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    The History of the Lynching Site Where Jason Aldean Filmed ‘Try That in a Small Town’

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    Henry Choate, an 18-year-old Black man, was hanged outside the Maury County Courthouse in Tennessee in 1927 after he was falsely accused of attacking a white girl.The new video for the country singer Jason Aldean’s song “Try That in a Small Town” takes place outside a courthouse in Tennessee where, nearly a century ago, an 18-year-old Black man was attacked by a mob and lynched.Mr. Aldean was criticized after releasing the video, which included violent news footage of looting and unrest during protests in American cities. Country Music Television pulled the video this week after accusations surfaced on social media that its lyrics and message were offensive.“I think there is a lack of sensitivity using that courthouse as a prop,” said Cheryl L. Keyes, chair of the department of African American studies and a professor of ethnomusicology at U.C.L.A.The teenager who was lynched, Henry Choate, had traveled from his home in Coffee County, Tenn., where he worked in road construction, to visit his grandfather in nearby Maury County on Nov. 11, 1927 — Armistice Day, as it was known at the time, or Veterans Day today.While he was there, he was accused — falsely, historians now believe — of raping a 16-year-old white girl.According to an account in “Lynching and Frame-Up in Tennessee,” a book by Robert Minor that was published in 1946, the girl’s family called the county sheriff, who responded by rounding up a pack of bloodhounds to track down the girl’s attacker.Before the hounds arrived, however, a group of white people went to Mr. Choate’s grandfather’s house, “called out” Mr. Choate and took him to the girl, who did not identify him as her attacker, according to Mr. Minor’s book.Once the hounds were brought in, they were “given the scent” on a street called Hicks Lane, where the attack was alleged to have taken place. But the scent did not lead the dogs to Mr. Choate’s grandfather’s house.Instead, “the trail faded out in another direction,” Mr. Minor wrote, “and the girl again said she did not recognize Henry Choate as her assailant.”One man, however, announced that he had seen Mr. Choate returning to his grandfather’s home from the direction of Hicks Lane. Mr. Choate’s arms were tied with ropes and he was led away. Eventually, he was turned over to the sheriff, who arrested him.After Mr. Choate was brought to the jail, a cook there told him to pray because “the mob is coming to lynch you,” according to Mr. Minor’s book.The courthouse in Maury County, Tenn., in 1946.Associated Press“I know they are,” Mr. Choate said.According to Mr. Minor’s account, a mob of white men gathered outside the jail, demanding the keys. The sheriff’s wife, with whom the sheriff had left the keys, initially refused because she believed Mr. Choate was innocent, Mr. Minor wrote.The mob attempted to enter the jail twice, and failed, according to a contemporaneous account of the episode in The Tennessean.One member of the mob left and returned with a sledgehammer and began beating the jailhouse door with it, Mr. Minor wrote.Terrified that the mob would dynamite the jailhouse, the sheriff’s wife relented, and the first deputy sheriff unlocked the door. Mr. Choate was beaten with a sledgehammer and dragged out of the jail.The mob used a rope to tie him to the bumper of a car and dragged him to the Maury County courthouse in Columbia, Tenn., where they hanged him from a window, according to news reports.There were about 250 men in the mob, according to research from the University of North Carolina.Two pastors, two lawyers and James I. Finney, the editor of The Tennessean, had begged members of the mob to spare Mr. Choate’s life, but to no avail, the International News Service reported.Others denounced the actions of the mob.The executive committee of a body called the Tennessee Inter-Racial Commission later said in a statement that “all available information indicates that the sheriff of Maury County failed to meet his obligations as an officer,” The Tennessean reported a little over a week after the lynching.The Maury County sheriff, who was identified in news accounts at the time as Luther Wiley, said in a statement in the days after the lynching that he was honoring a promise.“I had an agreement with the mother, brothers and the little girl not to take the criminal away from our county, but to give him a speedy trial,” he said, according to a 1927 account in The Tennessean. “And I kept my promise steadfastly.”He added that he was “overpowered by all classes of weapons,” referring to members of the mob who had armed themselves with crowbars, sledgehammers and dynamite.Ultimately, a grand jury declined to indict anyone involved with the lynching, according to a wire article that was published in The Philadelphia Tribune in December 1927.As the details of Mr. Choate’s death resurfaced this week, Mr. Aldean responded on Twitter to the criticism of his music video by denying that he had released “a pro-lynching song.”“These references are not only meritless, but dangerous,” he wrote. “There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it — and there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage — and while I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music — this one goes too far.”TackleBox Films, the company that produced the video, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Alain Delaquérière More

