Correction Appended
The desperate cries of a man with a rope tied around his neck
being pulled across campus by a group of white students echoed down
Bruin Walk Wednesday afternoon.
Clad in clothing reminiscent of the early 20th century American
South and brandishing plastic guns, the costumed students put on a
show of dragging the black student toward the location of his mock
lynching.
Anguished cries from a handful of student actors following the
small mob could also be heard.
Above the pained cries from Dwayne Scott, the graduate acting
student who played the man being lynched, and the students playing
his friends, shouts of “nigger” and “you
don’t deserve the right to live” were audible from the
acting lynchers.
At one moment during the simulated mob lynching, put on by the
Black Graduate Students Association as part of Black History Month,
Scott stopped and reached back toward the students who played the
part of his fearful friends and family, a look of agony on his
face.
In another instance, Perkins was stopped by two actors who made
a show of beating him for his attempts to escape, demonstrating
behavior that would have been typical of an actual lynching.
Later, as Scott stood beneath a tree in Bruin Plaza with a rope
around his neck that reached into the branches above him, he faced
the false accusation that he had raped a white woman. Students
joined together in mournful singing.
The early-afternoon commotion was part of a lynching
re-enactment put on by the BGSA aimed at giving students a picture
of the atmosphere of violence that permeated the country, and the
South in particular, through the 1960s.
During the period from the late 19th century through the
mid-20th century, blacks faced the type of brutality that was acted
out in Bruin Plaza for alleged crimes, such as looking at or
speaking to a white woman.
Theri Pickens, president of the group that put on the
performance, said she hoped the event would promote dialog about
issues relating to black history and racial violence, and to
“make sure that people know that black history … is
American history.”
Though the students wore costumes that were indicative of the
South of decades ago, students who participated in planning the
event wanted to make the point that lynchings and racial tension
are not only a problem of the past.
The history of lynching is still relevant today, in part because
instances still occur from time to time, but also because the
memory of these events has shaped African-American consciousness,
said Candace Stanciel, a student in the Graduate School of
Education and Informational Sciences.
Members of the group said understanding lynching provides a
context for students to better understand the civil rights
movement.
“You can’t really understand the civil rights
movement or why a nonviolent movement was so revolutionary unless
you understand the lynching and the brutality,” Pickens
said.
Though no one was actually hurt in the mock lynching, students
who witnessed the event were moved by what they saw.
“It was very emotional. It was a powerful performance
because it reminds our country of our violent history,”
fourth-year African-American studies student Paul Griffith said.
“It’s something that needed to be done.”
But the sensitivity and controversy of the subject caused some
students apprehension about participating in the re-enactment.
“A lot of actors were really resistant, really
uncomfortable with the idea of it, both black and white,”
said Shea Scott, a graduate acting student who directed the
re-enactment.
One source of resistance was that students questioned what
response a dramatic portrayal of a lynching would receive and
wondered why the group would choose to hold an event focussing on
such a dark and negative aspect of black history, Shea said.
Pickens said she encountered a similar sentiment from her mother
when she began planning the event, and said addressing these
“wounds” that are lynching is vital to progress.
“My mom asked me, “˜Why are you opening old wounds?
Why are you not letting sleeping dogs lie?’ And my response
(was) … you need to make sure a wound is examined … cleansed
before it is healed. It always starts with recognition,” she
said.