Deadly Discourses: Examining the Roles of Language and Silence in the Lynching of Emmett Till and Wright's Native Son

In James Baldwin's 1965 short story "Going to Meet the Man," Jesse, a white male, responds to a moment of sexual incapacity by flashing back to the moment of his initiation into manhood: a lynching picnic he attended with both of his parents. From his privileged vantage point atop his father's shoulders, Jesse takes in the climatic moment of the lynching with eyes full of wonder and love for his father. The central moment of this childhood memory occurs when one of the members of the lynch mob emerges from the chaotic sea of hostility with a long, shiny knife. Approaching the black man hanging above the pyre, he takes "the nigger's privates in his hand, one hand, still smiling as though he were weighing them" (216). Then, in a moment that borders on the sublime for each member of the white audience, the man wielding the knife raises and lowers his blade and castrates his victim, "cutting the dreadful thing away, and the blood [comes] roaring down" (ibid.). For Jesse, this violent emasculation and stripping away of the victim's manhood marks the beginning of his own.

Baldwin's portrayal of Jesse tying his role in the lynching to his own sexual performance is hardly unique or out of place with the symbolic value traditionally placed on the castration and lynching of black men, particularly those accused of transgressions involving white women. According to Phyllis Klotman, lynching served as "an initiation ritual in reverse, warning that society would not allow, in fact forbade, the passage of the Afro-American from boy to man." Conversely, according to Klotman, "participation in the lynching was patent proof of the initiation into manhood of the lyncher, or a rejuvenation of the potency in some ill-starred impotent" (56). The idea of lynching serving as a non-pharmaceutical cure for impotence certainly holds true for Jesse who, following his flashback to the lynching, regains his sexual fortitude and begins fervently making love to his wife. Further, Jesse here illustrates the fear that black men have been blessed with sexual feats that no white man can duplicate as he brags of his newly regained virility to his wife: "Come on sugar, I'm going to do you like a nigger, just like a nigger, come on sugar and love me like you'd love a nigger" (218). Jesse has taken the potency and manliness, in all senses of the word, of the lynching victim and transferred it onto himself. Through his flashback, Jesse has been reminded that as a participant in the lynching, he now controls that which he fears most: the sexual threat that black manhood poses for white womanhood.

While castration and lynching clearly serve emblematic purposes related to sexual prowess, they also serve additional symbolic roles and respond to other deeply seeded fears in the lyncher. As part of the castration/lynching process, the lyncher customarily inserted the victim's penis into the victim's mouth, often going so far as to use needle and thread to ensure it remained secured in the mouth. Beyond the implications already discussed, this action also serves as a metaphorical silencing of the black man and literally takes away his capacity for speech. While rape or sexual misconduct commonly formed the backbone of the charges levied against the lynched, those facts were frequently imagined, assumed, or just plain fabricated with the real transgression often involving the victim "talking fresh", making obscene comments, and more often than not, just plain speaking at all to a white woman. According to lynch law, the real crimes did not involve the nature of what specifically a black man did or did not say to a white woman, but rather that anything had been said at all.

By entering into the white speech community, the black man, at least in the eyes of the white Southerner, attempted to establish himself on equal terms with the white man and, therefore, crossed a boundary that was protected and viewed as sacrosanct. For a Northern...