At the end of Act I (prompting Slow Drag’s aforementioned song), Levee reveals a story of violence from his youth, telling of how a gang of white men raped his mother. When the eight-year-old Levee, witnessing the event, rushed in to defend his mother, the men stabbed him, then retreated when the boy seemed on the verge of death. The family left town, and once he had secured a home for his wife and son, Levee’s father returned to enact revenge, killing several of the men before he was captured; the white men then “hung him and set him afire.” 

In response to this, stage management posed a couple of questions: “After such lynchings & burnings, would the body be returned to the family? Also, why would the white men care /why would they be scared that little black boy Levee was gonna bleed to death?”

And Faedra responsed with the following: “No—there wouldn’t be a formal “returning of the body” by the perpetrators.  I think we can assume that the body might be retrieved by Levee’s family and friends—if there was much left to retrieve. 

We have to remember:  white folks who conducted/gathered at lynchings did it for four basic (yet intersecting) reasons:  1) to annihilate black people, 2) to intimidate and, therefore, control the greater black community, 3) as an act of retribution or “justice” if a lynching victim was accused (not necessarily guilty) of some crime or social violation, and 4) for entertainment.  In terms of the last reason, it has been well-documented (and the newspaper entries on the dramaturgy wall attest to this) that both the perpetuators and spectators at lynchings would often take body parts home with them as souvenirs (just like we might buy the “Rent” t-shirt!).   So, we are talking about an unimaginable level of disrespect for black humanity—we are not talking about a situation in which the white folk would even be thinking about “returning” the body. 

Now, there’s also the possibility that if the lynching victim was deemed guilty of a crime (and certainly that would be the case for Levee’s father), that his family may have been forced to watch lynching as part of the punishment.  In addition, the family may have also been disallowed to retrieve the remaining body parts as part of the punishment (ah—makes you think of Creon’s edict to disallow Polyneices’ body a proper burial, yes?!) . 

As far as the second query, I’ve thought alot about that myself.  I think we have to remember a couple of things:  Sadly, not unlike today, many women do not report rape because communities often blame the victim.  So, add to this the fact that we are talking about the early 1900s and that we are talking about the rape of a black woman by white men.  Black womanhood is NOT respected or valued and black women are not framed with the same notions of purity, femininity, and vulnerability that framed ideas of white women.  Also, we can’t forget that this mindset was augmented by the fact that during slavery white slave masters—and their wives—tried to explain away the proliferation of “mixed” babies by blaming the supposed loose morals and insatiable sexual appetites of black women, rather than addressing the issue of rape.  So, the rape incident described in the play presents the extension of psychology in which the violence and violating acts of white men could be explained away by the supposed “low” nature of a black woman (the, “hey, but she asked for it…” excuse).   So, even *IF* there was some proof that they did it and that she DIDN’T ask for it (and we don’t have DNA detection then!), would it even matter to authorities or the community at large?  There would be no avenue for justice for Levee’s mom.

I say all this to say also remind us WHY Levee’s father felt he had to do what he had to do.  He knew that if he didn’t take the situation into his own hands, there would be no punishment for the rapists.  Thus, in this instance, we know that Levee’s father killed four of the white men that had attacked his family.  He was then, beyond a doubt, “guilty” of a crime and white public sentiment would have fully supported (and, in fact, relished in) his eventual grotesque punishment.  Furthermore, as the political scientist, James Clarke, points out: “Since lynching enhanced the objectives of social control, and was not a punishable crime in the South, it flourished virtually unchecked by the law or community pressure.”

I also am trying to parse out the possible nuances in how these rapists were thinking. 

Raping a black woman was nothing for them to worry about and lynching a murderous black man was a heroic act.  BUT killing a small black child….that may have been perceived as being a bit different. That would be a mob murder of a single, small boy—and there would be bonafide evidence of this (a dead body).  And it did happen in the black family’s home (so what kind of excuse could they offer?).  All in all, they could probably get away with killing a kid, but it might be a bit of a messy affair.  And maybe, just maybe, the killing of a young child—black as he was—would be *just enough* to affect those white men’s twisted conscience…”