Chapter 10: Arabs

Chapter 10

Arabs

 

     Driving from New York into Pennsylvania on Interstate 90 we stopped at the first rest-stop  to stretch our legs, get a snack, and let the dog, Dipstick,  do his thing.  The plaza was well lit and quite modern.  In fact the entire plaza was bathed in light, front and back. The back stretched out a good 50 yards to a fence.  Beyond the fence was acres of hedge-rows, that could have been corn rows, but it was much too dark to tell for certain.  Nevertheless, thinking that it would be best to take Dippy for his stroll in the back of the plaza, he and I headed for the back and could clearly look into the rest stop itself which was a wall of glass window running the full length of the plaza. Inside I saw a little old man waving wildly at me, and pounding on the glass.  He was obviously trying to get my attention. Dippy and I looked at him, and then looked at each other and began to head back the way we had come and the man was following us inside to the door. As we came to the end of the building, he emerged from the building wildly gesturing to us completely out of breath saying, “don’t go out there”. I asked him “what’s the problem”?

And still out of breath he looked at me and said, “It’s dangerous back there…bad things happen”.  I looked out at the area which was completely lit up and said, “What kind of things?” He looked at me like I was crazy, and said,” Arabs!”.  At this point, I wish I’d had a picture of my face as I was trying to absorb what he was saying.   My mind is racing as I’m trying to process what I heard. “Arabs!!???”  I said. Arabs!!?”.  He then said, “It’s dark out there”.  I looked at him, and then, at the dog who was looking at me as if he was nuts, and I said, “Well, which is it, Arabs or the darkness?”  He then threw his hands up in the air with complete exasperation as if I was the crazy one here and said, “it’s dangerous back there.

 

I stood there in total amazement at what this guy was all worked up over.  I looked out beyond the fence at the hedge-rows which stretched out for acres into the darkness and thought, “this guy has visions of terrorists running through his head”, and they’re all gathering in a cornfield in Pennsylvania… and he thinks I’m going to take my dog out beyond the fence and into the hedge-rows in total darkness where I’ll disappear forever or get captured …by Arabs no less.  I had no idea that Arabs had a predisposition to hanging out in dark hedge-rows off the interstate in Pennsylvania just waiting for unsuspecting tourists who are walking a dog and decide to climb over a fence...with the dog, and then wander through acres of darkness.  I mean…is that something that’s part of Arab culture? Do they just sit there and wait, as if anybody is going to actually say to themselves…I think I’ll climb over a fence with my dog and simply take a stroll into acres of dark hedge-rows.  Maybe I’ll meet some Arabs. I mean, it’s midnight and I’m just making a pit stop here, but on second thought, maybe I’ll just jump a fence and explore acres of dark fields in Bumfuck, Pennsylvania. I’m trying to put together in my head why Al Qaeda, who I have to assume this guy is referring to (aren’t all Arabs members of Al Qaeda?), would have any interest in launching a terrorist attack from some cornfield in Pennsylvania off the interstate.  I finally said, “What the fuck are you talking about man? Why would I even consider taking my dog out beyond the fence that I have to climb over at midnight into some dark hedge-rows or cornfield or whatever it is? Does that sound sensible to you? Is that something that you would do? “Hey honey, go wait in the car. Me and the dog are going to wander through some cornfield for a while. If we don’t come back it’s because the Arabs got us”. My dog needs to take a crap and we’re walking right outside this window and you’re freaking out about Arabs or the dark, or maybe both.”  Finally a woman co-worker told the guy, “let him go and walk his dog”. “Go ahead sir.” “Never mind.”

 

 ARAB’s???;  In a cornfield in Pennsylvania?  I wonder who he’s voting for?

Chapter 2: Early Years

Chapter 2: Early Years

Chapter 9: Dog Whistle Politics

Chapter 9 

Dog Whistle Politics

 

    On Sunday, Jan.13, 2013, during an appearance on Meet The Press, Former Secretary of State, General Colin Powell condemned the GOP’s “dark vein of intolerance” and the party’s repeated use of racial code words to oppose President Obama and rally white conservative voters.  

Without mentioning names, Powell singled out former Mitt Romney surrogate and New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu for calling Obama “lazy” and Sarah Palin, who, Powell charged, used slavery-era terms to describe Obama:  

POWELL: There’s also a dark — a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party. What do I mean by that? I mean by that that they still sort of look down on minorities. How can I evidence that? 

