In class this week, my 8th grade students and I are discussing the period of Reconstruction and the missed opportunity to fix many of the problems that plagued this country since our founding. One of the topics we cover is lynching and the widespread use of lynching by white mobs to intimidate black Americans trying to exercise their basic human rights. Often, the narrative centers on the mass amounts of lynchings that occurred in the American South—this makes it seem like a distant problem of the past that only existed there. It’s easy for students to think lynchings only happened in the South, so we’re good- we’re removed from that stain of history. We live in Michigan after all, we were the last stop before ultimate freedom on the Underground Railroad after all, how could we be involved in this history?
The truth is much more difficult to grasp. Dark stains of history are all around us. In a brutal system of slavery and subsequent oppression and racial discrimination, no place was exempt from pockets of hatred and bigotry. We all have hidden stories of atrocities that are not known because they are not told.
132 years ago today, on the morning of May 27, 1889, 23 year old African-American Albert Martin sat in the St. Clair County Jail in Port Huron, MI. He was accused of assaulting a local farmers wife. That morning a white masked mob dragged him out of the jail and subsequently hung him from the 7th Street Bridge in the city center after dragging him through town by a rope. Although we often associate lynching during Reconstruction and Jim Crow as a Southern problem, the ugly truth is that racism exists everywhere, and did then too. Although there is some confusion in the historical record, some say there were 3 total race inspired lynchings in Michigan, the Equal Justice Initiative recognizes the lynching of Albert Martin as the only racially motivated lynching to take place in the state of Michigan. Local newspapers from the time demonstrate the extent of the bigotry and racial aspects associated with it. The Michigan Herald ran than headline “A Brute Lynched” and “A Michigan Mobs Vengeance on a Colored Ravisher” in the days following the incident. No one was ever charged or punished for the act. Sounds like a tale as old as time in the Reconstruction South? But it wasn’t. It was here in Michigan. A stones throw from the Canadian border.
Why does this matter? Port Huron is only about 30 miles from my home. My wife and I take our children there most weekends to walk by the river and watch the freighters go by under the Blue Water Bridge to Canada. I grew up spending weekends on the beach just north of the city. It’s a place so many go and never think of a hidden history below the surface. We like to think horrific racial events are disconnected from us, somehow a distant past from another time and place and out of sight and out mind. But the truth is, there are so many such stories around us if we take the time to seek them out. Students here in Michigan look to the South as the racially backwards section of the country and fail to really understand the deeper narrative: hate can exist anywhere if it is given the light of day.
I have taken the opportunity this year to try to expose students to these kind of stories. Show them there is always a history that’s hidden under the surface. What we read in textbooks is never the complete story, what we’re told is never the complete story. Many students will go through their middle school years thinking lynchings only happened in the South, never realizing that it also took place in their own backyard.
Recent events have put history teachers in the spotlight as we “brainwash” students and teach them to hate America. Here in Michigan, a bill is in the state legislature that would penalize a district 5% of their state funding if a teacher teaches about marginalized races or anything deemed “anti-American” in a history class. My question to those that sponsor this legislation is what am I supposed to tell kids about something like this story? Why should they not know a mob dragged a human being from a courthouse and hung him from a bridge without even a trial? I refuse to back down. My job is to teach kids the truth but also the critical thinking skills to go along with it so they can think for themselves.
My challenge to myself as I head into the summer is to uncover more of these stories. Uncover more hidden history and hidden voices that call to us to tell their story. Students need a full and complete picture of our history If we are going to learn from it.
Let’s do better history. Our kids deserve it.
