Activists re-enact grisly lynching in search for justice

The police were only about 50 yards down the road when the gun-wielding white mob stopped the car and dragged the two black men out, shoving them face first into the dirt.

The two women were next to be yanked from the burgundy Buick into the thick, sultry air of a Southern summer, one of them thrashing and flailing as she screamed and pleaded with the mob to spare her and her unborn child.

The lynch mob dragged the sharecroppers through the pine trees down a wagon trail to the Apalachee River and, on their leader's command, unleashed three torrents of gunfire. ...more

Here's a link the video with scenes and sounds from the reenactment.


Just last week I remembered myself as a kid in elementary school singing a song called "Tom Dooley" in the music class we attended once a week. Now, we never sang the entire version and it's clear why but it's not clear to me why we even sang it at all.

Elementary school version
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're bound to die
I met her on the mountain
There I took her life
Met her on the mountain
Stabbed her with my knife

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're bound to die

This time tomorrow
Reckon where I'll be
Hadn't a-been for Grayson
I'd a-been in Tennessee

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're bound to die

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're bound to die

This time tomorrow
Reckon where I'll be
Down in some lonesome valley
Hangin' from a white oak tree

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're bound to die

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Poor boy, you're bound to die

Poor boy, you're bound to die
Poor boy you're bound to die
Poor boy, you're bound to die...


Not the Elementary school version
Chorus
Hang your head, Tom Dooley
Hang your head and cry
Killed poor Laura Foster
And you know you're bound to die

You took her on the hillside
And begged to be excused
You took her on the hillside
Then hid her clothes and shoes

You dug her grave four feet wide
Dug it three feet deep
Rolled the cold clay over her
And tromped it with your feet

[chorus]

Took her on the hillside
Stabbed with a knife
Took her on the hillside
And then you took her life

[chorus]
[chorus]

This time tomorrow morning
Where do you reckon I'll be
Down in some lonesome valley
Just swinging from a white oak tree

You can take down my old violin
And play it all you please
For at this time tomorrow morning
It'll be of no use to me

[chorus]
[chorus]