When I see a former governor say that the President is “shuckin’ and jivin’,” that’s a racial era slave term. When I see another former governor after the president’s first debate where he didn’t do very well, says that the president was lazy. He didn’t say he was slow. He was tired. He didn’t do well. He said he was lazy. Now, it may not mean anything to most Americans, but to those of us who are African Americans, the second word is shiftless and then there’s a third word that goes along with that. The birther, the whole birther movement. Why do senior Republican leaders tolerate this kind of discussion within the party? 

Powell added that the Republican Party is “having an identity problem,” noting that its significant shift to the right has produced “two losing presidential campaigns.” “I think what the Republican Party needs to do now is a very hard look at itself and understand that the country is changed,” he said. “If the Republican Party does not change along with that demographic, they a going to be in trouble.”

Powell also called on Republicans to focus on a more equitable and progressive economic policies that help middle and lower income Americans, as well as immigration reform. “Everybody wants to talk about who is going to be the candidate,” Powell said. “You better think first about what’s the party actually going to represent.” 

 Dog-whistle politics is political messaging employing coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has an additional, different or more specific resonance for a targeted subgroup. The phrase is only ever used as a pejorative, because of the inherently deceptive nature of the practice and because the dog-whistle messages are frequently themselves distasteful, for example by empathizing with racist attitudes. The Dog-whistle is targeted to white people.                                                                                                             

Commonly-cited examples of dog-whistle politics include civil rights-era use of the phrase "forced busing," used to enable a person to imply opposition to racial integration without them needing to say so explicitly; the state of Georgia's adoption, in 1956, of a flag visually similar to the Confederate battle flag, itself understood by many to be a dog-whistle for racism; the phrase "Southern strategy," used by the Republican Party in the 1960s to describe plans to gain influence in the South by appealing to people's racism; Ronald Reagan, on the campaign trail in 1980, saying in Mississippi "I believe in states' rights" (a sentence the New Statesman later described as "perhaps the archetypal dog-whistle statement"), described as implying Reagan believed that states should be allowed, if they want, to retain racial segregation; Reagan's use of the term "welfare queens," said to be designed to rouse racial resentment among white working-class voters against minorities; a 2008 TV ad for Republican presidential candidate John McCain called "The One," which observers said dog-whistled to evangelical Christians who believed Obama might be the Antichrist; a Tea Party spokeswoman saying President Obama "doesn't love America like we do," thought to be an allusion to Obama's race and to the birth certificate controversy, and Republicans frequently emphasizing Obama's middle name for the same reason; an aide to 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney saying Romney would be a better President than Obama because Romney understood the "shared Anglo-Saxon heritage" of the United States and the United Kingdom; former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, and others, calling Obama "the food stamps president" said to be a way of exploiting stereotypes among racially resentful white voters who see food stamps as unearned giveaways to minorities. 

One group of alleged code words in the United States is claimed to appeal to racism of the intended audience. The phrase "states' rights", although literally referring to powers of individual state governments in the United States, was described by David Greenberg in Slate as "code words" for institutionalized segregation and racism. In 1981, former Republican Party strategist Lee Atwater when giving an anonymous interview discussing the GOP's Southern Strategy (see also Lee Atwater on the Southern Strategy) said: 

“You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968, you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger.” 

The Dog-Whistles were becoming louder.  We were  going to be hearing a lot of lies, and a lot of quasi-racist dog-whistling about how Obama doesn't feel the same way about America as "we" do.  But it would get much worse. As the campaign for the 2012 election got underway the “dog whistle” became a bull horn.  

While visiting England during the Olympics, one of Mitt Romney’s  "gaffes" had a decidedly darker undertone, when an unnamed aide was reported by the Telegraph to have commented that Romney would be a better President than Obama because only he understood the "shared Anglo-Saxon heritage" that Britain and America have. 

This sort of statement is known in politics as a "dog whistle". To most people, it looks innocuous, if a bit weird, but to its target audience – in this case, racists – it reads as a perfectly clear statement that Romney is better than Obama because he is white.

Not that this is anything new in the Republican party. Consider Romney's "gaffe" just number 5 in the Top Five Racist Republican Dog-Whistles of all time: 

4. Barack Hussein Obama 

Quick pop quiz: What's Barack Obama's middle name? Even if you haven't read it from the line above, it seems pretty likely that you know it's Hussein. Now, do you know John McCain's? (It's Sidney) What about Mitt Romney's? (Trick question. Mitt is his middle name, and his real first name is Willard. But even he forgets that sometimes) 

There is a reason you know the former's but not the last two. It's because reminding everyone that Barack Obama has, not just a scary foreign-sounding name, but a scary, foreign and Islamic sounding name which is the same as that nasty dictator plays really well with a Republican audience. 

To his credit, John McCain never got on board with that angle of attack, even going so far as to apologize for a radio commentator who did. But that doesn't mean the Republican base has forgotten their President's middle name. 

