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

I've been following C. Carr's work for years in the Village Voice and elsewhere. She's a writer's writer. I've always been a fan of her writing about performance: She is so measured and meticulous even when she is writing about people going crazy on stage. Now she's directed this same sensibility -- her eerily calm voice, her relentless reporter's narative forward motion, her talent for disturbing, her extraordinary precision -- to telling this story about race and crazyness in Indiana. And what a story it is. It's both horrendous and yet somehow a relief, to hear the truth. I can't get it out of my mind.

Our Town: A Heartland Lynching, A Haunted Town, and the Hidden History of White America is an honest, though painful look at race relations in America. C. Carr sees parallels between her quest in Our Town and that of South Africa's "truth and reconciliation" hearings. The work bears witness to the searing history of lynching in towns all across America in the first half the last century. Carr captures white hatred, fear, denial, and guilt and black anger, bitterness, fear, and pain. She quotes Chilean legal philosopher and activist Jose Zalaquett, a member of the commission that investigated atrocities under the Pinochet regime: "If you have a choice between truth and justice, choose truth. Truth doesn't bring back the dead, but it does release them from silence." That's just what Carr does in this book. Carr was 17 when she learned her beloved grandfather was a Klansman. Not until she was in her 20s did she see the infamous photo taken in her home town on the sweltering summer night of August 7, 1930--a black and white picture of two black men hanging from a tree as smiling townsfolk looked on. Like so many of us white liberals she felt guilty about our country's racist history. But Carr also felt a special shame about her town's history and her grandfather's membership in the Klan. That shame ultimately led her to write Our Town. Her story is an effort to examine the truth as a means of healing and opening a dialogue. Carr pursues the truth like a bloodhound. It doesn't matter that she often loses the scent while on the trail because she refuses to give up and just keeps circling Marion and the small towns surrounding it until she gets the next whiff. Early on in her research she decides to go back home and ends up living in Marion, Indiana for an entire year. During that time she interviewed those who witnessed the lynching and were still alive. She also went to Detroit several times to interview the third victim of the lynching - James Cameron - who, though spared death, was marked by the experience for the rest of his life. And to gain insight into the psychology of hatred and fear, Carr interviewed the figurative descendents of the Ku Klux Klan: the hodge podge group of Kluxers, white Supremacists, and skin heads all who still espouse racial hatred. Reading about them made me think of Hannah Arendt's now famous characterization of the Nazis and the Third Reich--"the banality of evil." Not surprisingly, many of the Kluxers and their brethren see Hitler as a man of vision. In "An American Secret" a personal reminiscence that appeared in the New York Times Magazine before the release of Our Town, Carr relates that the inspiration for her work was in part a conversation with a friend Robbie McCauley, an African-American theatre artist whose performances often emphasize the importance of black-white dialogue. Carr confessed her guilty truth to her friend and was surprised by Robbie's relief. She recalls Robbie told

If you want to read truth that in many ways is a metaphor for what was happening across America over the last four decades, read this amazingly accurate account of Marion, Indiana, and its KKK, and the residue that still exists today there as well as in many other geographical locations in the minds and hearts of some Americans. The reason why I know that her book is amazingly accurate is that I lived there and worked with many of these people Carr reports about. I not only taught at the two school systems and worked as a reporter at the Marion-Chronicle (a player in this drama)at the time, I was there standing outside my classroom the day the cafeteria erupted into a civil rights melee! Although this book offers many threads of story, Carr's real contribution is the accurate documentation of a slice of history that shows the danger of "willful neglect" of us all as we watch innocent citizens abused and killed in the name of God. ---Charlene Lutes, Ph.D.

I grew up 1/2 block from the Marion city limits. I spent 21 years there and wanted to leave from the time I was an adolescent. Although I have been gone over 30 years, I visit several times a year as I still have family there. The lynching was not something I knew about until I was in high school. (I am white and went to all white county schools. My parents moved to Marion in the fifties.) I also have to address the review by the man from TN. He objects to the characterization of the viewers in the lynching photo as gleeful. It is the single most harrowing aspect of the photo. Just look on the back of the dust jacket and decide for yourself. His apologia is that the viewers may have been on a voyage of discovery and not have known how to react because who could enjoy looking at such a sight. How does the reviewer then explain the photo becoming a local bestseller? The reviewer also suggests that the survivor of the lynch mob (James Cameron) may have fabricated his presence there. Cameron's surviving the lynch mob is not in question. There are numerous witnesses. The reviewer further tries to cast doubt by saying he doesn't recall what felony Cameron went to jail for. Cameron was imprisoned for his part in the killing of Deeter - the crime that led to the lynching - and was later pardoned by the Governor of Indiana. The teenaged Cameron had initially agreed to participate in the robbery but ran away when he recognized Deeter as a man who had been kind to him. You will meet many like the reviewer from TN in Carr's book. A theme of the book is the continuing denial of the lynching and the racism in Marion by the white community. Marion has been crumbling and shrinking as long as I have known it. Now I know why. The town was diseased long before I was born. But you do not need to be from Grant County or Indiana to relate to this story of a town gone wrong. It is a brave person who knocks on doors to talk about race as Ms. Carr has done. That courage comes through and is what makes this book an intriguing read for those who have never stood on the courthouse square or had a picnic in Matter Park.

In Our Town, Carr takes us on her 10-year search for the real story behind the August 1930 lynching that Marion, Indiana has never really dealt with. Carr's personal family history is intrinsically entwined with the story. Her grandfather, who lived in Marion, was a Klan member. The concept for the book was sparked when she broke her silence about her grandfather's Klan membership to a black friend. "Those are the stories we need to hear, that white people aren't telling," her friend had replied. The book lays bare the long-term ramifications of secretiveness, and silence, about the past. Carr discovered a "code of silence" around closely held secrets woven through the fabric of Marion - not only about the lynching, but about the area's underground railroad history, and the fate of the local Miami Indian tribe, who used silence as a means to erase its own culture for the purpose of blending into the dominant white culture. Her grandmother, it turns out, claimed to have Miami Indian heritage. Her grandfather had used silence to erase his own past - in particular his illegitimate birth. And his klan membership wasn't known to most of his family until after his death. Carr interviews scores of people in her 10-year odyssey. A seasoned investigative journalist, she sheds new light on some old mysteries. She also explores the kinds of human questions that most of us, as readers, would ask ourselves. Millions of us, after all, have the skeletons of Klan members in our own family closets. Carr's story would be left undone if she didn't search for her own truth, and she draws thoughtful and eye-opening conclusions. There are many gems to be found in this book. Our Town will hopefully act as a springboard for white-black dialogue about the past, and serve as both a tonic and a constructive tool in our collective struggle for improved race relations.