Cynthia Carr - Our Town: A Heartland Lynching, a Haunted Town, and the Hidden History of White America

OUR TOWN

A Heartland Lynching, a Haunted Town, andtheHidden History of White America

CYNTHIA CARR

CROWN PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

CONTENTS

For my nieces and nephewsBen, Marissa, Isabelle, and Jeremy

... We can only go down farther down
Down is now the only way to rise...

ALICE NOTLEY, The Descent of Alette

PART I

A Veil Hangs Over This Town

ONE

MY MARION

I was an adult before I ever saw the picture. But even as a girl, I knew thered been a lynching in Marion, Indiana. That was my fathers hometown. And on one of many trips to visit my grandparents, I heard the family story: the night it happened back in 1930, someone called the house and spoke to my grandfather, whose shift at the post office began at three in the morning. Dont walk through the courthouse square tonight on your way to work, the caller said. You might see something you dont want to see. Apparently that was the punchlinewhich puzzled me. Something you dont want to see. Then laughter.

I now know that, in the 1920s, Indiana had more Ku Klux Klan members than any other state in the unionfrom a quarter to a half million membersand my grandfather was one of them. Learning this after he died, I couldnt assimilate it into the frail Grandpa Id known. Couldnt assimilate it at all and, for a long time, didnt try. He was an intensely secretive man, and certainly there had been other obfuscations. He always said, for example, that he was an orphan, that his parents had died when he was three. I accepted this, but the grown-ups knew better. After Grandpas funeral, my father discovered a safe deposit box and hoped at last to find a clue to the family tree. Instead he unearthed this other secret: a Klan membership card. All my father said later was I never saw a hooded sheet. Hed go out. We never knew where he was going.

Much of this story is about shame. My grandfather was illegitimate, a fact that someone born in small-town Indiana in 1886 would rather die than discuss. And so he did. But if that particular humiliation seems foreign today, what about the other secret? A lot of us who are white come from something we would rather not discuss. Thats in the past, we like to say, as if that did anything but give us another hood to wear.

I was in my late twenties when I first came upon the lynching photo in a book: two black men in bloody tattered clothing hang from a tree, and below them stand the grinning, gloating, proud, and pleased white folks. I couldnt believe that this was my Marion, the lynching referred to in my family, a tree Id walked past as a child. I looked anxiously for my grandfathers face in that photo. Didnt find it. That was some relief. But he too had gone to the square that night. Thered been something you dont want to see. Then laughter. And as I began to tell people this story, that was one detail I left out, because it shamed me: there was laughter.

MY MARION. AS A CHILD, I loved the town. And one thing I loved most was the fact that it had a past, unlike the various midwestern suburbs where I grew up. Directly in front of my grandparents housetall, dark green clapboard with a black stone porchstood an iron hitching post, a black horses head with a ring through its nose. It was no decoration. Theyd just never taken it down. They lived with history. And every visit gave me a chance to ask Grandma for the family stories, to page with her through the family album. Somehow I never noticed that all the stories and pictures were my grandmothers. My grandfather had none.

During one summer vacation when I was nine or ten, I found a brittle yellow newspaper clipping in a desk drawer at my grandparents house. The headline said JOSIE CARR, and parts of certain lines had been cut out with a razor blade. I walked it into the living room asking, Whos Josie Carr? No one said anything, but Grandpa took the clipping from my hand and left the room. Someone explained then that Josie was his mother. I had just found her obituary. Wed been told that she had died about 1890 from tuberculosis. Or perhaps she had died from grief, said Aunt Ruth, my fathers sister, who liked brooding on the mystery. For all those years my grandfather kept the obituary, certain facts trimmed out with a razor blade. Then that day he took it from my hand, and no one ever saw it again.

We didnt know who Grandpas father was or why he abandoned Josie. Nor did we know when she died, what killed her, where she was buriednothing. My grandmother knew everything, of course. But she said, We dont talk about it. It makes your grandpa feel very bad. So we waited till my grandparents were out of earshot before discussing our slender clues.

Aunt Ruth would take the tintypes from the old beige Nabisco box. Many of those pictured were strangers to us. Uncle Rad? Aunt Pet? We couldnt ask Grandpa. We relied on Aunt Ruth to find the images of Grandpas mother: This is Josie before the tragedy. This is Josie after the tragedy. Aunt Ruth showed us in the later picture where clumps of Josies hair had fallen out. Maybe someone poisoned her, my aunt mused. Maybe someone was trying to get rid of her.

Aunt Ruth held both possessions of Josies that came down to us. One was a locket with a handsome young mans picture, a dateFebruary 11, 1883and the words All twisted up. N Or was it W? Or H? The other was a letter in different handwriting addressed to Josie kind Josie from a P.W.H., Bluffton, IndianaOctober 28, 1885. A letter full of nonsense about a dog and I have no time to write you. Why had this one letter been saved? She must have received it around the time she became pregnant. My grandpa was born in July 1886.

My aunt was both guardian of these artifacts and the one who most needed to know what they meant. She had a recurring dream about the family mysterythat she and Grandpa were in a mausoleum, watching someone pull out a casket. In real life, of course, Grandpa did his grieving alone. My father and my aunt recalled from childhood that on every Memorial Day he rode the interurban to Gas City, just south of Marion, taking three geraniums to the cemetery. We guessed that Josie must be buried there. He, of course, never said.

Aunt Ruth would tell us the story about applying for a job in a Marion furniture store, how Grandma had warned her, Theyll only want to talk to you about your family. And sure enough, the man interviewing her said, Young lady, do you know who your grandfather is?

Then Aunt Ruth would recount the words of her long-dead auntie Mame: Could you ever forgive us for what we did? But Aunt Ruth never knew who us referred to or why they needed her forgiveness. I guess I was brought up not to ask questions, she said.

We had a drawing my grandfather did as a childa palatial sort of Victorian mansion. At the bottom he had signed his initials: E.R. His name was Earl Carr. Hed taken his mothers last name. But clearly hed known from boyhood who his father was, and hed imagined taking that identity. Young Mister R.

Finally on his deathbed Grandpa told us, They cheated me. I could have had ten thousand dollars. That was all he ever said about his secret: