– Stop, let him go! – You're causing more problems.
It was forever and, at the same time, just a moment.
My grave is empty.
I'm not a hashtag.
And if these folks didn't intervene,
that wouldn't be true.
I’m listening intently
to 36-year-old Vauhxx Booker
recount how he thought
a group of white men,
who’d pinned him to a tree,
were going to lynch him on Independence Day.
The Fourth of July didn't free everyone in this nation.
That has been a constant struggle.
And there is nothing more... more American perhaps than
hanging a Black man who is a human rights commissioner
on Independence Day.
He’s explaining to me how he believes
the only reason we’re able to have this conversation on this day
is because allies circled him.
I was surrounded by a group of all white people,
most of them strangers.
They were willing to put themselves and their bodies on the line to protect me,
someone who was a stranger.
Vauhxx says what began as a beach outing with friends
turned violent when the group shown here
clashed with his group about allegedly being on private property.
You with your five white friends.
You happy with your five white friends?
A trio of videos he shared in a detailed Facebook post about the incident
have since gone viral.
In it, he explains how he decided to go talk to the group
after an initial tense encounter.
I know a lot of people have asked me why I made that choice to go
and, you know, have a conversation with someone that might be
saying something racist.
But I'm a Black man that has grown up in southern Indiana.
I've always had to navigate that difficult road.
Vauhxx says his goodwill gesture failed,
and things quickly became dangerous.
- You happy about this?
- What do you really wanna call me?
- You nappy-headed b*tch.
- What do you wanna call me?
What did you think they were going to do to you?
I felt that they were going to try to do everything they could
to seriously injure me, if not kill me.
And if I had a doubt, the doubt was removed
when I heard one of them yell at, you know, their friend,
like a command, to “get a noose.”
It's 2020. How do we not have a federal anti-lynching act?
Part of the reason is this man.
Sen. Rand Paul blocked a bill the House passed in February
that would have made lynching a federal hate crime.
This bill would expand the meaning of lynching
to include any bodily injury,
including a cut, an abrasion or a bruise.
What were your injuries?
I had... was diagnosed with a minor concussion.
I also had abrasions and bruising
and a neck strain and patches of hair that were ripped out of my head.
This happened in Vauhxx’s home state.
He’s from Indiana and grew up in a small city called Columbus,
where only 2.5% of the population is Black.
He tells me he’s been trying to get a memorial
to commemorate a lynching victim who was killed 150 years ago.
I had to realize that I had family in Indiana
that were contemporary to that time,
and what that event must've felt like for them
for the sheer horror of knowing that
you could be taken and lynched at any moment.
And never did I dream, as I was reading those accounts, that
that could be my story.
Lynching was so commonplace in the U.S.
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
that estimates say there were two to three Black people lynched weekly in the South.
Lynchings were premeditated acts of violence used to instill fear.
They became a popular way for white people
to express their anger at free Black people.
The gruesome images from the group attacks
were even placed on postcards.
This was certainly a boon to photographers and postcard dealers.
Some of these images, like this one from Marion, Indiana,
that man made 50,000 prints of that photo
and sold them for 50 cents apiece
before the governor of the state got him to stop printing.
Between 1877 and 1950, more than 4,400 lynchings took place in the U.S.
In April 2018, the nation’s first memorial
dedicated to lynching victims was opened in Montgomery, Alabama.
And before you say it: No, Indiana is not the South.
But it has had lynchings
and a well-documented history of deep Ku Klux Klan connections.
At the peak of its power within the state,
the KKK counted the governor as a member,
half the legislature and 30% of the native-born white men in Indiana.
That history still affects Indiana today
and shapes Vauhxx’s human rights work.
I'm charged with the enforcement of our county's human rights ordinance.
This is my first year on the human rights commission,
but I also chair our county's affordable housing commission.
In a state where less than 10% of the residents are Black,
seeing Vauhxx Booker retell his story at a rally to supporters resonates.
I’m here alive today because folks stopped being bystanders.
[Applause]
- Please let him go. - You go.
- We’re going to as soon as you let him go. - You go.
- I’m going to.
They had a choice.
They could have left me with these men who were attacking them as well.
They literally put their lives on the line to save mine.
And though the rally ended in violence
when the driver of a red car accelerated and injured two anti-racist protesters,
what Vauhxx wants you to remember
is what it means to be on the right side of history.
It's no longer acceptable to merely not be racist,
that you must work to adamantly be anti-racist.
Vauhxx says local law enforcement didn’t arrest anyone,
and what he wants is justice.
The FBI has now stepped in.
An official investigation has been opened up by the FBI.
We want this investigated as a hate crime.
It was clearly racially motivated.
I don't want this moment to define my life.
And I don't want the worst thing that's been done to me
to define my existence.
But ... I’m gonna stay as strong as I can.