[Rad_Hazard]

Originally Posted by G1911

Carrying a piece of lynch rope for luck is, of course, not as bad as actually doing said lynching, but it is such an odd thing to encounter. Rough street justice or perceived justice, racial and not racial, has been a norm for the vast majority of human history, but this little anecdote surprises. An all-around tragedy, the mechanism of it's sad and bloody conclusion turned into a good luck charm. History is often more strange than any fiction.

I do not mean this in a personal or negative way to anyone, but I find it endlessly interesting that today we see and treat racism (Anson's crime of thought, after the fact) as in many ways worse than even murder itself, that most absolute and final of all things (Simpson's crime of action, and a crime when committed). Anson is more objected to than Simpson, a statue of Semmes is pulled down for a memorial to a fellow who apparently committed a homicide without any dispute that he did. It dots our culture in many ways and places, and it surely says something about who we are as a people today, but I am not quite smart enough to put my finger on exactly what that is.

Anson's crimes were not of thought only, but of action. It's referenced at length in regards to Moses Fleetwood Walker and the Chicago Mascot Clarence Duvall in the book "The Summer of Beer and Whiskey" by Edward Achorn.