by Larkin Williamson

Created on: January 18, 2009   Last Updated: January 31, 2009

Cincinnati, Ohio...the year is 19l2, when my grandpa, Luther, showed up at his new job in a lumber yard. The first words out of his boss's mouth was "You three men go back and take down the darkies from the rafters". My grandpa had no idea what the boss meant, but he followed the other two workers to the furthest building in the back of the yard.

As they entered the building, my grandfather told me that he saw three black men hanging from the rafters. One of the workers he was walking with said "Damn, the drunken fools could have at least cut them down after their Saturday night fun!" The other worker then said" Yip, I am gettin' real tired of doing this on Monday mornings". Grandpa asked " You do this every Monday"? One said, "We do it every Monday, and sometimes we even find one or two through the week"!

Grandpa stared at the hanging bodies as the other two men cut them down with a pocket knife. He told me that one of the men looked about sixty years old and the other two were probably in their twenties. All three had been beaten and it looked like the older man had his arms broken. One of the young men's gray socks was drenched in blood from a gunshot wound in the leg. The young men's hands were tied with hemp rope along with nooses which were a one loop knot.

One of the workers looked at grandpa and yelled "Well boy, help us get them out to the edge!" Right about then, two black men came pulling an old wooden wheel cart up by the building. They didn't say a word, they just looked down at the ground. Grandpa helped drag the older man out by the cart and by this time, he had tears in his eyes.

Grandpa told me how he thought about the men who were strung up just for the fun of it-these were human beings, father, sons, brothers of families who loved and needed them. They were murdered by drunken white men who thought it was fun to hang a darkie. It was just accepted by the men of the lumber yard, and telling any authority didn't even cross their minds, because no one cared...even the authority of the time.

Grandpa shouted out at the other two workers "I can't do this job, I'm going home!" One of the workers said" Come on Luther, they's just darkies". As grandpa walked away, he turned and saw the two black men pulling the cart with the three bodies piled across it. The wheels of the old cart had a crying, haunting squeal and made Grandpa shiver to the bone. Grandpa left and never went near the lumber yard again.
Grandpa told me this story only one time. We were under the old willow tree at his home in 1972. This was the only time I had ever seen my grandfather cry. The biggest tears rolled down his face when he repeated what one of the workers said, "They's just darkies" . Grandpa was just 15 years old when he witnessed this horrendous act of evil. I was 15 when he told me the story.
Maybe grandpa summed up the core of racism? They were just darkies? When the word "just" is put in front of the description of any human being, racism is there! My grandfather's full name...Martin Luther Greye.

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