Respectfully Yours, Gainer Atkins

NATHAN: Thanks for downloading this episode of BackStory. If you like what you hear, there’s much more at backstoryradio.org.

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JOANNE: From Virginia humanities, this is BackStory.

ED: Welcome to BackStory, the show that explains the history behind today’s headlines. I’m Ed Ayers.

BRIAN: I’m Brian Balogh.

JOANNE: I’m Joanne Freeman.

NATHAN: And I’m Nathan Connolly.

BRIAN: If you’re new to the podcast, we’re all historians. And each week, we explore the history of a topic that’s been in the news.

JOANNE: Last month, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in Montgomery, Alabama. The memorial is dedicated to the thousands of African-Americans who were lynched between 1877 and 1950. At the center of the museum is a walkway with 800 steel columns, each inscribed with the name of an American county and who was lynched there. The columns hang from the ceiling, reminding visitors of bodies strung up in trees.

NATHAN: Today on the show, we’re going to talk about how we, as Americans, remember and reckon with systematic violence. How do we keep this difficult history alive and in the public eye? Later, we’ll take a trip to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, to hear about how Americans reacted to the Holocaust.

ED: But first, we’re going to hear from historian Kidada Williams. She studies racial violence targeting African-Americans, including the wave of lynching that began the aftermath of the Civil War. Over the course of her research, she’s come across many accounts of lynchings. Now these were not secret crimes. Often accounts of lynching would be published not only in local papers but in national outlets like the New York Times. And while these accounts can give details on what happened the day of the lynching, they are not usually sympathetic to the victim.

MALE SPEAKER: Davisboro, Georgia, May 18th. Charles Atkins, a Negro, 15 years old, one of four taken into custody today in connection with the killing of Mrs. Elizabeth Kitchens, 20 years old, was burned at the stake tonight. The lynching occurred at the scene of the murder and followed an alleged confession from the 15-year-old prisoner. He was tortured over a slow fire for 15 minutes and then, shrieking with pain, was questioned concerning his accomplices. Members of the mob, comprising nearly 2,000 people, then raised the body again, fastened it to a pine tree with trace chains, and relighted the fire. More than 200 shots were fired into the charred body, following the boy’s death.

Looking in the archives of the NAACP, Williams came across some extraordinary documents concerning this lynching– letters from the family of Charlie Atkins, letters which tell a very different story of his death and of its aftermath.

KIDADA WILLIAMS: My Dear Mr. White, this is knowledge and say that I received your very much appreciated letter and wish to say hear the purpose of my writing you was–

“GAINER ATKINS”: I am looking around for a good lawyer to bring suit against the state of Georgia for the lynching of my son at the age of 13 years old on the 1922, 18th day of May. And I’m sending to you for information– the fact the crowd tied a rope around my neck and also tied me to a stump, would beat my wife almost to death. She has not been well from that time, and they kept me in jail for 21 months and my wife in jail for seven months. I’m now looking forward to bringing the matter to the state court, just as soon as possible or as soon as I can get some good lawyer to take the case up.

I’m getting old. I miss the support of my family and feel that the state should help me to bury this burden. Thanking you for what you has done for me and what you are going to do. I wish to have a favorable answer soon. Respectfully yours, Gainer Atkins.

KIDADA WILLIAMS: When African-Americans wrote the Department of Justice or when they wrote the President of the United States, they often got a form letter back saying, This is an issue that should be taken up with your state government. What’s curious is that a number of African-Americans get that form letter and they actually write back and say, I went to my state government first, and they did nothing.

You could also imagine him potentially writing to the local newspapers, but that would be less likely to occur because newspapers, especially the local ones where lynchings occurred, assume the guilt of the person who’s been lynched and don’t really press down on the fact that even if they had committed the crime, that they were still entitled to due process and equal protection under the law. They take the story that the mob crafts to justify the killings. And so if he writes out that could be seen as a direct act of defiance.

And there’s nothing to stop the newspaper from publishing the letter, including his address where he is and putting a bull’s eye on his back. The NAACP has, up to this point, positioned itself as an ally. They’re going to investigate lynchings themselves. They’re trying to get the family story out about the killings. He’s writing to the NAACP because he’s hoping that they can help him get justice for himself and for his son.

NATHAN: July, 16th, 1926, 209 Taylor Street, Camden, New Jersey.

“GAINER ATKINS”: Dear Sirs, I wrote you some time ago concerning what happened to me. Now, I will tell you the facts in this case to the very best of my knowledge. In May 1922 in Washington County, state of Georgia my boy was lynched for killing a white woman that was carrying US mail to Davisboro Georgia. My boy was 13 years old at the time. His name was Charlie Atkins. He was lynched without any investigation by the people of Washington and Johnson Counties. And myself and my wife was beat near to death because it was said that my boy did the killing.

