In the early 1900s, my grandfather, Martin Luther Grey, showed up at his new job in a lumber yard near Cincinnati , Ohio. The first order of the day from his boss was, "You fellows go back and take down the darkies from the rafters". My grandfather had no idea what the boss meant, but he followed the other two workers to a large, partly open building in the back of the yard.
As they entered the building, my grandfather told me that he saw three black men hanging from the rafters.
One of the workers he was walking with said "Damn, the drunken fools could have at least cut them down after their Saturday night fun!" The other worker then said" Yip, I am gettin' real tired of doing this on Monday mornings". Grandpa asked " You do this every Monday"? One said, "We do it every Monday, and sometimes we even find one or two through the week"!
Grandfather stared at the hanging bodies as the other two men cut them down with a pocket knife. He told me that one of the men looked about sixty years old and the other two were probably in their twenties.
All three had been beaten and it looked like the older man had his arms broken. One of the young men's gray socks was drenched in blood from a gunshot wound in the leg. The young men's hands were tied with hemp rope along with nooses which were a one loop knot.
One of the workers looked at grandpa and yelled "Well boy, help us get them out to the edge!" Right about then, two black men came pulling an old wooden wheel cart up by the building. They didn't say a word, they just looked down at the ground. Grandfather helped drag the older man out by the cart and by this time, he had tears in his eyes.
Grandpa told me how he thought about the men who were strung up just because some good ol boys wanted to hang a negro. Human beings, father, sons, brothers of families who loved and needed them.
They were murdered by drunken white men who thought it was fun to hang a negro. It was just a common thing to the men of the lumber yard, and telling any authority didn't even cross their minds, because no one cared...even the authority didn't care.
Grandfather shouted out at the other two workers "I can't do this job, I'm going home!" One of the workers said" Come on Luther, they's just darkies".
As grandfather walked away, he turned and saw the two black men pulling the cart with the three bodies piled over it. The wheels of the old cart had a haunting, crying squeal and made Grandfather shiver. Grandfather left and never went back to the lumber yard again.
Grandfather told me this story only one time. We were under the old willow tree at his home in the early 1970s. It was the only time I had ever seen my grandfather cry. The true tears rolled down his face when he repeated what one of the workers said, "They is just darkies" . Grandpa was just 15 years old when he witnessed this horrendous act of evil. I was around 15 when he told me the story.
Maybe my grandfather said this about racism.... "They's just darkies?" They were not "Just" anything....they were fellow human beings.
