and Negroes were so varied and so numerous as to defy classification or enumeration.”[2]

In his book, The Abolitionist Legacy, Professor James McPherson reported, “In 1873, Louisiana became almost a synonym for chaos and violence. When Grant sent federal troops to install Kellogg in office [as governor], Louisiana Democrats were infuriated. They formed White Leagues which attacked black and white Republicans and took scores of lives.”[3]

From his book entitled; Charles Sumner, Harvard Professor, David Hebert Donald reached the following conclusion: “Congress could give the Negro the vote, but all over the South the Ku Klux Klan and other terrorist organizations systematically intimidated the freedmen, flogged or slaughtered their leaders and drove whites who worked with them into exile. Congress could require federal troops to supervise the registration of voters, but Negroes were waylaid and butchered on the roads to the registration offices. Congress could suppress outright violence by military force, but it could do nothing to protect Negroes from landlords who told them bluntly: If you vote with that Yankee [Republican] party you shall not live on our land.”[4]

Professor Howard O. Linsay, the author of, A History of Black Americans says, “Blacks and sympathetic Whites were attacked and threatened. African Americans were discouraged from seeking elected office and even from trying to vote. Any and all means were used from threats to violence to outright murder.”[5]

The following is what happened to Sam Hose and Mary Turner:

After a mob murdered Mary Turner’s husband, she threatened to swear out warrants against his killers. Several hundred men decided to teach her a lesson. They took this eight month pregnant woman from her home and after tying her ankles together, they hung her from a tree, head downward, dousing her clothes with gasoline, and burned them [the clothes] from her body. While she was still alive, someone used a knife ordinarily reserved for splitting hogs to cut open the woman’s abdomen. The baby fell from her womb to the ground and cried briefly, whereupon a member of the mob crushed the baby’s head beneath his heel. Then hundreds of bullets were fired into Mary Turner’s body.” [Page 14, Without Sanctuary – Foreword written by Democratic Congressman John Lewis].

These forms of torture were common in regions controlled by Democrats. The following is what they did to Sam Hose after falsely accusing him.

“After stripping Hose of his clothes and chaining him to a tree, the self-appointed executioners stacked kerosene-soaked wood high around him. Before saturating Hose with oil and applying the torch, they cut off his ears, fingers, and genitals, and skinned his face. While some in the crowd plunged knives into the victims flesh, others watched with unfeigning satisfaction, the contortions of Sam Hose’s body as flames rose, distorting his features, causing his eyes to bulge out of their sockets and rupturing his veins. The only sounds that came from the victim’s lips, even as his blood sizzled in the fire. were, “Oh my God! Oh, Jesus.” Before Hose’s body had even cooled, his heart and liver were removed and cut into several pieces and his bones were crushed into small particles. The crowd fought over these souvenirs. Shortly after the lynching, one of the participants reportedly left for the state capitol, hoping to deliver a slice of Sam Hose’s heart to the Democratic governor of Georgia, who would call Sam Hose’s deeds, “the most diabolical in the annals of crime.” [Page 15, ‘Without Sanctuary”]

After the brutal hanging, it was proven that Mr. Hose was innocent of the allege charges. They took parts of his body and displayed them in store windows, which was a common practice in towns, cities, counties and states controlled by Democrats.

I haven’t even scratched the surface. Time and space would not permit me to tell you about Dred Scott, the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, Plessy v. Ferguson, the Senate investigations of 1871, or the letters written by blacks in Kentucky in 1871 Louisiana in 1872, Alabama in 1874. From the New York riots of during the Civil War, to 1963 when the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed as Condoleezza Rice was preparing to go to Sunday School, wherever Democrats were in control, blacks have been tortured, intimidated and mutilated by Democrat officials and members of the Democratic Party. Senator Tillman of South Carolina said lynching blacks was justified. He went on to say: “Southern women will not submit to the black man gratifying his lust on our wives and daughter without lynching him.” This same Democratic Senator said: “We reorganized the Democratic Party with one plank and only one plank, namely that this is a white man’s country and white men must govern it.”

Now tell me Mr. President and Mr. Holder, how many detainees were beaten, hung, raped, cut into pieces bombed and burned to death under Bush Administration? Before we start condemning the Bush Administration for their handling of the allege terrorist from foreign countries, why don’t we first review the Democratic Party who tortured the black citizens from their own country. Oh, one more thing. Mr. Holder, it was the Bush Administration that finally prosecuted the person that was responsible for the 16th Baptist Church bombing. Black conservatives are looking forward to hearings on torture.

Rev. Wayne Perryman
P.O. Box 256
Mercer Island, WA 98040
(206) 860-6880
www.wayneperryman.com


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[1] 1992 Encyclopaedia Britannica pp. 979

64 Reconstruction – The Great Experience, pp. 226-233
[2] Reconstruction After The Civil War, p. 157

[3] The Abolitionist Legacy, p.40
[4] Charles Sumner, p. 420
[5] A History of Black Americans, pp. 88-89