In 1931 in Salisbury, Maryland, Matthew Williams was abducted from his hospital bed after being shot in the head a day earlier.
His abductors were an angry White mob who, with minimal evidence, accused the 23-year-old Black man of shooting his white employer, Daniel Elliott.
We have no idea if Williams really shot Elliott. In fact the other widely held belief, according to the Smithsonian Institution, was that Elliott’s son, James Elliott, shot his father and Williams, because Williams apparently lent the younger Elliott money and when James Elliott wouldn’t repay his debt, Williams allegedly raised the issue with Daniel Elliott.
Regardless, here’s what happened to Williams in the ensuing hours.
Williams was dragged several blocks to the courthouse as someone from the mob stabbed him over and over again with an ice pick. Beaten and bloodied, he was strung up by his neck and repeatedly hoisted and lowered, over and over, to the joy of a massive crowd.
After the mob tired of that they dragged his body to a bridge over the Wicomico River, doused his body in gasoline, tied it to a lamppost, and set it on fire. They left him there as a warning sign. Apparently some onlookers even took pieces of the rope as souvenirs.
Now I recognize that was probably very difficult for many of you to read. It certainly was difficult for me to write.
I bring it up though because what happened to Williams illustrates what a “lynching” truly is. That is important to keep in mind as we watch people in our community indiscriminately use that word in an effort to recast history, score political points and win some kind of “culture war.”
Last week a group of Tierrasanta residents, represented by the Thomas More Society and a Rancho Santa Fe law firm called LiMandri & Jonna LLP, filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of San Diego Unified’s decision to change the name of Junípero Serra High School to Canyon Hills High.
Among other things, the attorneys contend that the move violated citizens’ rights to vote for or against the rebrand, and the whole effort was another case of “cancel culture.” They also accused Canyon Hills High Principal Erica Renfree of manipulating the process and students to deliver the name change, erase history and push some anti-Catholic agenda.
“In effect, Dr. Renfree sought to enlist her students to a lynch mob of erasure and anti-Catholic bigotry,” the lawsuit states.
Now that’s one line in a 175-page complaint, so I understand that some people are inclined to dismiss it.
But it was one of the only lines from the complaint included in a news release by the Thomas More Society about the lawsuit.
When you look at it in the context of other things said in the complaint and by the attorneys — things like claiming this is “cancel culture,” “critical race theory” and “radical” leftists run amok — it makes it painfully clear that these people don’t really care about history or even about having an honest dialogue about who Serra was.
“This is another example of the ‘cancel culture’ mentality that radical leftist people in education are trying to force on an unwilling American public,” said Attorney Charles LiMandri in the news release. “Father Serra was a great defender of the indigenous people of California, and he deserves our best efforts to defend his legacy.”
That is a comical statement to make. And I say that as someone who grew up in Catholic schools, taking Catholic theology classes every day from age 5 to 18.
Removing the name of a Catholic missionary from the name of a public school in the U.S. is not necessarily anti-Catholic. Frankly, it’s rather odd a public school was named after a faith leader to begin with, because we live in a country where we’re supposed to have a separation of church and state.
I also think trying to frame this as anti-Catholic persecution is insulting to the thousands of Catholics, Christians and people of all faiths who face real persecution around the world today. It was just two years ago that we saw a truly horrific case of anti-Christian violence when more than 350 people were in killed Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday.
That’s persecution and anti-Christian animus. This is not.
Additionally it is intellectually dishonest to try and paint Serra as a purely righteous “great defender of indigenous people.” If that were the case, don’t you think people from our indigenous communities might express that opinion?
To my knowledge they haven’t. Some of them, in fact, have expressed the exact opposite sentiment. For example, the Southern California Tribal Chairmen’s Association, a non-profit that is led by and advocates for 24 of the federally recognized Indian tribes in Southern California, adamantly opposed Serra’s canonization in 2015, even sending a letter to the pope at the time.
“Pope Francis, you are evidently unaware of the deadly toll and devastating effect that the Catholic Mission system had on our nations and peoples here in California,” the letter states. “How else can we make sense of you associating the image of ‘sainthood’ with a Spanish Catholic missionary who instituted and imposed a Catholic mission system upon our ancestors with deadly and dehumanizing effects?”
I guess what I’m getting at is this is all frustrating, in part because there is a legitimate dialogue that can be had about Serra — historians themselves are even conflicted about his legacy.
Some argue he prevented something worse from happening to indigenous people at the hands of the Spanish military, while others argue that his establishment of missions had grave consequences for indigenous people anyway, such as forced assimilation, corporal punishment, and pretty terrible health outcomes for children. The tribal chairmen noted an estimated 90 percent of the children born in missions died before reaching age 10.
Instead of seeking to better understand each other’s perspective and having a more complex conversation about history though, we are just going in circles, because there are people who prey on political animosity and who want to turn this into part of some culture war, all while doing the very thing they’re accusing others of doing — ignoring history and the perspectives of others.
