Try That In A Small Town
Lynching in America
It was my intention to be writing more about the Affirmative Action decision today. But life – and country singer Jason Aldean – intervened. Unless you’ve been too tuned in to the Tour De France to be aware of anything else, then you know that the country music singer/songwriter filmed a music video, “Try That In A Small Town” glorifying small-town ability to exemplify the great all-American tough-guy male - cowboy style - and take care of the bad guys. Guns, guts, and Glory. There may not be another country on earth where that song would be a hit.
In this age of heightened awareness of police violence, many seem to hear a racist tinge and support of vigilantism, Kyle Rittenhouse style, in the lyrics. “Cuss out a cop, spit in his face / Stomp on the flag and light it up / Yeah, ya’ think you’re tough, well, try that in a small town / See how far ya’ make it down the road / Around here, we take care of our own / You cross that line, it won’t take long / For you to find out, I recommend you don’t.”
Here's what Aldean tweeted about the video: “When u grow up in a small town, it’s that unspoken rule of “we all have each other’s backs and we look out for each other.” It feels like somewhere along the way, that sense of community and respect has gotten lost. Deep down we are all ready to get back to that. I hope my new music video helps y’all know that u are not alone in feeling that way.”
In an effort to explain and defend himself, Aldean said, “What I am is a proud American… I’m proud to be from here. I love our country. I want to see it restored to what it once was before all this bulls—t started happening to us. I love my country, I love my family and I will do anything to protect that, I can tell you that right now.” Aldean was quickly met by widespread cheers from concertgoers at the Riverbend Music Center, who even started a “USA” chant.
The primary ‘bullshit’ that we seem to be enduring is the on-going backlash from the May 25th 2020 murder of George Floyd and then the on-going backlash from the Jan 6th, 2021 insurrection. It would be fair to wonder which ‘bullshit’ Aldean is referring to since he didn’t specify it.
Then his wife, Brittany, jumped in and further explained that the song was meant to represent the “feeling of community” that he experienced while growing up in Georgia “where we took care of our neighbors, regardless of differences of background or belief.”
And again it’s fair to wonder. Is she referring to small Georgia towns like Brunswick where Amaud Arbery was murdered in February, 2020, by tough, small-town, White men protecting their small, White town values?
But the biggest concern about the video was not the lyrics, it was the choice of the setting. Aldean chose the Maury TN County Courthouse where a lynching of a child took place 96 years ago.
From the Washington Post: “In November, 1927, 18-year-old Henry Choate was accused of attacking a 16-year-old White girl before an armed mob in Columbia, TN, used sledgehammers to kidnap him from jail. In less than 10 minutes, the mob of an estimated 350 White men dragged the 18-year-old from the back of a car through the city and lynched him from the second story of the Maury County Courthouse over an allegation that he denied. Even though the girl could not positively identify Choate as the assailant, the Black teen allegedly confessed in an effort to save his life. One of the mob members holding a rope taunted the teen before the noose was tied to Choate’s neck and his body tossed over the balcony. Well that sends you to hell,” the man said to Choate, according to the International News Service. “Here you go boy!”
The lynching of Choate has long haunted Maury County, where about 20 Black men and boys were lynched, killed by other methods or “disappeared” by White mobs or the Ku Klux Klan, according to research from historian Elizabeth Queener cited in the Tennessean.
On Nov. 11, 1927, Sarah Harlan was waiting for a school bus on a remote stretch of road outside Columbia when a Black male allegedly tore her clothing and attempted to shoot her, according to a 1927 report in the Tennessean. The assailant then allegedly hit her on the forehead with the butt of his pistol and scarred her neck when he tried to choke her that Friday morning, the newspaper reported. After she scratched his face and bit his finger until it bled, Harlan cried out that her brother was on his way, and the assailant fled. “Now I guess you’ll get it,” Harlan told him, according to the Tennessean.
Henry Choate was in town visiting his grandfather, Henry Clay Harlan (no relation to Sarah Harlan), for Armistice Day, now known as Veterans Day. Not long after Choate arrived, a law enforcement posse led by a pair of bloodhounds, George and Queen, went to the grandfather’s home and arrested the teen.