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      in Theater

      Ben Platt to Lead ‘Parade’ Revival on Broadway This Season

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      The musical’s exploration of antisemitism is timely, with rising concern about the issue in the United States and beyond.Ben Platt, the Tony-winning star of “Dear Evan Hansen,” will return to Broadway next month to lead the cast in a revival of “Parade,” a musical about an early-20th-century lynching of a Jewish businessman in Georgia.The revival, directed by Michael Arden (a two-time Tony nominee, for revivals of “Once on This Island” and “Spring Awakening”), had a seven-performance run at New York City Center last fall. Platt plays Leo Frank, a factory boss convicted of killing a young girl in a case tainted by antisemitism; Micaela Diamond, who previously played the youngest version of the title character in “The Cher Show” on Broadway, will co-star as Frank’s wife, Lucille.The show, with songs by Jason Robert Brown and a book by Alfred Uhry and co-conceived by Hal Prince, had a brief run on Broadway that opened in 1998; it was commercially unsuccessful, but won Tony Awards for both book and score. The history it depicts is real: Frank was convicted in 1913, lynched in 1915 (at age 31), and in 1986 he was posthumously pardoned.The musical’s exploration of antisemitism has made it more timely now, when there is rising concern about the issue in the United States and beyond. The City Center production garnered uniformly strong reviews: in The New York Times, Juan A. Ramírez called it “the best-sung musical in many a New York season.”The “Parade” revival will begin previews Feb. 21 and open March 16 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, where the musical “Almost Famous” closed on Sunday. The “Parade” production is planning a short run, to Aug. 6.The revival is being produced by Seaview, a company created by Greg Nobile and Jana Shea that previously produced “Slave Play” and “POTUS,” and Ambassador Theater Group, a large British theater company that operates two Broadway houses (the Hudson and the Lyric) and also produces shows. More

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      in Movies

      Behind ‘Strange Fruit,’ Billie Holiday’s Anti-Lynching Anthem

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      It helped make Holiday a star, but it was written by Abel Meeropol, a teacher in the Bronx. An Oscar nomination and a year of protests against racism have kept it in the conversation.When Billie Holiday first performed “Strange Fruit” in 1939, the song was so bold for the time that she could sing it only in certain places where it was safe to do so.The song likened the lynched bodies of Black people to “strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.”Ahmet Ertegun, the legendary music executive, hailed it as “a declaration of war” and “the beginning of the civil rights movement.”The song has garnered renewed attention since Andra Day was nominated for an Oscar for best actress for playing Holiday in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday.” The film, which debuted on Hulu in February, chronicles Holiday’s defiance in the face of the government’s efforts to suppress “Strange Fruit.” The Oscars air on Sunday evening.Holiday popularized the song, causing many to believe she was responsible for its chilling lyrics. That notion was reinforced by the 1972 film “Lady Sings the Blues,” which suggests that Holiday, played by Diana Ross, wrote the song after witnessing a lynching.In fact, the song was written by Abel Meeropol, a white Jewish schoolteacher in the Bronx.Mr. Meeropol was moved to write it after seeing a photograph of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Ind., in 1930. The photograph, by Lawrence Beitler, shows two bodies hanging from a tree as a crowd of white people look on, some grinning. Thousands of copies of the photo were printed and sold, according to National Public Radio.Abel Meeropol wrote the music and lyrics to “Strange Fruit,” using the pseudonym Lewis Allen.Boston University LibraryMr. Meeropol, using the pseudonym Lewis Allen, did not write the song for Holiday. It was first published as a poem in the New York teachers’ union magazine in 1937.He was known for his communist views, and for adopting the two sons of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were executed after being convicted on espionage charges. Mr. Meeropol’s wife, Anne, sang “Strange Fruit,” as did several others, before Holiday performed it at Café Society, an integrated nightclub in New York City, in 1939.At the time, the song’s message — conveyed with lines like, “Pastoral scene of the gallant South, the bulging eyes and the twisted mouth” — was immensely controversial.Yet in the 21st century, “Strange Fruit” has lived on, sampled in the 2000 song “What’s Really Going On,” in which the singer Dwayne Wiggins recounts an episode of racial profiling at the hands of the police in Oakland, Calif.And in 2021, as the nation continues to reckon with a series of killings of unarmed Black people by the police — often captured in gruesome footage of Black men being shot or, in the case of George Floyd, knelt on by white officers — “Strange Fruit” has maintained its place in the national conversation about racism.The song “is going to be relevant until cops start getting convicted for murdering Black people,” Michael Meeropol, one of Abel Meeropol’s sons, told “CBS This Morning” before Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, was convicted of murdering Mr. Floyd.“When that happens, maybe then ‘Strange Fruit’ will be a relic of a barbaric past,” he said. “But until then, it’s a mirror on a barbaric present.” More