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Octavia Spencer of ‘The Help’ wins best-supporting actress Oscar for role she inspired

Octavia Spencer wins Academy Award for her role in The Help

Octavia Spencer wins an Oscar for her role in The Help.

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An Iconic Lynching in the North

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

On a hot August night in 1930, 15,000 people flooded into the small Indiana town of Marion to see a great spectacle. Three black teenagers were being lynched for supposedly raping a white woman and killing a white man. The boys were savagely beaten by a mob of men, women and children. One by one they were hanged. Two died – but with the rope already tightening around his neck, one boy was saved.

The souvenir photo taken of this “spectacle lynching” is very well-known. They say it inspired the song “Strange Fruit,” written by teacher Abel Meeropol and made popular by singer Billie Holiday.

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Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters

Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

This exhibit pays tribute to people who fought hatred and injustice in the Jim Crow period. Some of these are well-known; others are unsung, ordinary people. Every quarter we will add more stories about the many heros of this era.

To inaugurate the exhibit, we present three unsung heros who opposed the infamous lynching in Marion, Indiana in 1930: Flossie Bailey and Grace and William Deeter.

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Dr. James Cameron, Museum Founder and Lynching Survivor

James Cameron, also known as "Jim" to his sisters and "Apples" to his classmates, in school picture. Courtesy of the Cameron Family.

James Cameron was just sixteen in 1930 when he and two other teens were lynched in Marion, Indiana. His friends were killed but, miraculously, James survived. He spent a year in jail awaiting trial for the murder that triggered the lynching. He was sentenced as an accessory before the fact and served four years in the Indiana Reformatory with hardened adult criminals.

Cameron believed God saved him for a purpose. He left prison resolved to do something “worthwhile and God-like.” He spent the rest of his long life working to help us understand this tragic chapter of American history. Dr. Cameron showed us how to cope with our painful legacy through love, justice, and reconciliation.

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Thomas Shipp

Tommy Shipp School Picture

Tommy worked at the Malleable foundry in Marion, Indiana, at the time of his death at age eighteen. Only a little more is known about him.

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