The Changing Same is a short film that examines the legacy that white supremacist violence, in the form of lynching, leaves in its wake. This film documents poet and professor Lamar Wilson’s as he grapples with the brutal lynching of Claude Neal. Neal was publicly murdered by a white lynchmob in Wilson’s hometown of Marianna, Florida in 1934. The Changing Same asks viewers to consider the lasting impacts that histories of racial violence have on the people and communities in the present.

Viewers are called to consider themes of redemption, reconciliation, and accountability on the long road towards acknowledging and confronting the realities of white supremacist terrorism. They are also asked to address the question:

Is Marianna really that much different than other American towns haunted by histories of racial violence and lynching?

This lesson plan guides students through similar questions while offering important concepts and definitions to facilitate a respectful grappling with legacies of racism and racial violence in American history. This lesson is intended for a high school aged audience, but could be adapted to meet the needs of college students as well.

Overview of the film:

On October 19th, 1934, 23-year old Mr. Claude Neal was arrested and accused of raping and killing a 19-year old white woman named Lola Cannady, in Marianna, Florida. As the news began to spread throughout the town, a mob of angry white citizens kidnapped Mr. Neal from the local authorities, and then dragged his body fourteen miles to the center of town. Finally, after being mutilated and tortured publicly, the mob murdered him through a violent historical practice called spectacle lynching and hanged Mr. Neal from an Oak tree on the courthouse lawn.

The Changing Same is the documented journey of Dr. Lamar Wilson’s attempt to reconcile the silence surrounding Mr. Neal’s lynching and the community that was responsible for it—a community which he calls home. Seventy years later, Dr. Wilson publicly confronts this history of racial terror in his hometown by running the same 14-mile route that the mob carried and dragged Mr. Neal along to his lynching.

This film explores the following themes:

• Racism
• Historical Memory & Memorialization
• Racial Violence and spectacle lynching
• Intergenerational Trauma
• Accountability
• Protest
• Notions of “Justice”

GRADE LEVELS: 9-12

SUBJECT AREAS:

African American Studies Courses

Civics & Government

Current Events

English Language Arts

Global Studies

History

Human Rights

Humanities

ESTIMATED TIME NEEDED:

Approximately TWO 90-minute class periods (including 30 minutes to screen The Changing Same)

BEFORE VIEWING: (approximately 10 minutes)

• Tell students that this is a film that explores very serious histories of lynching in America.
• Remind students of any classroom or community rules you have in place that require respectful listening and non-violent language amidst difficult conversations.
• Remind students that everyone will be impacted differently by the material shown and the histories discussed over the next few class periods and that you should lead with compassion, kindness, and curiosity.
• Share essential questions for students. Read through and ask if there are any initial questions before screening. As students watch the film, have them take notes about what they notice in relation to these essential questions.

Essential Questions:

• Why is it necessary to know the past in order to build a more just future?
• In what ways does the history of lynching in America continue to impact our current day-to-day?
• In what ways is it important for us to know who were the historical perpetrators of lynching were, and who were the victims? Why does this historical recognition matter today?
• Can nations ever fully overcome their violent pasts and become places of justice and liberty for all of its citizens in the present and future?

SCREEN THE CHANGING SAME (approximately 30 minutes)

AFTER VIEWING: (approximately 30 minutes)

Have students independently read and analyze the following quotes and give them 15 minutes to respond in their journals (if they have them).

Frantz Fanon was Black psychiatrist and writer from the Caribbean island of Martinique, who challenged practices of colonization, racial violence, and oppression.

James Baldwin was an American essayist, novelist, and activist in the field of racial justice.

“Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity”

– Frantz Fanon

“People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them”

– James Baldwin

1. In what way does each quote apply to The Changing Same? Make at least one specific connection from the film to the individual quote.
2. What do you think Dr. Wilson understands his mission to be?
3. What history is the town of Marianna trapped in collectively? What history is Dr. Wilson trapped in? What history are George and Pam Little trapped in? How are these histories trapped inside of us? How do you make sense of Baldwin’s concern in regards to The Changing Same?

