Sen. Lindsey graham knows what 'lynching' means. He just pretended not to.
Sen. Lindsey graham knows what 'lynching' means. He just pretended not to."
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On a February morning in 1947, in the darkness before dawn, 31 white men gathered in Pickens County, South Carolina. A white cab driver had been robbed and stabbed two nights before. A black
man named Willie Earle had been arrested for the crime. But the 31 white men did not wait for a trial. They showed up at the jail with shotguns. The jailer gave them Willie Earle. An hour
later, somebody placed a call to a funeral home, notifying them where to find a dead black man on a dirt road west of Greenville. Willie Earle was the last victim of a lynching in the state
of South Carolina. He was far from the only one. Records show that at least 185 black people were lynched in South Carolina from the end of the Civil War through the first half of the 20th
century. But I mention Willie Earle this morning because of something else that happened in Pickens County, South Carolina, eight years after Willie Earle was killed. It’s where Lindsey
Graham was born. He grew up in Pickens County, graduated from high school there, and went on, of course, to become a U.S. senator. A U.S. senator who said last week that the impeachment
process against President Trump is “a lynching, in every sense.” In every sense. I probably don’t have to explain this. But for those in the very back, maybe those trying to leave the room
altogether, let me try. The black people who were lynched were poor and powerless, instead of white and wealthy and the most powerful people in the land. Before they were murdered, they were
beaten and tortured. Often they were killed by hanging. Many times this happened in the town square. White crowds would come to watch the killing. People took photos that were turned into
postcards that were turned into souvenirs. The word lynching carries all that historical weight. It is not just about persecution. It is about humiliation and murder. This all came up
because President Trump himself said the impeachment process is a lynching. I honestly don’t know if our president knows enough to understand what he meant. I’m not sure exactly what he
knows beyond his own need for power and attention. But Lindsey Graham damn sure knows what lynching means. You know, Lindsey Graham used to be somebody. Now he has become one of those birds
that sit on the back of a rhino and pick bugs out of their skin. After he backed Trump on the word “lynching,” he tied himself into knots trying to explain that he was talking about a
political lynching, and how that was different. But he is from Pickens County, South Carolina, and there is no way he didn’t know exactly what he was saying, and how much it would hurt
people who are not like him. That’s definitely the result. What bothers me most was that it might have also been the point. _Tommy Tomlinson’s On My Mind column normally runs every Monday on
WFAE and WFAE.org. It represents his opinion, not the opinion of WFAE. You can respond to this column in the comments section below. You can also email Tommy at [email protected]._
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