James Cameron: The Man who Survived his own Lynching

In August 1930, three Black teenagers, James Cameron, Thomas Shipp, and Abraham Smith hung out together one night when they decided to rob a white man named Claude Deeter. The robbery went south, and the teens shot Deeter. Mary Ball, Deeter’s girlfriend, said two of the teens had raped her. The third teen, 16-year-old Cameron, ran away before Mary was attacked and Deeter murdered.

Boys Hauled Off to Jail

Police captured the three men before night’s end. They were hauled off to jail on charges of robbery, rape, and murder. Ball later recanted her statement that the teens had raped her. Subsequently, this charge was dropped.

Later in the evening, a lynch mob broke into the jail and kidnapped the three teens. They dragged them to the Grant County Courthouse Square where 12,000 to 15,000 people had gathered. The group lynched Shipp and Smith.

Shipp was killed first. The mob took him from the jail and beat him to death. The mob then hanged him from the bars of his jail cell window. The mob repeated the process with Abraham, but he died from the beating before he was hanged from a tree in the square.

The lynch mob then planned to execute Cameron. They beat Cameron and then placed a noose around his neck. As the lynch mob prepared to hang Cameron, a woman appeared from the crowd and announced that he was not guilty. Frank Faunce, a local sports hero from Indiana University, intervened and removed the noose from Cameron’s neck. He said that Cameron deserved a fair trial and returned him to the cell.

Cameron wore a huge scar around his neck from the rope.

Charges Filed Against J. Cameron

None of the members of the lynch mob were ever charged with the murders of Shipp and Smith nor the assault of Cameron.

Cameron, however, was convicted on charges of being an accessory before the fact of the murder of Deeter. He served four years in prison and relocated to Detroit after his parole.

Aftermath

James attended college and earned an engineering degree after the attempted lynching. In 1991, he received a pardon from the state of Indiana. Cameron worked as an activist and studied civil rights in America so that he could teach other people what he knew. He founded three chapters of the NAACP and became the first president of the Madison County Chapter. He served as the Indiana State Director of Civil Liberties where he often received death threats. He even participated in two marches in the 1960s: the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and in 1968, the Solidarity Day, a part of the Poor People’s Campaign.

Cameron also wrote a memoir of his life titled A Time of Terror: A Survivor’s Story

Lynchings in the 19th Century

Black people were the primary victims of lynching, or the public killing of an individual without any due process, during the 19th and 20th centuries. Some 72% of victims were Black. White Americans used lynching as a way to both control and terrorize Black (and non-white) Americans, particularly in the South. Lynchings were brutal, oftentimes including decapitation and mutilation, although people typically picture an image of a person hanged from a tree.

Lynching attendees often cheered at the sight of a Black man or woman beaten and hanged and turned the lynchings into parties of sort. Photographers, including journalists from local newspapers, snapped all the photos as possible of the lynchings, often turning them into postcards.

Although records from the NAACP report a total of 4,743 lynchings in the U.S. from 1882 until 1974, many historians believe the number is extremely underreported. Of those lynchings, 3,442 were the murders of Black Americans. Believe it or not, lynchings did not occur in every state. Arizona, Idaho, Maine, Nevada, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wisconsin were the only states without any recorded lynchings.