Invite students to share with the person (or people) sitting beside them. (approximately 10 minutes)

Invite students to share with the whole class. (approximately 10 minutes)

SPECTACLE LYNCHING, MEMORY, & MEMORIALIZATION (approximately 30-45 minutes)

The students will complete a 3…2…1… about lynching:

• On post-it notes students will identify three facts they already know about lynching , two questions they have about lynching, and one comment about the legacy and impact they think lynching has had on American race relations.
• They will place each post-it note around the room under a 3, 2, or 1.
• Students will then share out certain facts, questions, and comments they have written in a facilitated conversation (this conversation should go on for nearly 15 minutes).

Clearly define spectacle lynching for students:

A form of terrorism and white supremacist violence that was carried out as a cultural practice in the early-mid 20th century in America. It was, by nature, a public event requiring at least four people, but often there were thousands of white attendants in the mobs.

ACTIVITY:

LEARNING FROM THE PAST, REMEMORIALIZING, & THE PROBLEM OF WITNESS

Share with students images from Ken Gonzalez-Day’s collection of photographs Erased Lynchings:

Explain to students that these photographs were taken from actual historical photographs and postcards that were produced directly from the events of spectacle lynchings and public acts of terror. Remembering that spectacle requires a focal point and that in the original photographs the “spectacle” was a brutalized black body, for instance, like Mr. Neal’s.

In the original photograph, there was a black man, who had been hanged from this tree.

Credit: Ken Gonzalez-Day, “The Wonder Gaze” (St. James Park, CA. 1935), 2006-2017, Erased Lynching Series (print and installation)

(NOTE: If you feel that you would like to juxtapose this project with the original photographs, they can be found in the collection Without Sanctuary: Photographs and Postcards of Lynching in America by James Allen. This could be a powerful teaching tool, to juxtapose these images.)

Ask students to respond to these questions as they look at this image:

What happens when we shift our attention? What happens when the spectacle becomes the perpetrator? What do you notice about the people in the photograph?

What does this image teach you about the historical relationship between whiteness and violence in America?

What can you learn about them by the ways they are dressed, the looks on their faces, etcetera?

What does this image teach you about the social dynamic of lynching?

Does it strike you that they seem to be “normal” – or everyday – people?

What then, does this suggest about the practice of lynching?

CLOSING ACTIVITY:

Remind students of this passage from Octavia Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower that The Changing Same opens with:

To survive,

Know the past.

Let it touch you.

Then let

the past

Go.

Ask your students to respond to the following questions and write their answers in their journals:

In what ways can we know the past?

In what ways, specifically, can the past be our teacher?

How can the past touch us? In what directions might the past move us?

Why does it matter what we choose to remember, whose story we center, who is the spectacle and the spectator in our historical memory?

EXTENSION ACTIVITIES:

Students will have small group discussions and/or they may respond by writing their answer down.

Those words are then followed by Dr. Wilson saying,

“Paranoia is a very healthy thing in a town like this. It may keep you alive.”

1. Is it ever possible to “let the past go?” No matter a response, each student should draw a response that answers the question. The objective is not to demonstrate how perfect one can draw, but to conceptualize a concept of letting go of the past.
2. Why do you believe Mr. Ladray Gilbert’s uncle and the people in Mr. Gilbert’s church did not talk about the lynching of Mr. Claude Neal (2:31—2:50)?
3. Why might paranoia (the heightened anxiety, fear and distrust of others) help to keep a person alive? Students will have a small group discussion and/or they may respond by writing their answer down.

Markovitz, Jonathan (2004). Legacies of Lynching: Racial Violence and Memory. University of Minnesota Press: Minneaopolis, MN.

Wood, Amy Louise (2009) Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940. UNC Press: Chapel Hill, NC.

The images in the “Erased Lynching” series began in 2002 and were derived from appropriated lynching postcards and archival source material from which Gonzales-Day removed the victim and the rope from each image. This conceptual gesture was intended to direct the viewers attention away from the lifeless body of the lynch victim and towards the mechanisms of lynching. The work asks viewers to consider the crowd, the spectacle, the role of the photographer, and even the impact of flash photography, and their various contributions to our understanding of racialized violence. The perpetrators, when present, remain fully visible, jeering, laughing, or pulling at the air in what can only be described as a deadly pantomime. As such, this series strives to make the invisible –visible, and to resist the re-victimization of the lynching victim (from Gonzalez-Day’s website).

This resource was created, in part, with the generous support of the Open Society Foundation.