Moore's Ford Bridge lynchings reenactments

From: roko_joko <roko_joko_at_31k5WWLmSAJHgtZyGlWdBZk3bGxWRcvleh6iW-gHmbMuaXaRoPnkdl1Rl2vuajEOc_>
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2009 01:05:14 -0000

I heard a lecture about a modern ceremony that I thought might interest this list. It was "Welcome Back to Life: Regeneration and Traumatic Memory in a Multiracial Lynching Reenactment" by Mark Auslander of Brandeis University and you can listen to it at http://www.buworldofideas.org/shows/2009/03/508/

For four years people in Georgia USA have been publicly reenacting the 1946 Moores Ford Bridge lynchings. The original event is Googleable. To me it's especially interesting as (in a broad sense) a "we lost" ceremony, which seems to have been a subject of inquiry in Glorantha discussions: "What kind of magic do you get from a heroquest you're supposed to lose?" Also with respect to: when you have an enemy in a ceremony, who plays the role, what's it like, and what does the community get out of it. Here are some of the reasons people gave for doing the reenactments. They're from notes I took and might not be quoted perfectly.
* we want to remember it

• there are ghosts left over and we want to [interact with them somehow]
• we want to know what it was like, for both sides
• we want to be doing something ourselves. We want to to tell this truth so that we will have a future.
• something is wrong with us and we need to work it out
• healing
• we can't really know what happened; we have to keep on trying to find it out