On June 3, 2020, Senator Rand Paul single-handedly thwarted passage of the Emmitt Till Anti-Lynching Act
to extend a longstanding Congressional tradition of obstructing the passage of
anti-lynching legislation since 1918. Despite his (fallacious) protestations to the contrary, we are grateful
that we can reference anti-lynching plays written by Harlem Renaissance era
playwright Georgia Douglas Johnson (1877?-1966) in which she effectively
documents a cross-generational, whiteness tradition of anti-lynching
legislation obstruction.
In Preaching the Blues: Black Feminist Performance in Lynching Plays
(Routledge, 2020), I conduct close readings of two of Johnson’s
plays related to anti-lynching legislation, And
Yet They Paused (1938) and A Bill
to Be Passed (1938). Johnson, anti-lynching drama’s most prolific author,
depicts Congress’ unwillingness/inability to pass anti-lynching legislation,
including the strategies (i.e. filibustering, stalling and breaking for recess)
by which white men stall the process. Through her plays, Johnson also documents
a 1936 lynching in Duck Hill, Mississippi, in which two black men were tortured
to death using flamethrowers, an event which occurred at the exact same moment
that Congress met to consider anti-lynching legislation presented by Joseph
Gavagan (D-New York). The concurrent scene depicted by Johnson repeats itself
when Paul delivered his Congressional filibuster during the exact same moments
as George Floyd’s high profile memorial services. Bystanders
recorded a Minneapolis police killing Floyd by excessive use of force, sparking
international #blacklivesmatter protests.
Johnson’s plays also provide critical
perspective from Black church officials who observe that the white Congressmen
avoid passing anti-lynching legislation out of their desire to get re-elected as
opposed to facilitating American justice. These Congressmen know that their
constituents expect a quid pro quo exchange of their votes for impunity in
lynching Blacks. In fact, in other anti-lynching plays, government officials
and their constituents formed bonds over performing lynching together. In this
way, Johnson ties lynching directly to Americans politics even though
rhetorical performances such as Senator Paul’s seek to obscure a connection.
In contrast to unethical whiteness
performances, Johnson depicts Black church members strengthening their
community ties by singing traditional “ring shout” hymns in which they invoke
Biblical images such as Joshua and the Battle of Jericho and Moses versus
Pharoah. Black American citizens sustain their (long-suffering) belief in a
possibility of justice through their culturally specific Christian practice.
Anti-lynching plays clarify lynching as a
complex of interrelated whiteness performance practices used to deny Black
Americans their full citizenship. Together, lynching and politics work as
extralegal means by which white politicians and their constituents bond.
Although Rand Paul’s illogical explanation tries to mask a longstanding
whiteness tradition of obstructing passage of anti-lynching legislation,
Georgia Douglas Johnson’s plays effectively document the practice for our
reference more than eighty years later.
