The passage in The Warmth of Other Suns, The Stirrings of Discontent recounts the story of life in the south and the commonality of lynching during this time. Quoting from the book, "All blacks lived with the reality that no black individual was completely safe from lynching." The South acted against the 14th Amendment violently and in doing so, denied Blacks equal protection and Black men and women were lynched based merely on accusations. Governor candidate James K. Vardaman is quoted as saying "If it is necessary, every Negro in the state will be lynched" (Wilkerson, 39). Putting a brief history of lynching into perspective, I can then begin to analyze the peom Georgia Dusk as a representation of the realities of lynching.
A lengthened tournament for flashing gold,
Passively darkens for night's barbecue,
A fest of moon and men and barking hounds,
An orgy for some genius of the South
It is easy to mistakenly read Toomer's representation of the south as a form of glorification, but once a critical analysis begins one can understand the deep rooted irony of his passages. The violence is masked by the beauty of the South and the imagery that he portrays in this passage. Reading this passage as a representation of lynching, we see that "Passively darkens for night's barbecue, a feast of moon and men and barking hounds," are a metaphor to a lynching taking place. In context to the rest Cane, the novel in which this poem was taken out of, we can understand the continuous repetition of sounds of hounds as a metaphor for lynching, as it is the audio cue for lynching in Blood Burning Moon (a short story in Cane) as well. (My independent study last quarter dealt mainly with this text)
Analyzing the spectacle nature of lynching, as in lynching as a site of spectacle, even religious in nature, other theories outside the two books required are needed. Specifically looking at Harvy Young's analysis of the Black body as a souvenier for lynching, both as it creates a fetished example, religious artifact (The Black Body as Souvenir in American Lynching Theatre Journal - Volume 57, Number 4, Dec 2005, pp. 639-657) We can then argue that the act of lynching itself is both a ritual ceremony for those performing the lynching in which both subjugates Black people, the Black body, and creates a national consciousness of othering (the latter is pretty obvious). Looking at an example of Warmth of Other Suns we see this ritualistic aspect manifest itself in the following passage:
Fifteen thousand men, women and children gathered to watch 18 year old Jesse washington as he was burned alive in Waco, Texas in May 1916. The crowd chanted "Burn, burn, burn!" as Washington was lowered into the flames. One father holding his son on his shoulders wanted to make sure his toddler saw it.
"My son can't learn too young," the father said.
I say this is ritualistic in the sense that the passage exemplifies a mass gathering, chanting and the want for older generations to have the younger generations to learn "the ways." It's set up as a ritualistic performance, a mass gathering watching the spectacle on the stage setting (the site of the lynching). The flames act as a symbolic reclamation of whatever the psyche of the lynchers thought was lost and could be reclaimed through the flamed body. Not only that, the history of lynching as a site of being a fair or picnic (family fun!...) Yet, lynching carried on after the spectacle is over. As Young explains in his article, The Black Body as Souvenir in American Lynching, souvenirs were taken from these events. The most common, and commonly known, are postcards. Photographers would take photographs of the victim which could be bought by individuals who attended the lynching. The were bought and widely distributed, often, even, traded in the same fashion as baseball cards. However, physical souveniers were taken aswell, a body part, a toe, flesh, and was bottled or stored away. Toes were used in a ritualistic sense in the same way that rabbit feet are used as "good luck charms"
Looking back now to the poem Georgia Dusk we can analyze the poem through the spectacle. Toomer exemplifies the ritual in the following excerpt:
Meanwhile, the men, with vestiges of pomp,
Race memories of king and caravan,
High-priests, an ostrich, and a juju-man,
Go singing through the footpaths of the swamp.
I suppose this is where my analysis gets a little tricky, for this passage can be read from an African consciousness perspective, but following the lynching metaphor, it can be read as a ritualistic experience of the lynching.
