Words Have Meaning

News Item:

The NAACP's Milwaukee chapter held a press conference in the County Board room before the meeting and speakers declared the vote as a "lynching."

In August, 1930 when James Cameron was just 16 years old, he was falsely accused of participating in the murder of a white man in Marion, Indiana.

In the ensuing chaos, Cameron was rounded up by a mob and forced to watch in horror as a mob of approximately 15,000 people brutally beat and lynched two of his friends. The mob's intent was to have Cameron share his friends' fate.

Yet, Cameron survived the beating and attempted lynching. However, he was sentenced to four years in the prison for accessory to manslaughter. Incredibly, no one was ever accused, arrested or charged with the murder of Cameron's teenage friends, nor for the beating and attempted lynching that Cameron suffered.

His story is but one of perhaps thousands. Countless victims who were forced to suffer at the hands of ignorance and hate-fueled racial violence in the United States since this nation's founding.

Because of this personal experience, Cameron dedicated his life to promoting civil rights, racial peace, unity and equality. He helped found three NAACP chapters in Indiana during the 1940s, and became the first president of the NAACP Madison County Branch in Anderson, Indiana. In 1988 he founded America's Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, from whose website I obtained the above information.

It has been estimated that between 1880 and 1920, an average of two African Americans a week were lynched in the United States.

To equate a political squabble over the competence and ethics of a politician with the brutality endured by Cameron and hundreds of other men and women in the United States is to make a mockery of their suffering. Moreover, it a betrayal to the NAACP's proud legacy of campaigning against actual lynching.

There is no doubt that there are racial tensions in Milwaukee. And it would appear that the 'battle lines,' if you will, within the County Board regarding Lee Holloway's chairmanship have drawn mostly racially segregated camps.

But for crying out loud, let's have some perspective, shall we?

Years ago, Clarence Thomas was wrong to accuse Democrat senators and others of conducting a 'high tech lynching' when they tried to subvert his nomination as a Supreme Court justice. And now, the NAACP in Milwaukee is wrong to so casually use the term as well.

America can not hide from its history of racial violence. Lee Holloway should not be allowed to hide behind it, either.