By: Janice Holguin
What if someone told you that at one point, being caught in a town away from home could possibly end your life or that your basic human rights depended on the color of your skin? Horrifyingly, this was real in the 19th century. During this time Jim Crow laws were in full effect. People of color suffered everyday to live as equal as everyone and oftentime fell victim to being judged and not seen as good enough by the color of their skin and being experimented with for not being seen as real human beings. The sci-fi horror HBO series Lovecraft Country, which takes place around the Jim Crow era is a prime example of what living was like back then.
Aside from the racism people of color face daily, the show Lovecraft Country creates a horrific show based on real historic events. Between supernatural events and white privilege on screens, some are obvious, but it could get tricky to understand which of these events took place in history. I personally have never heard of a sundown town until I watched the show and watched the characters get chased out of one. It’s something that grabs your attention intensively and worries you, and come to find out they were real! Even if the show had to use monsters to show how brutal US history was, the racism during the Jim Crow era, and stories of experimentation done on African Americans still shine right above it.
Some ways Lovecraft Country portrays racism is by showing white privilege. The show gives insight to what a day in the life of a person of color in the 1950s was like, complete and uncensored. During the first episode, our main characters Tic, Leti and George are on a journey to their destination, they end up taking a bathroom break in the woods. A white cop ends up approaching them and telling them that they are in a sundown town, 7 minutes away from sundown while the border is the same distance away. After an intense chase to the border, they make it, but they’re faced with more police. As if things couldn’t get worse, they’re then attacked by numerous shaggoths, but for some reason, that sounds like a better outcome than what the police would’ve done. Racism had such a big effect that it was actually quite dangerous to do things that white people did without even realizing the privilege they had. Something as simple as leaving town for a day could put your life in danger in the 1950s, if your skin happened to be a darker shade. This is the reason the creation of the ‘Green Book” for African Americans became so popular and much of a necessity.
In Camila Barbeito’s article “HBO's Lovecraft Country Contains a Crucial Historic Reference.” we’re provided with information about the creator of the Green Book, as well as what led to the creation of the book. The creator, who’s name was Victor Hugo Green, created the book as a sense of guidance to let people of color know which places were accepting of them, and what places where they would be able to travel to and be safe, especially since at the time, sundown towns were extremely common to come across. However, the book may not have been enough to protect African Americans from white privilege.
Moreover, Lovecraft Country provides another historical event surrounding white privilege to get the point across. During the Jim Crow era segregation laws were widespread across the entire United States as well as discrimination. All of it was legal as well. African Americans were not seen as human beings but as a disturbance who white people had the upper hand against throughout history. In episode 9 of Lovecraft Country we get to see a view of the Tulsa Massacre. In the article “The Tulsa Race War of 1921” R. Halliburton provides information about what caused the massacre. An African American male and white woman were in an elevator and the white woman had claimed that the African American man had assaulted her. That same evening a mob of white men approached the courthouse while African American men followed in an attempt to protect the man who was being accused. This escalated into all of the black businesses and “black side of town” being burned down and looted, even despite the fact that the woman had already mentioned that the man was innocent.
Additionally, just a few decades later we have a lynching of a 14 year old African American boy, Emmett Till. In episode 8 of Lovecraft Country we see the large number of people waiting outside for what appears to be a funeral. The funeral is that of the 14 year old boy who was lynched for offending a white woman in a store. After attending the funeral, we have one of the characters named Ruby who is in distress after what she saw. In “Behold the Corpse: Violent Images and the Case of Emmett Till.” by Christine Harold and Kevin Michael Deluca, it is learned just how violent the attack on the young boy was. He had his tongue protruding through his chin, an eyeball hanging from his right cheek, the other eyeball missing and his nose appeared tenderized, as if it “someone chopped it with a cleaver.” As if things couldn’t get any more horrifying, for trial Till received an all white jury who admitted that they believed that the men who had brutally beat Till were guilty, however, the verdict came back not guilty. The men charged for his murder confessed to it after the trial and haven’t faced any consequences for it. This was proof to show how terrible racial injustice was during the Jim Crow Era.
Decades later, racism is still around. In episode 8 of Lovecraft Country, we have Dee, a young girl who flees her best friend Emmett Till’s funeral because she was overwhelmed. Dee comes in contact with two police officers who end up physically assaulting her to where she couldn’t breath and ends up yelling that she can’t breath. She ends up getting haunted after that event but the encounter definitely lingers on your mind afterwards.
While the show takes place in the 1950s, the “I can’t breath” quote still matters today. In “I Can’t Breathe: A Killing On Bay Street” by Matt Taibbi, we learn of a man named Eric Garner who was accused by police for selling untaxed cigarettes. However at the time of his arrest he wasn’t selling any. During his arrest, police put him in a chokehold. Despite Garner telling police multiple times that he could not breath he was not listened to and soon fell unconscious. Police still refused to get him medical attention and he ended up passing away. The significance of a cop doing the same thing to Dee in episode 8 is a reminder that African Americans are still fighting today to simply live their lives and go on with their days unbothered. It shows how these people view the black race in its entirety and how dark skin is supposed to be seen as guilty all the time. In the end, guilty or innocent, those with darker skin were not seen as humans with rights.
In episode 3 we have one of the main characters named Leti who had just bought a big house, however later on in the episode we come to find out that the house is haunted with ghosts who passed while being used as experiments. In “The 'father of modern gynecology' performed shocking experiments on enslaved women” by Brynn Holland we’re given insight on a man named James Marion Sims. He was a gynecologist who experimented on slaves in an attempt to find a cure for childbirth fistulas. His focus was more on experiments and results rather than proper treatment, especially since he was under the impression that African Americans did not feel pain. Due to the fact that he believed they couldn’t feel pain, he would operate and experiment on them without anesthesia as well. There were a lot of ethical issues and malpractices surrounding Sims and his experiments, the majority of his patients died with infections and he never took responsibility for any of their deaths, but instead blamed it on midwives. In another article, “What hope looks like: A visit to the fistula hospital” by Deborah Craig it is learned that Sims experimented with African American women, up until he could perfect this technique. Once he found something that worked and was able to correct all his mistakes was when he believed it was best to operate and work on white women. He used African Americans as a way to find a cure to something to help white women. However, he never faced any consequences because he was credited with inventing the speculum tool which is still used today.
In conclusion, Lovecraft Country is a show that leaves the audience to unravel the show in itself. Majority of the historical events that take place are followed by supernatural events and fictional monsters, meanwhile it leaves you more at peace than what could’ve happened. This gives an amplifying effect on the unintentional horror provided by the show. While the show does leave it to readers to interpret their own understanding, one google search is all you need to feel terror aside from watching the show considering these events occurred in the past. This is significant because they manage to give you something to watch without outshining the importance of white privilege or outshining the facts that people don’t talk about now.
Janice Holguin is a current Bloomfield College student and lives in Lakewood, New Jersey. Janice is 18 years old.
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