Maury County Sheriff Luther Wiley claimed that Choate had changed a bloody shirt and hid a .22-caliber pistol used to club the White girl. Authorities claimed that Choate’s grandfather denied his grandson’s alibi that he was helping him gather corn when the attack unfolded. Wiley said that Choate had a wound on his finger resembling a bite mark, and other witnesses put Choate in the vicinity of the attack when it happened, but it’s unclear whether those accounts were reliable. But when it came time for Sarah Harlan to positively identify her alleged assailant, she couldn’t do it. “Confronted with Choate this afternoon, the girl said he resembled her assailant but she was unable to identify him positively.”
Before Choate was taken to jail, the girl’s mother pleaded with the mob that was eager to lynch him to spare his life after her daughter was unable to positively say that it was him who attacked her. The mother “asked them to spare the Negro for trial.” The mob attempted to grab Choate, but he had already been taken to the county jail.
At the jail, Sheriff Wiley gave the key to Choate’s cell to his wife. The wife told Ella Gant, the jail’s Black cook, about what was unfolding. “Ella, I hate this,” she said, according to Robert Minor’s 1946 book, “Lynching and Frame-Up in Tennessee.” “They are going to mob this boy they brought in. … Go and tell the boy to pray, because they’re going to kill him.”
Gant went to Choate’s cell and passed along the message: “Boy, Mrs. Wiley says you better pray, because the mob is coming to lynch you.” Henry wasn’t in the mood for praying but understood what was about to happen.
It was about 8 p.m. when the mob came to the jail looking for Henry. The sheriff had told the crowd that there would be a trial for Choate on the following Monday, but the mob had decided that the 18-year-old must die. Wiley’s wife hid the key and pleaded with the mob not to kill Choate. “You all go away,” she said. “I am not going to see an innocent boy hung.”
When one of the mob members threatened to use dynamite on the jail, Wiley’s wife became terrified and handed over the key she had hidden behind a laundry bag. When a deputy sheriff opened the jail cell and mob members yelled out, “Come out, Choate,” the teen was struck on the head with a sledgehammer, dragged out to a car, tied with a rope to the bumper and dragged by his neck about 300 yards to the courthouse.
The lynching was about to happen as several ministers and James Finney, the editor of the Tennessean, were attending an American Legion Armistice Day banquet in Columbia. They tried to intervene, but their efforts failed. “Go ahead back to your banquet!” a lynch mob member yelled, according to the Tennessean. “You are having your fun over there. Now let us alone while we have ours out here.”
Choate’s body was hanged over the balcony of the courthouse with the patriotic bunting. The next day, Willis White, a police officer, went to a funeral home with a simple, almost off-hand request. “There’s a dead Negro at the courthouse. Come and get him.”
No one was ever prosecuted because no witness could be found that was able to identify anybody who had been involved. The rope used to lynch Choate hung on display at the courthouse for several weeks as a trophy.”[1]
The Equal Justice Initiative’s Peace and Justice Memorial in Montgomery Alabama, which I visited in February on my way back home from kayaking the Everglades with my friend and CCP supporter Steve Meyer - who donated the considerable cost of our visit to Montgomery to visit the memorial and additional Civil Rights sites and memorials - has identified and memorialized over 4,400 documented lynchings of Black people in the United States between 1877 and 1950. According to EJI, there were thousands more that have not yet been documented and verified. At 4,400, that amounts to a public murder about every 6 days for 73 years.
We tend to envision lynchings as hangings, and of course many were. But simple hangings were almost a mercy killing. Many were far more gruesome and involved skinning the victims alive, live burnings, dismemberment, and castrations. Most were public entertainment.
Fred Rochelle, age 16, was burned alive in front of thousands at the Polk County Courthouse in 1901.
David Walker, his wife, and four children were lynched in Hickman Kentucky in 1908 after Mr. Walker was accused of using inappropriate language with a White woman.
