Maury County Courthouse, Columbia, as seen in the music video for Jason Aldean’s latest single Try That In A Small Country Town, has a dark connection to the 1927 lynching of Henry Choate.
WARNING: Content of a disturbing nature ahead
The controversy surrounding Jason Aldean’s latest single, Try That In A Small Country Town, has stepped up a notch this week, following the release of the official music video.
Jason Aldean in Maury County Courthouse music video controversy
Having first released the track back in May, outspoken country music star Choate waited until July 14 to release the song’s now infamous music video, which still has many people talking almost a week later. The message of Try That In A Small Country Town, in Aldean’s words, is one of “community and respect”, two values he believes small towns used to have in abundance, but are now lacking.
Throughout the song, Aldean lists a number of behaviors that he doesn’t deem small-town appropriate, such as sucker-punching people on the sidewalk and burning the American flag. He proceeds to invite anyone who would think of engaging in such behavior to “try that in a small town”, warning that “(If) You cross that line, it won’t take long,
for you to find out, I recommend you don’t”.
The release of the video didn’t raise too many eyebrows initially, until July 17, when journalist Ashton Pittman pointed out on Twitter that the location of the video, Maury County Courthouse, Columbia, is the place where a lynching took place in 1927, in a spot on the front of the building that can be seen in the video,
The 1927 lynching of Henry Choate
The brutal tale of Henry Choate that has caused the uproar surrounding Aldean’s video is but one of the countless grim stories about the persecution of black people in the US in the early 20th century.
On Veterans Day 1927, an 18-year-old Choate traveled from Coffee County to Columbia, Tennessee to visit family, specifically his granddad, who lived on the outskirts of the city.
Whilst visiting, he was accused of attacking a young white woman and was immediately arrested and placed in the local county jail.
Within two days of his visit, Choate had died at the hands of a 250-strong mob that had stormed the prison and broken the teenager out of his cell, inflicting a fatal hammer blow to his head in the process.
The mob paraded his body through the streets and proceeded to hang his body from the front center of the courthouse.
The anger about the music video being shot in this location derived from the fact that it features footage from the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, so the framing of the angry, counter-protest lyrics being sung in front of the place where a young black man’s body was hung feels a little on the nose to many people.
Aldean responds to Maury County Courthouse video criticism
In the days since Pittman’s tweet, Aldean has been met with widespread criticism, though a number of people have defended the Dirt Road Anthem singer, insisting that there was no intentional reference to lynching in the video.
Adressing the viral frenzy surrounding the video, Aldean took to Twitter to clarify his intentions behind the video:
With the country singer adamant that there is no merit to the arguments being made about the Choate lynching and the Try That In A Small Town video, it would appear that Aldean will make no attempts to edit or change the video, which will likely remain on YouTube unless the controversy continues to escalate.
The post Jason Aldean music video - 1927 Henry Choate lynching at Maury County Courthouse explained appeared first on HITC.
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