How James Cameron’s True Story of a Lynching Led to Milwaukee’s Black Holocaust Museum

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Photo: America’s Black Holocaust Museum - abhmuseum.org

America’s Black Holocaust Museum exhibit

America’s Black Holocaust Museum

Of the many racist atrocities visited upon Black people over the years in America, perhaps none was as heinous as lynching. Most of these cowardly acts—claiming untold thousands of victims—were in the 1800s in the South. But not all.

Perhaps the most famous depiction is a black-and-white photo of two bloodied Black men hanging from limbs of a tree, surrounded by amused White onlookers. An empty third noose dangles between them.

But this all-too familiar, sickening photo was not taken in the Deep South in the 1860s, ‘70s, ‘80s or ‘90s. It was taken in Marion, Indiana on Aug. 7, 1930, and serves as the cover of a chilling book by James Cameron called A Time of Terror. And that third noose was intended for Cameron, who was 16 years of age.

Cameron, who passed way at age 92 in 2006, was founder of America’s Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, which has become world-famous. After closing 10 years ago, the museum reopened in February on the ground floor of the Griot Building, at 401 W. North Ave.

We first met in 1986, when I was a columnist-editorial writer with The Milwaukee Journal, and he presented me with a signed copy of his book. Over the next decade, I toured the museum’s original building at North Fourth and West North Avenue, and we had many private conversations.

In 1994 and 1996, Cameron, a soft-spoken, old school gentleman, appeared as a guest on two news talk shows I co-hosted“The Carter-McGee Report” on WNOV radio, and “Eye on Milwaukee” on CBS Channel 58. Our in-depth interviews about his awe-inspiring museum, which he founded in 1988, and his unique literary achievement, were among the most moving, and fulfilling, of my career.

The genesis of Cameron’s book is testament to his indomitable spirit. After many rewrites and some 300 rejections by publishers over 45 years, he copyrighted the work in 1980 under the title From the Inside Out. Two years later, he renamed it A Time of Terror and mortgaged his home to self-publish the book in Milwaukee (T/D Publications). In February 1994, it was re-published by Black Classic Press in Baltimore.

Here is how Cameron introduces the account of his miraculous escape from slow death by lynching—a must-read for every Black man, woman and child in this country:

“Have you ever watched one man die and then another, knowing that your turn was next? Have you ever looked into ten thousand angry faces whose open mouths screamed for your blood? Have you ever felt yourself in the hands of such a mob whose sole purpose was to destroy you?

“All of these things and more happened to me several years ago. This I acknowledge not boastfully but humbly, for the fact that I am alive to tell this story is due to a power greater than myself or any man ...”

Lynching in the Heartland

It should be noted that a compelling recounting of Cameron’s near-lynching also was the subject of a book called A Lynching in the Heartland by James Madison, published in 2001 by St. Martin’s Press. But with all due respect, Cameron’s spellbinding, first-person account is, quite frankly, in a class by itself. As is the wonderful man who lived it.

Cameron’s stunning story begins the evening of Aug. 6, 1930, in Marion, a hotbed of Ku Klux Klan activity. Cameron went along with 18-year-old Abe Smith and 19-year-old Tom Shipp in a plan to rob a White couple parked in a lover’s lane. Recognizing the White man as Claude Deeter, whose shoes he had shined, Cameron ran away.

He was later arrested at his mother’s home, told Deeter had been shot and the woman—who knew the Black teenagers—said she was raped. In jail, Cameron was beaten by sheriff deputies and coerced into signing a confession. The next day, after the town’s mayor brought a masked man to jail to look at the three Black prisoners, Deeter died.

An upcoming lynching was aired on the radio and a mob shouting “nigger, nigger” stormed the jail. The sheriff—whom Cameron later learned was a Klan member—stood by as Shipp was badly beaten and hung from a tree in the courthouse square. Then Smith was dragged out, hit with rocks and bricks and a crowbar was rammed through his chest.

Cameron says: “I watched from my window upstairs knowing that Abe was dead before they hung him. After about 15 minutes of celebrating, the mobsters started back toward the jail.” Beaten again, he prayed as his neck was put in a noose. Miraculously, he heard a voice say “Take this boy back. He had nothing to do with any raping or killing.”

At that point, he relates, the mob and onlookers—comprised of men and women—parted and he was permitted to make his way back to the jail. Later, the state militia arrived and the bodies of the two teenagers were cut down. Cameron was taken to another county and spent a year in jail. In a subsequent trial, in Anderson, Ind., he was found guilty of being an accessory to manslaughter. However, it was determined that the White woman had not been raped. None of the lynch mob was arrested or charged.

Cameron was to serve another five years in prison and when released in 1936, put on parole for five more years. In February 1993, he was pardoned by Indiana Gov. Evan Bayh. But he’ll never forget the night his life was spared. It began his journey, chronicled in A Time of Terror and culminated in the treasure trove of history known as America’s Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee.