“BECAUSE YOU KNOW THIS STORY”: CONTINUATIONS OF ANTI-LYNCHING LITERATURE IN ARACELIS

GIRMAY’S THE BLACK MARIA AND DANEZ SMITH’S DON’T CALL US DEAD

A THESIS

Presented to the University Honors Program

California State University, Long Beach

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the

University Honors Program Certificate

Rosalena Ruiz

Spring 2018

I, THE UNDERSIGNED MEMBER OF THE COMMITTEE,

HAVE APPROVED THIS THESIS

“BECAUSE YOU KNOW THIS STORY”: CONTINUATIONS OF ANTI-LYNCHING LITERATURE IN ARACELIS

GIRMAY’S THE BLACK MARIA AND DANEZ SMITH’S DON’T CALL US DEAD

BY

Rosalena Ruiz

_____________________________________________________________ Dr. Dennis López, Ph.D. (Thesis Advisor) Department

California State University, Long Beach

Spring 2018

i

ABSTRACT

“BECAUSE YOU KNOW THIS STORY”: CONTINUATIONS OF ANTI-LYNCHING LITERATURE IN ARACELIS GIRMAY’S THE BLACK MARIA AND DANEZ

SMITH’S DON’T CALL US DEAD

By

Rosalena Ruiz

May 2018

Anti-lynching literature is a subgenre of African American literary tradition which

developed in response to rampant anti-black racial terror lynchings in post-Civil War United

States. The reality of racially motivated, anti-black lynchings throughout U.S. history continue to

plague twenty-first century lives of black Americans. In utilizing traditions of anti-lynching

literature, Aracelis Girmay’s The Black Maria and Danez Smith’s Don’t Call Us Dead, two

collections by contemporary poets, process collective histories of racial trauma and deconstruct

the continued impact of such legacies on black experience in contemporary U.S. society.

Research rooted in historical explorations of black literary expression as agents of socio-political

and cultural change asserts the role of black authors as both activists against manifestations of

white supremacy and theorists of new ways of being in the world. Ultimately, selections from

Girmay and Smith’s collections can be positioned within the canon of anti-lynching literature

based on two parameters: (1) the works unflinchingly depict and record the lived experience of

lynching in U.S. history while critiquing and challenging institutions which perpetuate evolving

forms of anti-black violence in contemporary U.S. society, and (2) the works theorize, new ways

of black existence and freedom through literature. Lynching has not disappeared but has instead

transformed and requires continuous literary activism which advocates for the protection of black

lives in America.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For my family—mom, dad, Annie—and all the things you are: too large for an acknowledgments

page.

For Dr. López who, with your mind and kindness and belief in the possibility of radical thinking,

encourages engagement with the written word through activism and compassion. For

always responding to my emails.

For the poets and writers of past who are also of now—who wrote for community, for activism,

for joy, for recognition, for reclamation, for pain, for healing. Their voices in my mind

and heart—Hughes, Baldwin, Brooks, Lorde: guiding lights.

For Aracelis and Danez, I speak your first names with all the warmth deserving of two spirits

kind enough to share their voices. For the space your poems gave me to sit down,

question, mourn, honor, grow, learn. For your labors. I respond in kind with my labor.

For the lives, every one, all of them, taken too soon, always too soon, by the white supremacist

institution of racial terror. For boys, girls, men, women, old, young, remembered,

forgotten. I carry your voices and lives and loves and losses in my heart and the space

between my bones. May this, in its small way, work for your justice and your peace.

Forward.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................ii

CHAPTER

1. LIVING HISTORIES OF RACIAL TERROR LYNCHING ............................................ 1

Historical Background: Roots of Racial Terror ........................................................ 1

Contemporary Background: Lynching in the Twenty-First Century ......................... 5

Anti-Lynching Literary Conventions and Poetics .................................................... 8

2. EXPANDING THE CANON OF ANTI-LYNCHING LITERATURE .......................... 13

Representing Racial Terror Lynchings .................................................................. 14

Aracelis Girmay and The Black Maria .................................................................. 15

Danez Smith and Don’t Call Us Dead .................................................................. 22

The Black Maria and Don’t Call Us Dead: Modern Anti-Lynching Literature ...... 27

3. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?: LITERATURE AS HEALING .......................... 29

REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................ 32

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CHAPTER 1

LIVING HISTORIES OF RACIAL TERROR LYNCHING

The literary subgenre of anti-lynching literature serves a distinctive purpose within the

landscape of understanding and processing histories of racial inequality and white violence

toward black individuals. While not the only group targeted by this so-called rough justice

African Americans were the primary victims of this brutal form of social control and tool to

maintain racial hierarchies in the United States. Scholarship regarding the practice of lynching

attempts to recover and inform on the long and violent legacy that influences continued

processes of discrimination and racialization. Within this scholarship, literary analysis identifies

anti-lynching literature as a central form of resistance performed by black authors. It is the

primary goal of this paper, through the synthesis of historical, social, cultural, and literary

analysis, to explore and assert the various ways that twenty-first century literature can be

classified as anti-lynching literature and subsequently positioned within this subgenre of the

African American literary canon.

Historical Background: The Roots of Racial Terror

In this section, I aim to establish the historical context of lynching referenced and

represented by authors of anti-lynching literary works. Analyzing methods of lynching and

statistical information regarding victims throughout the history of the United States highlights

specific ways black authors, as with all writers, are products of the period in which they are

writing. Within this framework, literary works can be contextualized as agents of change within

a wider socio-political landscape. This understanding develops a link between anti-lynching texts

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of the past and contemporary works of literature that draw upon both lived and literary history to

continue the legacy of documentation and critique of anti-black violence.

A historical framework is necessary to contextualize modern literary representations of

lynching as a form of critiquing contemporary manifestations of white supremacy and racism in

the United States. Understanding the history of racist violence provides depth and meaning to

trends of literary documentation. Paralleling factual histories of lynching in the United States

with contemporary manifestations of anti-black violence ensures lynching is not viewed as an act

that has ended and no longer plays a role in the modern-day experiences of black Americans.

Engaging with quantitative and qualitative historical data and scholarship highlights the

continued relevance of understanding lynching as a cultural and sociopolitical nexus in society,

black history and black literary expression.

Analyzing the quantitative statistics regarding the prevalence of lynching in the United

States provides a foundation for understanding the deep roots of white supremacist violence that

continue to plague contemporary race relations. The most recent comprehensive analysis of

terror-lynchings throughout the United States by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) provides

insight to the sheer scope of such violence perpetrated against black individuals: “EJI has

documented 4084 racial terror lynchings in twelve Southern states between the end of

Reconstruction in 1877 and 1950, which is at least 800 more lynchings in these states than

previously reported. EJI has also documented more than 300 racial terror lynchings in other

states during this time period” (Lynching 4). This statistic illuminates two vital aspects of the

study of lynching and anti-lynching works. First, it is impossible to ignore the overwhelming

presence of traumatic lynchings that black families and communities were forced to confront on

personal and collective levels. Second, the fact such research is still being conducted and new

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victims are still being accounted for in the twenty-first century suggests lynchings continued

hold on cultural identity and race relations. While this data provides a window into the grim

reality of white supremacist violence that black authors attempt to document and critique in their

works, it tells only part of the story. In order to prevent the grisly nature and context of anti-black

violence from being diminished or ignored, a qualitative analysis of the experience of lynching

in the United States is also necessary.

While numerical data is a valuable tool to grasp lynching’s enormous influence on

culture and black literature, descriptions and accounts of the actual act illuminate the bleak

legacy of racialized violence, which continues in contemporary society. Acknowledging the

gruesome reality of lynching violence can be difficult to capture in words and images, let alone

numbers, as noted by M. Lee Stone: “The historical reality of lynching was far more complex

and more horrifying than any literary or visual account. Lynching victims were mostly black but

also women and children. Few victims were ‘strung up’ in a hurry. Many persons were tortured

first and men were castrated and many burned” (Stone). Statistics cannot convey the suffering

and pain experienced by human victims of the crime or the ways in which they were tortured and

killed at the hands of white mobs. Even with qualitative data, it is difficult to communicate the

horror of lynching. Lynching was not merely a random, isolated, or marginal act, but rather an

aspect of cultural performance and social control in the United States defined explicitly by its

brutality:

The American lynching ritual… although it could be as ‘simple’ as hanging, burning or

shooting, by a mob, of an individual thought to be guilty of some crime, in its most

barbarous form included all three—hanging, burning, shooting—as well as torture,

mutilation, and especially castration. The methods of torture were as ingenious and

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infinitely various as the sadistic imagination of the mob, which often included men,

women, and children. (Klotman 56)

Here again, the extremity of brutality employed to assert control over newly freed black

populations is delineated; Phyllis R. Klotman presents six distinctive characteristics of lynching,

each designed to denigrate and destroy the humanity of black victims. The characterization of

lynching as a “ritual” underscores that the inhumanity of the act was calculated and deliberate,

and more importantly, an integral part of social life, especially in the United States’ South. The

assertion that “men, women, and children” participated in the ritual of killing suggests the

intergenerational perpetuation of white supremacist ideals and anti-black racism, which shapes

racist forms of violence to this day.

A framework that synthesizes quantitative and qualitative accounts of the lynching of

black individuals, particularly men, throughout the history of the United States encourages an

active awareness of the continued legacy of such violence. Historical data on lynching does little

to affect social and political change if it is not viewed as a tool through which to understand and

deconstruct contemporary and dominant modes of white supremacy. Engaging with the historical

reality of lynching prevents stagnation of criticism and enables a lens through which to view

current manifestations of racialized violence as well as literary works. As stated in the

introduction to The End of American Lynching, “Lynching is a practice that has formally and

strategically evolved over time… We will learn more about lynchings when we contest the idea

that these events are isolated crimes and random events unconnected to the social and historical

experience of the communities and this nation where they occur” (Rushdy 19). Lynching is both

a distinct historical practice and a contemporary nexus of racist violence that continues to

influence and shape the cultural, social, and racial landscape of the United States. This

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understanding allows for analysis of anti-lynching literature not merely as artistic works, but as

cultural productions designed to document and critique the reality of racism and anti-blackness

in the United States.

Contemporary Background: Lynching in the Twenty-First Century

In order to understand the ways in contemporary works of literature can be positioned as

anti-lynching texts, a brief overview of twenty-first century forms of racialized violence, white

supremacist terrorism, and extralegal and legal lynching is necessary. Contemporary structures

of anti-blackness and racist violence in the criminal justice system and wider society directly

evolve from historical forms of racialized cruelty and violence analyzed above. Loïc Wacquant

argues in his article “From Slavery to Mass Incarceration” that there is a “genealogical link”

between racialized social relations of oppression in the United States: “Not one but several

‘peculiar institutions’ have successively operated to define, confine, and control African

Americans in the history of the United States [slavery, Jim Crow, the ghetto, and prisons]. . . .

This suggests that slavery and mass imprisonment are genealogically linked and that one cannot

understand the latter . . . without returning to the former as historic starting point” (41-42). As

much as they can linked to slavery, police brutality, mass incarceration, capital punishment, and

racial profiling of black communities in the United States are genealogically tied to racial terror

lynchings. It is impossible to understand and combat contemporary modes of oppression without

acknowledging the ways they mirror histories of social control; current manifestations of anti-

black violence are born, raised, and nurtured by racial terror lynching, and continue the legacy of

brutalization on black communities.

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These parallel histories of violence result in similar forms of trauma on African American

communities across the United States and throughout history. The United Nations’ Working

Group of Experts on People of African Descent suggests an intrinsic link between contemporary

social inequity and the past: “Thousands of people of African descent were killed in violent

public acts of racial control and domination and the perpetrators were never held accountable.

Contemporary police killings and the trauma it creates are reminiscent of the racial terror

lynching of the past” (Working Group on People of African Descent). Research by the UN

Working Group presents parallels between lynching violence and contemporary police

shootings. The fact that both forms of violence were and continue to be sanctioned by the state

draws connections across time periods. Despite lynching’s typical qualification as an extralegal

act, police officers and state officials were both active participants in and passive bystanders to

racial terror lynchings. In Making Whiteness, Grace Elizabeth Hale writes that “spectacle

lynchings could not occur without the complicity of mayors, law enforcement officials, and local

business men,” despite the fact “mob leaders were less likely to come from these groups” (237).

Although outside of the judicial system, racial terror lynchings were perpetrated, witnessed, and

endorsed by officers of the state. This state sanctioned violence is directly mirrored by

unprosecuted police shootings of black people in the twenty-first century. Whether the murders

were committed by state-sanctioned lynch mobs in the twentieth century or police officers in the

twenty-first, the violent and traumatic outcome for black individuals and communities is the

same. Both acts serve to enforce the dehumanization of black individuals in a white supremacist

society and reinforce the continuous lack of justice extended to black Americans in the United

States.

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Similarly, the Equal Justice Initiative’s “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of

Racial Terror” delineates the continued influence of lynching on the administration of criminal

justice toward black people across the United States. This study reminds one that racist

discourses promoting anti-Black images of criminality and pathological violence that justified

racial terror lynching are still utilized to substantiate present-day imprisonment and killing of

African Americans: “Lynching and racial terror profoundly compromised the criminal justice

system. . . . Decades of racial terror in the American South reflected and reinforced a view that

African Americans were dangerous criminals who posed a threat to innocent white citizens. . . .

The unprecedented level of mass incarceration in America today is a contemporary manifestation

of these past distortions and abuses” (60-61). Just as African Americans were the principal

targets of lynch mobs, they are the primary targets of modern-day policing and

disproportionately incarcerated across the United States. The decrease in racial terror lynchings

of the twentieth century did not result in justice for black citizens but rather called for new ways

of targeting, imprisoning, and killing black people through so-called legal channels. The

comparison of police brutality and mass incarceration with the practice of racial terror lynching

highlights the ongoing effects of unreconciled racial violence and how such ideologies and

discourses permeate contemporary United States. Lynching, more than an act confined to

history, is alive and well in American society and manifests throughout contemporary black

American experiences of racist violence.

Understanding the ways in which forms of violence in the twenty-first century United

States replicate the historical practice of lynching is vital to drawing connections between anti-

lynching literature across time periods. If it is possible to parallel historic acts of violence against

black communities, it is also possible that twentieth-century authors and their texts can provide a

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framework in which to categorize and analyze anti-lynching literature in the twenty-first century.

Through simultaneously analyzing historical and critical literary research, a definition for what

qualifies as a part of the canon of anti-lynching literature becomes possible.

Anti-Lynching Literary Conventions and Poetics

As a result of the evolution of early forms of lynching into new manifestations of social

control and terroristic violence, equations can be made between twentieth-century anti-lynching

literature and twenty-first century works; if the violence addressed by early authors still exists in

the time of contemporary writers it follows that early literary convention and poetics can be

applied to analyze and understand their works. I intend to explore the ways in which black

literature responds to and is directly shaped by lynching throughout history. Writers across

generations utilize literature in order to combat racial terror. As a result, a tradition of literature

as activism enables writers to fight against the state-sanctioned killing of black Americans in

their respective time periods.

Anti-lynching literature attempts to disrupt the complicit acceptance of anti-black

violence by replicating thematic elements of lynching in texts that record and criticize

manifestations of white supremacy. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, black

authors employed literature to actively combat oppressive structures of anti-blackness by

unflinchingly presenting the inhumanity of the American lynching ritual. Literary works

representing lynching serve to enact socio-political change through black self-expression.

Klotman explains the process of Black authors centering lynching in their work: “If, as Hoyt

Fuller has said, literature rises organically out of the experience of a people, then it is clear that

writers will attempt to transmute their experience, no matter how violent or repugnant, into art. It

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seems reasonable therefore that lynching . . . should find its way into the writing of so many

Afro-Americans” (55). Representing anti-black violence in literature acts as a form of artistic

self-expression in the face of extreme violence and oppression; African-American authors

produce works that transform aesthetics into a functional tool to document and critique

lynching’s prevalence in the experiences of black Americans.

The style and function of anti-lynching literature directly reflects the time period during

which it was written; post-Civil War works differ in form and theme from those produced during

the Harlem Renaissance. Documenting the inhumanity of white mobs participating in lynching

rituals primarily characterizes early works of anti-lynching literature. Unfortunately, early

examples of anti-lynching literature and in-depth analysis and criticism are scarce, lacking in

comparison to later works. However, I do believe it is important to point toward earlier texts and

their respective criticism in order to establish a foundation for critique of texts that would follow.

Klotman’s utilization of Paul Dunbar’s 1904 short story “The Lynching of Jube Benson”

exemplifies the literary trends of anti-lynching literature in the first decade of the twentieth

century. Here, the lynching of a black man by a brutal mob serves as an overarching motif

focused primarily on accurately representing the lived experience of white supremacist violence.

Klotman asserts Dunbar’s short story “illustrates the extraordinary disposition of white men to

lynch black men even on circumstantial evidence, and in spite of long association which should

prove the potential for criminal assault inimical to the character of the individual” (55). This

early anti-lynching work functions as an example of literary commentary intended to document

the reality, however illogical, of the lynching ritual in the United States. Accurately representing

anti-black violence is the primary function behind Dunbar and pre-Harlem Renaissance African

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American authors attempts to document and critique the rampant prevalence of white mobs

lynching black individuals in post-Civil War America.

As the function of lynching transformed throughout the twentieth century to maintain

racial hierarchies in the United States, so did the ways in which black authors sought to represent

in literature anti-black tools of social control. As Kimberly Banks suggests, the changing

approaches to anti-lynching literature serve a distinct socio-political purpose: the assertion of

black humanity and value in a white society that degrades and violates their existence. Banks

explains: “Experiments with lyricism enabled them to affirm the humanity of the lynching victim

while also illustrating the brutality of the lynch mob. Lyricism shifts the symbolic importance of

lynching from the perpetrators to the victim and restores his/her humanity” (Banks 452). Hence,

where pre-Harlem Renaissance works centered around the brutality of the lynch-mob, authors of

the Harlem Renaissance were concerned with establishing and highlighting the humanity of the

lynch victim. Furthermore, lynchings depicted in works for this time period derive from a desire

for social control and the assertion of white supremacy in the face of the advancement of African

Americans; it is through brutal violence that racial hierarchy is maintained. Banks concludes,

“The decision to represent lynching in lyrical terms prompts readers to see lynching as a loss of

social power. Lynching is a desperate social act, instigated through fear of social equality” (464).

Shifting forms of literary expression in the 1920s and 1930s are a direct response to evolving

forms of white social control of black individuals and communities. The performance of

lynching by the mob is still central to anti-lynching literature, as to black American experiences,

during the Harlem Renaissance, but the purpose of such representations now serves to critique

new forms of social control and dehumanization.

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Yet another shift in the tradition and practice of anti-lynching literature comes during the

Black Arts movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Works from this period exemplify transforming

styles of documentation and critique of white supremacist violence and exemplify the ways anti-

lynching literature adapts throughout history to continuously critique evolutions in anti-blackness

in the United States. In “Remembering Lynching and Representing Contemporary Violence in

Black Arts Poetry,” David Kieran notes: “A significant body of poetry emphasizes that the

contemporary structural violence towards blacks by whites is in fact a continuation of the

brutality the African-Americans have historically endured” (34). Despite the decreasing number

of lynchings in the 1960s and 1970s, new methods of excluding black people from social and

political advancement manifested in response to the Civil Rights movement. Kieran posits that in

response, “Black Arts poets deploy signifiers of the lynched body describing contemporary

spectacles of institutionalized, legalized, and legitimated violence that strip African Americans

of their agency and capacity for resistance” (Kieran 34). Kieran argues contemporary Black Arts

poets utilize imagery of lynching in order to critique new forms of racist violence designed to

repress calls for equality during the Civil Rights movement in the United States. It is through

lynching that black writers of the period come to understand their contemporary position in white

society. It follows, then, that they should respond to such a reality with works that continue the

tradition of anti-lynching literature as activism and critique. Kieran cites memorialization of

lynching in Black Art’s poetry as a literary tool through which to process and deconstruct

evolutions of anti-black violence in the United States. He argues, “signifiers of the lynched body

have been consistently mobilized to critique contemporary American culture’s pervasive

structural inequality and violence. In these poems, lynching’s violence continues in the present,

and this violence does not lead to freedom but rather indicates that racial oppression endures in

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spite of attempts to address inequality” (35). For Black Arts poets, representations of lynching

ground their work in the history of anti-black violence while simultaneously allowing for

evolutions in social critique and calls for activism. Anti-lynching literature takes on a new

purpose in the Black Arts period. In contrast to previous periods where literature directly

critiqued and sought to quell rampant lynchings, allusions to lynching by Black Arts Movement

writers now sought to combat new social forms of systemic racist violence. Such forms of

violence are seen not as unique and apart from the history of lynching but rather as directly

resulting from and perpetuating the brutal anti-black racism embodied in terror-lynchings

throughout the United States.

Tracking anti-lynching literature by black authors across literary and historical time

periods suggests the persistent purpose of lynching representations in works throughout African

American cultural production and activism. The reappearance of anti-lynching literary

conventions and poetics point to the fact lynching has never disappeared from black experience

in the United States. Countering sentiments that suggest lynching is an act bound to a specific

historical period, black authors throughout history document the continuation of white

supremacist social control, which reproduce and perpetuate the violence of racial terror

lynchings.

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CHAPTER 2

EXPANDING THE CANON OF ANTI-LYNCHING LITERATURE

With this understanding of the reality of lynching and literary responses to anti-black

violence, can contemporary black authors be positioned within the canon of anti-lynching

literary traditions? If twenty-first century authors grapple with the continued effects of racial

terror lynching in contemporary United States by employing literary conventions and poetics

utilized by their twentieth century predecessors, then the work they produce can be positioned in

the canon of anti-lynching literature. For the purpose of my research, I have synthesized the

historical background and literary criticism delineated above to establish two key parameters

around which works by contemporary writers can be positioned within the genre of anti-lynching

literature. First, the work depicts, unflinchingly, the reality of lynching violence throughout the

history of the United States while paralleling contemporary black struggles and manifestations of

anti-blackness to the act of lynching as a form of oppression and social control. Second, the work

conceptualizes, theorizes, and constructs new ways of being for black individuals through the

literary form chosen by the author. The continuously evolving forms and functions of anti-

lynching literature exemplifies its relevance to understanding present-day black cultural

productions that aim to challenge persistent manifestations of white supremacy and racist

violence in the United States. Analysis of preexisting scholarship asserts lynching as a cultural

and sociopolitical nexus throughout the history of the United States and within African American

literature. Therefore, twenty-first century black literature that memorializes past black oppression

through representations of lynching, critiques persistent forms of anti-black violence, and

advocates for new ways of existing in the world continues the tradition of anti-lynching activism

through literature established by black authors in the United States.

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Through recognizing the evolution of racial terror lynchings from the late nineteenth

century to the present and engaging with history proactively, Aracelis Girmay and Danez Smith

fight against the notion that racial terror lynching no longer exists in their respective collections

The Black Maria and Don’t Call Us Dead. Understanding the ways in which forms of violence

in the twenty-first century United States replicate the historical practice of lynching allows for a

consideration of contemporary works of black literature as modern additions to the anti-lynching

canon. Girmay and Smith extend the literary and political practices of anti-lynching literature

into the present. Active legacies of lynching that manifest in the twenty-first century require

continuous and proactive forms of memory warfare in order to combat contemporary racist

violence. Herein lies the role of the anti-lynching author; akin to twentieth-century writers of

anti-lynching literature, Girmay and Smith convey and expose the reality of lynching in its

various forms and the resulting impacts on black communities. Furthermore, they each utilize

lynching’s legacy in order to equate past and modern structures of oppression, continuing the

activist tradition of anti-lynching literature. Finally, in addition to critiquing past and present

modes of violence, they further replicate anti-lynching literary traditions by looking beyond the

confines of dominant modes of anti-black violence in order to imagine liberated forms of black

existence and healing through the acknowledgment of racial wounds.

Representing Racial Terror Lynchings

The continued concern of black authors to represent lynching in their work results from

deep emotional trauma and sustained influence of such violence in contemporary black

experience. The pervasive influence of racial terror lynching in the lives of African Americans

makes ignoring such violence impossible: “In effect, black Americans share a kind of communal

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memory of lynching that is not bound by region or by time” (Ifill XI). This “communal memory”

permeates the poetry of both Girmay and Smith; for each author, lynching is not confined to the

past and requires continued documentation in the twenty-first century. As a result, they

unflinchingly acknowledge and record the racist violence prevalent throughout U.S. history,

replicating the literary tradition of their predecessors. Racial terror lynchings loom heavy

throughout Girmay’s The Black Maria and Smith’s Don’t Call Us Dead; their understanding of

their role as literary activists and their position as black Americans mirror those of anti-lynching

authors throughout the twentieth century. Both poets grapple with the omnipresent

manifestations of racial terror perpetrated against black bodies in contemporary United States’

society. An overarching theme persistent throughout both poets’ works is their respective

representations of the trauma of policing, targeting, and brutalization endured by African

Americans in white spaces on a regular basis. Girmay’s and Smith’s poetic explorations of the

dehumanization, degradation, and murder of black individuals and communities by dominant

structures of power echo the underlying thematic concerns of twentieth-century anti-lynching

authors. Whether victims are hung from a noose on the branch of a poplar tree or shot with hands

in the air by a police officer, the outcome is the same; both forms of violence serve to maintain

the white supremacist status quo through state-sponsored brutalization of black individuals. As a

result, Girmay and Smith attempt to process contemporary traumas born from racial terror

lynching and critique the perpetuation of such violence and traumas through literary activism.

Aracelis Girmay and The Black Maria

Aracelis Girmay’s collection The Black Maria blurs the line between past and present

racialized violence, exploring the historical proclivity of white America to control and monitor

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black Americans. Anti-black lynchings, whether performed by mobs, uniformed officers of the

state, or neighbors, are documented and critiqued throughout her collection; different

perpetrators and types of violence are juxtaposed in Girmay’s work, suggesting that histories of

racial violence are not isolated, but instead interact and influence one another across time

periods.

Girmay roots her exploration of the historical continuum of racial terror with the lynching

of Emmett Till, using the fourteen-year-old black boy’s murder as a touchstone for

understanding anti-black violence throughout historical and contemporary United States. Till,

brutally disfigured and lynched by white men for allegedly whistling at a white woman, serves as

a central figure to exemplify the historical brutality of lynchings while also mirroring

contemporary criminalization of black men, women, and children. Indeed, Till’s murder has

proved central to the formation of African American literary activism: “The Mississippi courts

may have closed the book on the Till case long ago, but the African American community, in

particular the African American writer, has not” (Metress 89). Unlike America’s so-called

systems of justice and the wider white society, African American communities cannot ignore the

social reality of lynchings; for black authors like Girmay, literature serves to ensure that this

racist violence is not erased from history by dominant power structures and victims do not go

unrecognized or unmourned.

In her poem “The Black Maria I,” Girmay balances reverent memorialization with

honest recollections of the brutality committed against Till through the act of lynching: “For

days, the beautiful child Emmett swells into the Tallahatchie. Even / now, the moon paints its

face / with Emmett’s in petition. Open casket of the night, somebody’s / child, our much more

than the moon” (74). Here Girmay engages in the tradition of black authors before her,

17

positioning Till at the center of the lynching narrative to memorialize an individual who was so

grotesquely denied his humanity by the white individuals who lynched him. Girmay’s

description, “For days, the beautiful child Emmett swells into the Tallahatchie,” operates in two

ways: first by presenting Till’s beautiful youth to ensure the reader does not forget how young he

was at the time of his murder, and second by using the present tense to evoke a sense that the

violence of his lynching lives on in the present. In each way, Girmay echoes twentieth-century

authors’ desire to document the very present threat of lynching.

The imagery of “the moon” painting “its face with Emmett’s in petition” directly mirrors

the lyricism used to represent the reality of lynching by Harlem Renaissance authors. Although

lyrical in style, the image also reconstructs the disfiguration of Till through the equation with the

moon. The widely circulated image of Till marred with wounds from gunshots and barbed wire,

swollen from two days in the river, mimics the surface of the moon more so than the face of a

young boy. Despite its lyrical beauty, the poem intends to represent the horrific extent of anti-

blackness embodied by twentieth-century racial terror lynchings and thus forces the reader to

confront the realities of such violence. Much like works by early twentieth-century black

modernists, lyricism is utilized to juxtapose natural and linguistic beauty with the brutality of

racist violence; where twentieth-century authors de-romanticized grand narratives about the

Antebellum South, Girmay similarly de-romanticizes the notion that America is somehow a post-

racial society through her assertion that the death of Emmett Till requires active “petition” as the

root causes of his death have yet to be addressed and resolved. This notion of de-romanticization

through black narrative activism manifests in the poem through the reference to the moon as

“open casket of the night,” recalling Mamie Till’s insistence upon an open-casket and public

funeral for her son to control the narrative of his lynching and force America to confront the

18

young, brutalized face of their anti-black sentiments. Any preconception that the United States

has transformed into a colorblind nation of equality is vehemently refuted in the recollection of

the racist brutality of Till’s murder. Aracelis Girmay supports Mamie Till’s goal to ensure the

horrific details of his killing are not forgotten, making it impossible for the continued anti-

blackness embodied by lynching to go unconfronted. In order to extend such activism into the

twenty-first century, Girmay critiques the perpetual presence of lynching in the United States by

drawing connections between Till’s murder and contemporary anti-black killings.

Through identifying and analyzing parallels between historical and contemporary victims

of terroristic violence, Girmay asserts that racial terror lynchings continue into the twenty-first

century while advocating for the recognition of such truth; in doing so, she continues the

tradition of anti-lynching poetics. In “The Black Maria” Girmay holds space and memorial for

black children victimized by contemporary racial terror lynchings by mirroring their deaths with

that of Emmet Till: “If this is a poem about misseeing—Renisha McBride, Trayvon Martin,

Rekia Boyd, / then these are also three of the names of the black maria” (74). The black marias

of the moon—craters once thought to be seas by European sailors and astronomers—are central

to Girmay’s exploration of contemporary black experience; it is through these black marias that

the history of misidentification of black people is explored. The black marias were misnamed by

Eurocentric explorers in such a way that replicates the Western tradition of forcibly

misidentifying black individuals through racist forms of dehumanization and reduction. This

imagined criminalization experienced by both Martin and Till is explored by Girmay through the

concept of the black marias: if the moon whose face is painted with that of Emmett Till can also

be named after Trayvon, Rekia, and Renisha, an equation is made between lynching victims of

the past and victims of racist violence in the twenty-first century.

19

In naming the black marias after Renisha McBride, Rekia Boyd, and, most significantly

to this paper, Trayvon Martin, Girmay suggests that the continuous inability of white euro-

americans to accurately identify African Americans as human beings of beauty and value results

in violence perpetrated against black bodies. The traumatic outcome of this misidentification is

wholly embodied in the murder of Trayvon Martin, “a seventeen-year-old boy walking to a

friend’s home carrying only his cell phone, Skittles, and an Arizona watermelon drink . . .

gunned down by a neighborhood-watch coordinator named George Zimmerman” (Bloom 9). The

contemporary killing of Trayvon, as well as Rekia and Renisha, is rooted in the same willful

misidentification used to justify the killing of Emmett Till. Upon the release of Zimmerman’s

phone call to 911, it was revealed “he had looked out the window of his SUV and described

Trayvon, a stranger to him, as ‘a real suspicious guy’ who was ‘up to no good,’ adding, ‘these

assholes, they always get away’ and ‘fucking punk,’” exemplifying that Trayvon’s killing was

motivated by, “the deepest, ugliest stereotypes still embedded in the American psyche: that

blacks are criminals, dangerous—‘they’ get away with their crimes—‘they’ must be watched,

followed— those assholes” (Bloom 9). These deep rooted preconceptions of African Americans

reflect the justification for Emmett Till’s lynching fifty-nine years prior, and it is telling that both

Emmett’s and Trayvon’s killers were acquitted of their crimes. In this way it is possible to

classify Trayvon’s killing as a racial terror lynching carried out in the twenty-first century.

Trayvon Martin and Emmett Till, as well as other victims of anti-black policing and terroristic

violence, embody the continued existence of racial terror lynching in contemporary United

States.

Girmay further explores the pervasive and racist mentality of black predisposition to

criminality that underlies forms of physical violence encountered by black individuals like Till

20

and Martin through her description of an encounter between the young, black astrophysicist Neil

DeGrasse Tyson and a white neighbor in 1973. In her poem “The Black Maria I.,” Girmay

indicates that the influence of the lynch mob’s pathological incrimination of black bodies is alive

and present in all eras and aspects of U.S. history and culture. The neighbor reduces Tyson to a

criminal figure, replicating racist imaginations central to racial terror lynchings throughout

history: “His neighbor / (it is important to mention here / that she is white) calls the police /

because she suspects the brown boy / of something, she does not know / what at first, then turns,

/ with her looking, / his telescope into a gun, / his duffel into a bag of objects / thieved form

neighbors’ houses / (maybe even hers)” (91). Girmay represents the white mindset, which

criminalizes black people, boys in particular, on sight and appeals to unfounded racialized fear to

justify anti-black violence. This conflict asserts that racist attitudes used to justify lynchings do

not disappear but merely transform into new iterations of racist social control. Girmay classifies

the thought process of the woman observing Tyson as “the murderous jury of / his neighbor’s

imagination & wound,” drawing attention to racist discourses and behavior which have shaped

white supremacist killings of black individuals throughout history (92). The “imagination”

characterized as a “murderous jury” is a direct allusion to the collective mentality of white mobs

participating in public lynchings; this mentality is resurrected in the mind of the neighbor and

holds the same violent potential. In these lines, one encounters the age-old criminalizing of black

bodies that served as ideological justification for lynching in the past and today serves as

ideological rationale for the continued killing of black men by police officers. By engaging with

the history of black individuals being killed due to the volatile and prejudiced whims of white

people, Girmay presents the same forms of brutality disguised as justice with which anti-

lynching authors of the twentieth century engaged in their works. Girmay forces readers to

21

confront the fact that “[they] know this story,” because, it’s the same story of anti-black violence,

including lynching, told repeatedly across history (91). In presenting the continuation of the

historical tendency of white imagination to serve as judge, jury, and executioner of black

individuals, Girmay suggests central characteristics of racial terror lynching continue into the

present and directly affect twenty-first century African Americans.

As with anti-lynching literature throughout history, Girmay’s work is shaped by both a

communal and a deeply personal connection to the reality of anti-black violence in the United

States and beyond. Victims of racist violence throughout history shape understandings of

individual black experience in twenty-first century American society. Throughout “The Black

Maria I,” the poetic space is utilized to present and process the inherent danger of being black in

a white supremacist society and the resulting fear endured by African Americans on an

individual level: “as I write this poem my body / is making a boy even as the radio / calls out the

Missouri coroner’s news. / the Ohio coroner’s news. / 2015” (92). Here Girmay navigates the

complex terror of mothering a black boy in an environment which repetitively and callously

subjects black individuals—predominantly but not limited to young boys and young men—to

brutalization and murder. Her fears are substantiated by the near constant bombardment of “the

Missouri coroner’s news. the Ohio coroner’s news,” which could easily be expanded to include

coroner’s news emanating from radios across the United States from California to New York.

This omnipresent reporting of the killings of black individuals enforces the same racial terror as

twentieth century lynchings. Through the inclusion of the year “2015,” Girmay documents the

contemporary reality of such violence, critiquing the perpetuation of racial terror lynchings in the

twenty-first century. This gruesome reality permeates Girmay’s musing upon her impending

motherhood and the potential fate prescribed to her son by institutions rooted in anti-black

22

violence like the police: “maybe he will be (say it) / the boy on the coroner’s table / splayed &

spangled / by an officers lead as if he, too weren’t made / of a trillion glorious cells and

sentences” (92). Girmay’s concerns and fears around mothering a black son in a nation built

upon white supremacy are the result of anti-black killings compounded throughout American

history. As a black mother in the United States, the thought of birthing a boy forces Girmay to

confront—“(say it)”—the unending continuum of racial violence that ultimately reduces the

wonder of black individuals’ humanity into a body on a coroner’s table.

Girmay’s exploration of racial terror lynching violence spans decades, stretching from the

murder of Till in 1955 to Tyson’s encounter with police in 1973 up to the killing of Trayvon

Martin 2012 and the birth of her son in 2015. In presenting the intersections of these racist

killings across historical boundaries and critiquing the institutions that allow for their continued

existence, Girmay’s collection The Black Maria embodies the key characteristics of anti-

lynching literature and extends its activism to the twenty-first century.

Danez Smith and Don’t Call Us Dead

Allusions to various characteristics of racial terror lynching allow for the documentation

of violence and anti-blackness, which have victimized African Americans throughout U.S.

history. For Danez Smith1, racial terror lynching lives on in the present, and through their works,

the poet recognizes and depicts its longstanding hold on black communities. Much like Girmay’s

work, Smith’s Don’t Call Us Dead is embedded with the tendrils of contemporary racist

violence—an old and cumbersome poplar tree sprouts new roots that sustain Smith’s exploration

of the brutality of racial terror lynching and its trauma in the twenty-first century.

1 Danez Smith identifies as non-binary and uses they/them/theirs pronouns. The paper reflects this preference.

23

Occupying the afterlife constructed in Smith’s “summer, somewhere,” are countless

black boys and men who have fallen victim to anti-black and racial terror violence throughout

history. Here, the brutality endured by victims of racial terror lynch mobs is recollected and

memorialized: “years ago / we plucked brothers from branches / peeled their naps from bark”

(5). The image of brothers hanging from branches represents the same gruesome form of murder

depicted by anti-lynching authors of the twentieth century. Despite occurring “years ago,” it is no

less prevalent in the memory of Smith or other black Americans in contemporary society.

Through poetry, the victims of lynching are re-centered in the imagination of the reader, as if

they were witnessing the violence firsthand. Smith’s language of “we” and “brothers” suggests a

communal identity amongst black men derived in part from the continuous burden of witnessing

and carrying the weight of those lost to the racial violence of white America. For Smith, this

trauma is embedded in the very fabric of black American experience, and they draw this

connection in their account interconnectedness between : “here, if it grows it knows its place / in

history. yesterday, a poplar / told me of old forest / heavy with fruits i’d call uncle / bursting red

pulp & set afire / harvest of dark wind chimes” (8). In Smith’s poetry, there is no escaping the

history of lynching, no uprooting racist violence that continues to construct and uphold white

supremacy throughout the United States; the description of the lynching victims as “fruits i’d call

uncle” leads the reader to recognize the genealogical link between historical and contemporary

victims of racial terror lynchings. Through constructing afterlife inhabited by victims of racial

terror violence that refuses to forget the history of white supremacy, Smith utilizes anti-lynching

poetics to suggest that manifestations of anti-blackness are deeply interwoven.

Presented amongst the historical victims of racial terror lynching in the poem once again

is Emmett Till. Much like Girmay, Smith is particularly concerned with the ways his lynching

24

epitomizes the dehumanization of black people throughout American history. In their “summer,

somewhere,” Smith embodies Emmett Till to confront the traumatic effects of anti-black

violence, mirroring the tradition established by twentieth-century African American authors.

Smith assumes the voice of the young boy in order to critique the brutality of racial terror

lynchings: “there, men stood by the shore & watched me blue. / there, i was a dead fish, the

river’s prince. / there i had a face & then didn’t. / there, my mother cried over me, open casket…

/ what was i before? a boy? a son? / a warning? / a myth? i whistled” (Smith 21). Through this

embodiment, Smith utilizes the poetic space to allow the victim of lynching to directly confront

the institution of white supremacist violence that rendered him lifeless. As noted by Metress, this

practice of literary empowerment has deep roots in African American literature, and by

extension, in anti-lynching works: “As long as black writers continue to remember him and

agitate on his behalf in the court of literature, Emmett Till can continue to have the final word

while his murderers, who sought to silence him, are themselves cosigned to silence and brought

before the bar of judgement” (101). This reclamation of narrative agency is embodied by the

reappearance of the open casket in Smith’s poem; Smith, in resurrecting Emmett, subverts the

ultimate goal of suppression intended by lynch mobs, subsequently controlling the narrative

surrounding the young boy’s death, much Mammie Till’s open casket funeral for her son.

Providing Till with a voice after death through his use of personal pronouns “i” and “me” allows

for an account of lynching that centers the experience of the victim. Smith’s use of the language

“men stood by the shore & watched me blue” and “i was a dead fish” and “there i had a face &

then didn’t” creates a face to face dialogue with Emmett in which they force the reader to

directly confront the extremity of anti-black violence endured by victims of racial terror

lynching.

25

While drawing attention to twentieth century victims of anti-black killings like Emmett

Till, Smith’s “summer, somewhere” also documents and memorializes their contemporary

counterparts. Within the poetic space, Smith depicts the continuation of racist violence across

generations. References to contemporary lynchings appear throughout the poem, as Smith

reveals the various characteristics that have come to define the twenty-first century experience of

racial terror lynchings. Smith focuses upon the continuous criminalization of black bodies by

white institutions in the United States through an exchange between an unnamed police officer

and the black person he killed: “dear ghost i made / i was raised with a healthy fear of the dark. /

i turned the light bright but you just kept / being born, kept coming, kept being / so dark, I got

sca … i was doing my job / dear badge number / what did i do wrong? / be born? be black? meet

you?” (18- 19). Here, the killing of black boys and men is presented as essentially unavoidable;

histories of racial terror lynching replicate themselves in interactions between contemporary

black individuals and police officers. The “healthy fear of the dark” embedded in police officers

mirrors the fear of black criminality used to substantiate twentieth-century lynchings. In “being

born” and “being black,” boys and men are endangered merely by existing, regardless of time

period; there is no escaping the constant surveillance and brutalization ascribed to them because

of the color of their skin. The almost routine reality of racial terror lynching is confronted and

critiqued. The white supremacist violence of racial terror is perpetual and compounding; for the

black community, burying their men, women, and children is constant, each funeral reopening a

wound that never closes and is never allowed to heal.

For Smith, racial terror lynching is a deeply personal and directly shapes their

understanding of themselves, the trauma they experience occupying a masculine-presenting

body, and the pain of witnessing the violence against their community in the United States.

26

Smith presents the unending violence committed against black individuals by white supremacist

power systems: “i’m sick of calling your recklessness the law. each night, i count my brothers. &

in the morning, when some do not survive to be counted, i count the holes they leave. i reach for

black folks and touch only air” (25). In describing the laws of America as “recklessness,” Smith

points to the hypocrisy of systems of justice in the United States; the actions of police and the

carceral system are anything but just to African Americans and in fact hide white supremacy

under the guise of legality. This “recklessness” of so-called law is similarly represented in

Marlene Parks “Lynching and Anti-Lynching,” which describes the active neglect of black lives

by the American legal system; “between 1882 and 1933, sixty-one antilynching bills were

introduced into Congress. Between 1934 and 1940 there were 130 (more than twenty a year!),

and between 1941 and 1951, sixty-six, for a total of 257 in sixty-nine years” (316-317). ). In

other words, while state and federal government officials were aware of the violence, they

decided not to act to ensure the safety and lives of black Americans. Smith describes the

continual loss of lives to racial terror violence to critique this state-sanctioned killing and the

legal complicity in violence represented by twentieth century lynchings; in both eras, such

violence operates with the law on its side.

Danez Smith, through stressing the communal experience of racial terror, acknowledges

and represents the intergenerational link between forms of anti-black violence in the United

States. Throughout Don’t Call Us Dead, Smith employs anti-lynching poetics to critique the lack

of substantial socio-political and cultural change necessary to eradicate racial terror lynching.

27

The Black Maria and Don’t Call Us Dead: Modern Anti-Lynching Literature

Girmay and Smith continue the tradition of documenting the brutality of lynching

through literature and the fight for recognition and remembrance of victims like Emmett Till and

Trayvon Martin in the same way as their twentieth-century predecessors. Whether utilizing

general characteristics and imagery relating to twentieth-century lynchings or re-centering the

specific figures of Emmett, Trayvon, and other victims in their collections, both Smith and

Girmay draw from and engage with the African American literary tradition of unflinchingly

documenting racial terror lynching in their works. As a result they extend the practice to include

contemporary manifestations of lynching. This points to a central responsibility of anti-lynching

authors: litigating and agitating on behalf of victims of anti-black violence in the United States.

More so than acting only as historians and scribes, black authors in both the twentieth and

twenty-first centuries employ the tool of literature to behave as disruptors and activists against

the status quo of white supremacist brutality.

The sense of urgency with which authors of traditional anti-lynching literature responded

to racial terror lynchings is replicated in Girmay’s and Smith’s presentation of contemporary

black struggles. Where black authors of the twentieth-century wrote with the direct intention

document the horror of racial terror lynching, Girmay and Smith employ the practice to record

the contemporary byproducts of such historical brutality. In both cases, documentation puts

authors in the position to control the representation and disrupt dominant narratives of racial

terror violence. This, according to Sherilynn Ifill, is at the heart of any hope for racial

reconciliation in the United States: “The oppressor demands silence of both victims of the

oppression and of the passive beneficiaries. Only one story may be told—the one constructed by

the oppressor. Counternarratives threaten the power of the oppressor. . . . No racial reconciliation

28

process can succeed without providing this opportunity for truth-telling” (133). By recording

and critiquing contemporary violence, both authors directly respond to and challenge racial terror

lynching; as previously noted, these twenty-first century forms of violence directly result from

lynching’s legacy. Racial terror lynching has not disappeared, but merely has transformed;

therefore, Girmay’s and Smith’s rendering of anti-black violence in their literature is no different

from the work of their predecessors. In this way it becomes clear twenty-first century writers

continue the tradition of anti-lynching activism in a modern setting.

29

CHAPTER 3

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?: LITERATURE AS HEALING

Narratives and discussions in which lynching is presented as having disappeared with the

passage of time fail to acknowledge the very real and urgent presence of racial terror lynching in

the contemporary United States. Far from being confined to the tree and the noose, the practice

of lynching underscores and influences ideas of race and justice in the twenty-first century. As a

result, contemporary black Americans continue to be victimized by racial terror lynching, with

black individuals still living out the reality of brutality to varying degrees of apparent severity. In

all cases, collective silence and denial of the persistent impact of lynching by white supremacist

institutions on every level ensures the continued dehumanization of black individuals throughout

America. The sustained and unpunished killings of black men, women, and children by police

and non-black Americans represented throughout Girmay and Smith’s poetry glaringly points to

the fact that systems of violent oppression and terror have not vanished. With this in mind, how

then, can lynching begin to be uprooted from American society and how might black individuals

and communities begin to heal?

While the ongoing reality of racial terror lynching is a source of grief and anger

throughout both The Black Maria and Don’t Call Us Dead, it also powerfully drives each poet’s

desire to imagine and craft liberation for black Americans. As poets and activists, Girmay and

Smith not only document and critique the legacy and continued reality of lynching violence in

the United States but also, much like the works of authors and poets before them, imagine new

existences for black individuals outside of the confines of the anti-Black violence of lynching.

This notion of poetic activism and healing is exemplified by Girmay in “on poetry & history,” in

which she describes Native American poet Joy Harjo’s philosophy on the role of poetic activism:

30

“she said it was her job to put that grief in its place, or someone else, some child or grown person

would be out walking & just walk right into it, without knowing what they’d just walked into,

what they had, then, inherited in a way, what they were, then, carrying & feeling. The danger of

that. The grief of that” (69). This mentality of processing historical forms of grief and trauma in

order to promote and make space for communal healing of oppressed communities is central to

both historical and contemporary works of anti-lynching literature.

Like Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, W.E.B Du Bois, and countless others that

came before them, Aracelis Girmay and Danez Smith balance confrontations of racial terror

lynching with presentations of liberation from the trauma it produces. The poetic space enables

black poets to reimagine worlds in which black communities can find reprieve from white

supremacy. This manifests in Smith’s “dear white america” in which the speaker proclaims,

“i’ve left Earth & i’m touching everything you beg your telescopes to show you. i’m giving the

stars their right names. & this, this new story & history you cannot steal or sell or cast overboard

or hang or beat or drown or own or redline or shackle or silence or cheat or choke or cover up or

jail or shoot or jail or shoot or jail or shoot or ruin / this, if only this one, is ours” (25). Smith

acknowledges the brutal history of racial terror in the United States while utilizing their power as

a poet in order to craft new histories that are not rooted in the trauma sustained by white

supremacist violence like lynching. Similarly, Girmay’s “Fourth Estrangement, With A Petition

For The Reunion Of Jonathan And George Jackson” asserts the power of narrative agency and

reclamation to promote healing for marginalized black individuals: “Look at what a story can do.

/ Astonishing what a story can do. / Who would we who were enslaved be now / had that been

the story we told / ourselves of ourselves? A chosenness by God. / No afterlife. No poverty now

& gold in heaven” (104). When black Americans are able to tell stories of resistance, liberation,

31

and resilience, the terror and oppression born from lynchings can be disrupted. In “The Black

Maria I,” Girmay proclaims, “The poem dreams of bodies always leadless, bearing / only things

ordinary / as water & light” (93). Similarly Smith in “little prayer” transforms the poem into a

petition: “let ruin end here / let him find honey / where there was once slaughter / let him enter

the lion’s cage / & find a field of lilacs / let this be healing / & if not let it be” (81). The urgent

need to dismantle lynching legacy and heal from racial terror points to the importance of

expanding the canon of anti-lynching literature to include twenty-first century works like those

written by Girmay and Smith; in doing so “bodies always leadless” and “honey where there was

once slaughter” becomes possible for black Americans through literary activism.

32

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