Do Republicans Like Lynching?

It certainly looks that way. Or at least they seem to think their constituents like it. First, all the non-signers to the Senate’s resolution apologizing for failing to outlaw lynching are Republicans. Now it looks Senator Bil Frist, Senate Majority Leader, vetoed a full role call vote that would have put members on record.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) refused repeated requests for a roll call vote that would have put senators on the record on a resolution apologizing for past failures to pass anti-lynching laws, officials involved in the negotiations said Tuesday.

And there was disagreement Tuesday over whether Saxby Chambliss, one of Georgia’s two Republican senators, had supported the measure when it was approved Monday night.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) refused repeated requests for a roll call vote that would have put senators on the record on a resolution apologizing for past failures to pass anti-lynching laws, officials involved in the negotiations said Tuesday.

And there was disagreement Tuesday over whether Saxby Chambliss, one of Georgia’s two Republican senators, had supported the measure when it was approved Monday night.

Bob Stevenson, Frist’s chief spokesman, said Tuesday evening the procedure the majority leader established was “requested by the sponsors.”

The chief sponsors of the resolution, Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and George Allen (R-Va.), disputed that assertion.

Landrieu said Monday before the resolution was adopted she would have preferred a roll call vote but had to accept the conditions set by Senate leaders.

How is it that in 2005 Republican Senators have a hard time coming out against lynching?

Consider that some of the constituents/supporters of these southern Senators probably have relatives who were probably spectators to lynching. Perhaps some have relative who participated in lynching, or even took home souvenires from a lynching; fingers, toes, teeth, or even the occasional severed penis. Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America, about a lynching that took place in Georgia, includes a passage describing southern whites picking through the brush at the scene of a lynching, looking for stray body parts to keep as momentos.

Maybe some of the southern Senators consituents have photographs and postcards from lynchings, like the ones found in Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, tucked away somewhere in the attic. Maybe some even have great-great-grandpa’s old Klan robes tucked away in mothballs.

To them, lynching — and all that it represents — is in the past, and they want it to stay there, mothballed alongside great-great-grandpa’s Klan robes. It makes it easy to pretend that the past never happened, or that it’s irrelevant now. And that’s part of the reason they elected these folks in the first place, to make it easier for them to do just that. It’s easier. It’s far easier than reconciling the fond memory of grandma and grandpa to the reality that perhaps they participated in a lynching, or stood by and watched a man hung, burned, and fed his own genitals. Maybe they took a picture, or even a piece of the victim with them. How do you reconcile that? It’s easier not to.

Just like Trent Lott, one of the hold-outs, chooses to remain in denial and believe the he and his dear south have changed, so his constituents and those of the other hold-out Senators prefer to believe that the prejudice and bigotry at the root of lynching have been rooted out of their society and their hearts today. Even if it’s probably still living in their attics, or in shoeboxes in their closets. The fact that these Senators can’t go on record as standing against lynching now, for fear of their constituents reaction, suggests that the roots of lynching haven’t rotted away, but live just beneath the surface, maybe waiting for the chance to sprout back into the sunlight again.

Ironically, there’s a quote from a southern author that’s quite applicable here. “The past is never dead. It fact, it’s not even past.”