Strange Fruit

Someone on FB posted the picture of Thomas Smith and Abram Smith who were lynched in 1930. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Shipp_and_Abram_Smith
One look at the picture made me physically sick to my stomach.

I am almost naive in my faith in people. I have traveled alone several times staying with strangers (through couchsurfing.com). I have always believed something mummy loves to say, "tum logon ke saath jaise ho, woh tumhare saath waise honge". Loosely translated it means that people treat you the way you treat them. So if you don't do anything wrong to them, they will by default be nice to you. Strangers are always nice, kind people. When I see contrary evidence like that picture, it really shakes me from within. If the picture wasn't haunting enough, the poem "Strange Fruit" written by Abel Meerpol totally tore me apart.

Abel Meeropol, Strange Fruit (1939)

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

I don't get it. I don't understand how someone's pain can bring pleasure to anything that God made. According to research studies in the past (Milgram's experiment and the Stanford prison trials) people are kind only when they are answerable for their actions. If nobody was accountable to anybody, then by nature, man is cruel. When I read about those research studies, I refused to acknowledge it. I read about them in depth to find a loophole. That there is something that the researchers did wrong. I didn't find any published loophole and it made me sad for a while. But then all I did is distract myself with loud music and fatty food and prayed that it didn't apply to my time anymore.

Seeing this picture has me shit scared. I'm shaking and nauseated. But for now, I will hold on to the faith.