3. Georgia's 1956 state flag 

Less a dog-whistle, more a klaxon, this one. In 1956, the state legislature of Georgia voted to adopt this as their flag: which is awkwardly similar to the Confederate battle flag. You know, the one people marched under as they went to war to defend their right to keep people in slavery? That one. Now, Mississippi also has a flag which contains the confederate one, but at least theirs was adopted in the 19th century. Georgia, on the other hand, voted for theirs in 1956, and then proceeded to keep it until 2001. And even when they replaced it, the new one still had the confederate flag on it, albeit much smaller. It was only in 2003 that they successfully de-racisted. 

Even then, it still didn't stop being flown in the skies of Georgia – it just flew in less of them. The city of Trenton, Georgia (population 1,942) promptly adopted it as their official flag, and still use it today. Not cool, Georgia. 

2. Ronald Reagan and "States' Rights" 

On the campaign trail in 1980, Ronald Reagan gave an infamous speech in Mississippi, where he told assembled supporters that:  

“I believe in states' rights.... I believe we have distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended to be given in the Constitution to that federal establishment.” 

It is perhaps the archetypal dog-whistle statement. To most people, it sounds like a statement on

constitutional law. Yet to the residents of Nashoba County, where the speech was held, it is a clear call-back to what many still viewed as an illegitimate federal imposition: the civil rights agenda.

Desegregation was fought bitterly throughout the South, and even drove the government to institute martial law in some areas. 

Even worse, the Nashoba County Fair was very close to the town of Philidelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights activists were shot and killed in 1964. 

In that context, saying "I believe in states' rights" sounds an awful lot like saying that Reagan believed that the decision as to whether or not to desegregate should be handed back to the states – and if they decided against it, they should be allowed to. As New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote in 2007:  

“Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair. Whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans — they all knew. The news media knew. The race haters and the people appalled by racial hatred knew. And Reagan knew.” 

He was tapping out the code. It was understood that when politicians started chirping about “states’ rights” to white people in places like Neshoba County they were saying that when it comes down to you and the blacks, we’re with you.

 

1. Where's the birth certificate?  

The number one racist dog-whistle has to be the relentless accusations that Barack Obama wasn't born in the US. Unlike the others, it's one that has a point beyond propaganda – the "birthers" hope beyond reason that they'll be able to prove he is of foreign birth, and thus render him ineligible for the Presidency – but it serves that aim admirably as well.

 

The Guardian's Michael Tomasky sums up the thinking of the people who spread the myth: 

“They likely know no one who voted for Barack Obama, so all the information they received in 2008 that they trusted – not from the media, but from friends and co-workers – led them to search for explanations fair and foul. Acorn and the journalists helped them feel a little better, but they didn't solve the basic problem: that the man occupied the office.” 

And so, the birther story. Perfect. Explained everything. A conspiracy of immense proportions,

concocted all the way back in 1961, had to be the only explanation for how this black man got to the White House. And if you think race isn't what this is about at its core, ask yourself if there would even be a birther conspiracy if Barack Obama were white and named Bart Oberstar. If you think there would be, you are delusional. 

Even releasing his actual birth certificate didn't stop the crazies, but it did at least get everyone else to recognize them as such, until, at the White House Press Correspondent's Dinner last year, he could safely mock them.

Chapter 7: Racism Justified

Chapter 7 

Racism Justified 

 As an adult, I saw racism revealed over and over again. I found a common thread in political views running through every racist that I encountered. All of them held conservative views.  Conservatism is always a reaction to a challenge to an existing order becoming  self-conscious and reflective when other ways of life and thought  appear on the scene,  against which it is compelled to take up arms in an ideological struggle.                                                             

Situationally, conservatism is defined as the ideology arising out of a distinct but recurring type of historical situation in which a fundamental challenge is directed at established institutions and in which the supporters of those institutions employ the conservative ideology in their defense. Thus, conservatism is that system of ideas employed to justify any established social order, no matter where or when it exists, against any fundamental challenge to its nature or being, no matter from what quarter. Conservatism in this sense is possible in the United States today only if there is a basic challenge to existing American institutions which impels their defenders to articulate conservative values. 

The Civil Rights movement was a direct challenge to the existing institutions of the time, and

conservatism as an ideology is thus a reaction to a system under challenge, a defense of the status – quo in a period of intense ideological and social conflict. 

The very notion of a race of people that was;  at our beginnings as a country, only considered to be 3/5’s of a human being,  now having equal footing with those that actually believed in this idea, is a direct challenge to a long held  social concept. It denied the idea of white supremacy as legitimate. It’s surprising how many people still cling to this idea, and will go to extreme lengths to perpetuate it. 