Zakariya Walker was burned alive in front of more than 1,000 men, women, and children in Coatesville Pennsylvania in 1911.
Hundreds of Black men, women and children were lynched in the Alene massacre in Phillips, County Arkansas in 1919.
Parks Banks was lynched, near Yazoo city, Mississippi, in 1922 for carrying a photograph of a White woman in his hat.
Lacey Mitchell was lynched in Thomasville, Georgia in 1930 for testifying against a White man accused of raping a Black woman.
Mac Brown was lynched in Fulton County, Georgia, in 1936 for kissing a White woman on the hand.
Thousands watched Ernest Green and Charlie Lange, both 14, lynched in Tugboat Mississippi in 1942 after a White girl said they were threatening.
Elizabeth Lawrence was lynched in Birmingham, Alabama in 1933 for reprimanding White children who threw rocks at her.
Charles Atkins 15 was burned alive in 1922 by a White mob of more than 1,000 people in Washington county Georgia.
Nathan Bird was lynched near Luling, Texas in 1902 for refusing to turn his teenage son over to a mob. His son, accused of fighting with a White boy, was also lynched.
Jack Brownlee was lynched in Oxford, Alabama, in 1844 after Mr. Brownlee had a White man arrested for attempting to assault his daughter.
Hayes Turner was lynched on May 19, 1918, in Brooks County GA. In front of his pregnant wife, Mary. The lynch mob suspected Hayes in the murder of a White farmer infamous for his harsh treatment of his share croppers. Mary threatened to have the murderers arrested – an empty threat in 1918 Georgia. But it angered the mob to be spoken to that way by a nigger. So the next day they returned, bound Mary’s feet, hung her upside down, doused her in gasoline, and lit her on fire. Before she died, the mob sliced her open, and when Mary’s baby fell to the ground, they stomped her to death.
The Peace and Justice Memorial has an additional 4,385 documented lynchings.
Lynching is a pretty serious thing in America…then and now. On June 7, 1998, three White men dragged James Byrd Jr. for three miles behind a Ford pickup truck along an asphalt road in Jasper TX. Byrd, who remained conscious for much of his ordeal, was killed about halfway through the dragging when his body hit the edge of a culvert, severing his head and right arm. The murderers drove on for another 1 and ½ miles before dumping what remined of James in front of a Black cemetery.
Sandra Bland was found hanged in her jail cell in Waller County TX on July 13th, 2015 after being pulled over for a minor traffic violation. It was ruled a suicide. Her family does not believe it. She had everything going for her.
Amaud Arbery, mentioned above, was lynched in Brunswick GA in 2000. Police initially tried to ignore it.
Since 2000, there have been at least eight suspected lynchings of Black teens and men in Mississippi alone.
America has a thing with race. Politicians from Kamala Harris to SC Republican Senator Tim Scott deny it – likely for political reasons. Ron DeSantis along with right-wing darling Nevada outlaw rancher Cliven Bundy claim that slavery was a benefit to Black people.
It’s telling that Americans know far more about Germany’s crime against humanity than we do about our own. It’s telling that the Holocaust museum, partially funded with American tax dollars, opened its doors 23 years before the Smithsonian African American Museum, also partially funded with American tax dollars.
If Aldean loves America as much as he claims, he could pull the song and promote healing instead of doubling down. “In the past 24 hours, I have been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song and was subject to the comparison that I was “Not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protests.” These references are not only meritless, but dangerous. There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it —and there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage — and while I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music — this one goes too far.”
“Going too far” is filming, defending, and promoting a video that pays homage to lynching, even if inadvertently.
We - i.e. you - could end racism by being knowledgeable and careful who you vote for, from the President of the United States to your local judges, prosecutors, and school board. By calling racism out when you come across it. By letting your politicians know which legislation you support and which you oppose. By simply being aware and vigilant. By supporting your favorite racial justice organization. By being something other than an interested bystander.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/07/19/jason-aldean-henry-choate-lynching-tennessee/
Wayne, Thank you for this --as painful as it was to read, your writing it is so important in today's climate. I'm adding it to the Third Act Racial Justice resources list.