On Embracing Discomfort on the Road Ahead

Mary Turner was angry. After Hampton Smith, the white farmer who exploited the Georgia court system to help him dole out the specific cruelties of slavery and chain gangs, was shot to death, a lynch mob of white men rose up.

Mary’s husband, Hayes Turner, who worked for Smith, was among those who were lynched. A September 1918 Crisis account offers more detail: “Mrs. Turner made the remark that the killing of her husband on Saturday was unjust and that if she knew the names of the persons who were in the mob that lynched her husband, she would have warrants sworn out against them and have them punished in the courts.”

She thought she had a right, even though it was Georgia, a century ago. Maybe because she was eight months pregnant she couldn’t help herself.

The angry mob decided to teach Mrs. Turner a lesson: She was strung up to a small oak tree on a narrow road. Her ankles were tied together, her clothes were doused in gasoline and the clothes were burned from her body. As she writhed in agony, someone took a knife for gutting hogs and sliced the baby out of her. A member of the mob stepped on the baby’s head before bullets were fired into Mrs.’ Turner’s body.

Sandra Bland was angry. After a long history of battles with depression , Bland was pulled over by an officer three years ago in Texas just as she had turned a new page in her life, most of us were told. She was arrested and jailed, where it was determined she died by suicide.