The history behind that mob

Imagine awakening from a five-year coma on Jan. 6 and the first thing you see on TV is a yelling mob stampeding past barricades and police to break into the U.S. Capitol.

The mob runs amok through the hallways, chases and attacks police — one of whom, you hear, has been killed — breaks windows, barrels through doors, smears human waste on walls, and ransacks and loots offices while looking for members of Congress and the vice president, who some are chanting should be hung.

Having just awakened with no idea of what’s going on — “Who is Mike Pence? Who is AOC?” you wonder — is your initial reaction revulsion and fear that an angry mob has taken over and desecrated the “People’s House,” or do you wait to see who these people are and whether their politics align with yours before you decide whether to condemn or justify their actions?

Shouldn’t revulsion and fear, independent of political allegiance, be the natural reaction of any human being?

Look at all the videos of the mob storming the Capitol, including those shot by the insurrectionists. Look, especially, at the one where the mob is fighting with Metropolitan Police officers in a doorway, dragging one down the steps. Chants of “USA! USA!” erupt, and one man can be heard yelling, “Get that mother(expletive) out of there! Drag him!” as the officer is punched, kicked and hit with objects, including poles bearing American flags.

Imagine being a Black man in the 1890s, 1920s, 1930s — pick a decade — sitting in a jail cell, accused of a crime for which you’ve not been convicted and/or one for which you’ve been falsely accused. Imagine sitting — or, by now, standing — in that cell and hearing and seeing that crowd coming for you.

Imagine you’re Henry Smith in Paris, Texas, in 1893 or Jesse Washington in Waco in 1916 and thousands have gathered to maim and burn you. Or imagine you’re a Mexican American like Antonio Rodriguez, seized from a jail cell in Rocksprings in 1910 before being doused with oil and set afire. Or that you’re Elias Villarreal Zarate, taken from jail in Weslaco in 1922 to be hung.

Lynchings were often advertised in newspapers. Thousands of people, including parents bringing children, would travel with picnic baskets to enjoy the spectacle of a human being — usually a Black man — dying a horrible death. Often, body parts would be distributed as souvenirs and commemorative postcards printed.

Look at any of the hundreds of lynching photographs that exist, and take in the smiles and demented joy on the faces in the crowd, including children, as they pose with human remains.

You don’t need to go back decades to imagine the terror felt by people afraid they’d die at the hands of a mob. Less than two weeks ago, men and women in the U.S. Capitol hid for their lives as a mob of their fellow citizens, fueled by a lie that a presidential election had been stolen, looked for them.

After all the images we’ve seen and all we’ve heard of the mob, including the beating of policemen, is there doubt what they would have done had they gotten their hands on lawmakers, including the vice president, for the man for whom they insurrected?

The United States is no stranger to mob violence, particularly when inflamed by election results brought about by African Americans’ participation. Consider the Opelousas Massacre of 1868, the Colfax Massacre of 1873 and the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898.

We are not a nation unfamiliar with political violence. On Monday, we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., who was a victim of political violence.

But it cannot be appreciated enough how narrowly, on Jan. 6, members of Congress avoided being assassinated, some lynched in public, to the glee of a mob. And it cannot be overstated, leading up to and beyond Inauguration Day, the threat we face from domestic extremists.

Those extremists must be condemned and stopped, and those who encourage and justify them renounced.

Comparing King to the Founding Fathers, his biographer,

Taylor Branch, has written: “Nonviolence is an orphan among democratic ideas. It has neatly vanished from public discourse even though the most basic element of free government — the vote — has no other meaning. Every ballot is a piece of nonviolence, signifying hard-won consent to raise politics above firepower and bloody conquest.”

This week, in honoring King and the nonviolence of voting, as well as the Founding Fathers and the peaceful transition of power, we stand together and against those seeking bloody conquest.

We must.

Andrew Harnik / Associated Press People shelter in the House Jan. 6, knowing what Blacks have known throughout U.S. history: The mob is coming for them.