And it was said shortly after this happened that a white man killed the woman and gave my boy her auto to make it appear that my boy did the killings since my boy knew no better than to let this man give him this auto. Now this is all for this time. Please let me hear from you by return mail, as I would very much like to hear from you as quick as possible. Yours truly, Gainer Atkins.

KIDADA WILLIAMS: Both of the letters are written longhand. The handwriting is actually very neat, probably doesn’t have the fine literacy skills that some of our listeners might enjoy today. But even without that, you still get a sense of who he was as a person, and I can imagine him as a grieving father who’s been beaten, who’s been in prison, who’s left his home community in order to be safe, trying to do something to try to have meaning in his life by giving a degree of justice for himself and his son.

And so that I feel on the page when I interact with the letter. On July 26, 1926, Walter White, Assistant Secretary from the NAACP, wrote Gainer Atkins back. My Dear Mr. Atkins, I have your letter of the 16th relative to the lynching of your son. I am taking the matter up with well-informed people in Georgia. I will keep you advised of all developments. Yours very truly, Walter White. I don’t believe I have his initial response.

Gainer’s letters referred to earlier correspondence with Walter White and receiving information from him. For the letter that I shared with you all, there’s only a little bit that I just read. But what often happens with the first response, it is an expression of condolence, a hope to do what they can to help the family get justice if that is at all possible.

Now the challenge is that, in the 1920s, the NAACP– they were running out of fuel. They hadn’t been able to get federal anti-lynching legislation passed, and they’re also beginning the slow process of trying to branch out beyond lynching, and take up segregation, and education, and other places of public accommodations. So part of what they’re able to do, at this point, is to try to apply some pressure to the governor– to try to shame the state into taking some action. Because that’s their only recourse at this point.

I don’t think that people like Gainer Atkins know that that’s the situation, the internal situation, of NAACP at this point. All he knows is that they’ve thrown him a lifeline. With the lynching victims’ families, they feel as though they don’t have anything else to lose but to ask, and ask, and ask, and ask, and ask for more– something to get them closer.

On September 7th, 1926, Gainer Atkins wrote another letter to Walter White. I wrote Mr. Alexander concerning the case–

“GAINER ATKINS”: –as you directed me to do. But I did not get very much satisfaction out of his letter, so I thought I would write to you again to see if you would write the High Sheriff of Washtenaw County, Georgia and also my lawyer, whose address is Sandersville, Georgia, Washington County. See if you can get any information from them concerning this case.

I’m getting older now and feels the need of my child and also the time that these people cause me to lose and suffer. So I want to ask you to do all that you can for me. In good many ways, this burdens my heart. So do all you can for me. The loss of my child is worse than all this. I wants to consult the government concerning the matter, and I wants to ask you to direct me as to just how to get at the matter.

My lawyer, Mr. Evans, is the man that cleared myself and my wife of this crime, but my child is gone. He suffered death. My wife suffered for a long time also– and also myself, so answer soon. Respectfully yours, Gainer Atkins.

KIDADA WILLIAMS: What stands out in the letter is Gainer Atkins’s palpable grief and agony at losing his boy. It’s obvious that he’s deeply affected by the killing, and his beating, and his imprisonment. And I think that, for me, what the letter does, it connects Charles, or Charlie as his family called him, to community. It says that, even though he was isolated from his people at the time of his death, that he was fully human, that he was part of a family that grieved his death long after it occurred. And for me, I think that that’s really important because it shows a very different side of lynching that we don’t get when we look at the newspapers.

And if I can, I’ll also connect that to part of what we’re seeing with the new legacy museum down in Montgomery. One of the things that they’ve been able to do is to do something historians haven’t done, which is connect directly to families. In their publications, and the documentaries that they’re working on, and even in the museum itself, they are bringing the story of lynching victims’ families, lynching victims’ connectedness to communities to light.

It’s letters like Gainer’s that, at least for me, cause the course correction in the nature of my research. The writing that I did on lynching was distant and personal. It was discovering Gainer’s letter that changed that. Because I now saw Charlie. I had to ground them. I had to ground those victims, connect those victims to their people. Because that’s how they were in life, as letters like Gainer’s really reveals to me.

ED: Kidada Williams is a historian at Wayne State University and author of They Left Great Marks on Me– African-American Testimonies of Racial Violence from Emancipation to World War I.