SWD 16

Rubin Stacy, lynched Ft Lauderdale 1935

Memorial art to Rubin Stacy, a young African-American man lynched in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, July 19, 1935. Born between 1899 and 1907.

Art: 2011
Media: Ink on paper
Framed,  30 inches H x 41.5 W

Inspired by plate 57 in the book Without Sanctuary - Lynching Photography in America, edited by James Allen, Hilton Als, Congressman John Lewis and Leon F. Litwack. Published by Twin Palms, 2000.

At an exhibit of my Holocaust art and human rights art, held at Seattle Central College, 2013, among 8 human rights drawings from my Sight-seeing with Dignity human rights art series I considered the drawing of Rubin Stacy to be my best drawing – insofar as drawings go.
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When I was working on the drawing I decided to visually separate the victim’s hand – seen at lower right in the drawing – from the main larger depiction of his  body and head.
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Why? When I think of people being lynched, I think of the wrenching, excruciating pain of a body being pulled and torn apart. And it also happened that murder victims of Ku Klux Klan terrorists would be dragged along behind wagons, cars or trucks. This happened most recently just a few years ago when an African-American man was dragged to his death behind a vehicle in Texas. The pain would be unbearable.
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The lynching photos are extremely difficult for me to view; comparable for me to looking at atrocity photos of Nazi and Fascist victims from WWII in Europe; I just loathe the subject and seeing the photos but they are important for learning and understanding history and it's lessons for today's conflict ridden world.

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The most recent lynching photo in the book was taken in 1960. Most of those lynched (as seen in the photos, some of which were made into postcards at the time between the late 19th century and 1930's) were African-American men.

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There is one photo of an African-American woman who was lynched. Leo Frank, a Jewish man lynched in Georgia in 1915, is seen in two lynching photos. And there are photos of 2 Italian immigrants lynched as labor union sympathizers in Florida in the 1930's, and several white men who were lynched after being accused of various crimes.

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In 2018 I remain appalled and that the president of the United States is an unrepentant racist who has refused to apologize for the years of his anti-black race hate campaign known as the “birther” campaign. Trump’s birther campaign successfully paved the way to his presidential campaign.
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With the president’s refusal to apologize for the birther campaign, it cannot be morally nor ethically stated by any Republican voter and supporter of President Trump and Vice President Pence that they are knowingly non-racist or anti-racist.
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The birther campaign was not just a virulently racist attack on President Obama, the First Lady and their daughters. It was – and continues to be – a virulently racist attack on all African-Americans and on other minorities in America, too.
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An op-ed I penned about President Trump, the birther race-hate campaign and American corporations whose executives support the Trump-Pence White House:
“President Donald Trump’s ‘birther’ campaign needs to be renounced with an apology” Real Change newspaper, Seattle, Sept. 6 – 12 issue, 2017. Real Change is a non-profit in Seattle that advocates for and aids the homeless.

Exhibits

(2013) Seattle Central College, M. Rosetta Hunter Gallery, exhibit of selected human rights and Holocaust education artworks by Segan