The idea that a person that could have been your slave at one time, could today be your boss, or even President of the United States, is more than some people can deal with on an emotional level.  White supremacy as an institution is renounced, discredited, and dismantled, and that is a major blow to an existing order, and conservatism is always a reaction to a challenge to an existing order. These are people that desperately need somebody to look down to in order to validate their own self-worth. “Sure, life is tough. But at least I’m White.” They can no longer rely on a policy that used to be institutionally enforceable. When that is removed by law, hostility is the result;  hostility for those that have been emancipated by law and elevated to equal status, and hostility for the law itself including those that proposed it and passed it.  

Thus, hatred for African-Americans and for the Liberal’s and liberal policies that endorse their equal status is fully embraced by the conservative. 

 Letting go of the past is difficult to do. An entire race of people becomes an easy scapegoat for one’s own failures. Hate is passed on from one generation to the next. Parents teach their children to hate.

The cure for hate is education, so every attempt to keep schools segregated was an important factor. Every attempt to de-segregate schools was resisted. Integrated schools are a way of leveling the playing field and a sign of equality and equality is a challenge to the social fabric. The more narrow the view point, the more ignorant the person becomes and  the easier it is to promote fear and fear promotes hate.  Fear always promotes hate.  

The conservative mind embraces a narrow point of view.  It doesn’t like being challenged.  It resists new information.  A liberal mind by definition is open to change, but change always threatens the existing order, so the liberal is not to be trusted. He is feared, and hated because he challenges the existing order. 

Another glaring problem is that the conservative knows there is no rational justification for his racism. He knows that it’s wrong, intellectually, but he’s imprisoned by an ideology without a basis, and this ideology appeals to his “Gut” and not his brain. As Charles Pierce wrote,  “The Gut is the roiling repository of dark and ancient fears. It knows what it knows because it knows how it feels”. Richard Hofstadter points to this when he says, “Intellect is pitted against feeling”, he writes, “on the ground that it is somehow inconsistent with warm emotion. It is pitted against character, because it is widely believed that intellect stands for cleverness, which transmutes easily into the sly or the diabolical”. The Conservatives  entire set of values is wrapped in a theory of rationality that was handed to him by somebody else with a nice big bow. His way of life is now threatened by a truth that contradicts his beliefs. To admit that it was flawed and without any basis, is to admit that, foundationally, everything he believed in is flawed and that means that he could be wrong about something.  And that also means that there is no justification for the pain and suffering that his ideology has inflicted on others. An entire war was fought and over 600,000 lives were lost in order to continue a way of life that was baseless. Rather than admit that his beliefs were in error, he clings to the ideology of hate and directs that hate toward the object that is the very cause of the hate: The Black Man. The Black Man is a constant reminder that his ideology is flawed, a reminder that his hatred is baseless. Holding on to an ideology with no basis is irrational.  

Rather than dump this irrational way of thinking, he embraces irrationality as a way of life. He becomes a justificationist, and looks for anything that will justify his flawed ideology. He looks for passages in the Bible as a justification for slavery and therefore a justification for his beliefs.  He finds a refuge in the Bible and religion, (conservatives a very religious bunch) and this becomes the foundation that he “feels”  he can stand on. But he fails to recognize that that the Bible cannot be its own basis. That’s circular reasoning.  A criteria cannot be its own criteria. If we claim a basis gives us truth, we then are making the implicit claim that truth requires bases. But then it is plainly obvious our own basis lacks a basis, as it cannot be its own basis. The Bible might justify slavery, but what justifies the Bible? Well…it’s the inspired word of God. According to whom? According to the Bible.  That’s circular reasoning.  That’s a logical fallacy. Clinging to a logical fallacy, when you know it’s a logical fallacy is irrational. Conservatives  insist on a foundationalist way of thinking,  and the basis, the foundation of this idea all rests on something claiming itself as its own foundation. So…what is the foundation for the foundation, or the basis for the basis? They don’t like being pressed on this because that requires defending a stated  position based on something, and that leads to an infinite regress vs. their dogma. Trying to justify a basis leads to more justification for yet another basis and that leads into a black hole of one justification after another. There is no exit.                                                                                                                                      

Conservatives oppose the “liberal agenda”.  But what is that “agenda”? Liberalism challenges the status-quo. Conservatism opposes any challenge to the status-quo. And there you have it. But what is the justification for the status-quo, especially one that keeps an entire race of people suppressed because of an ideology without a basis? 

African-Americans are fully aware of this attitude coming from conservatives, which is why so few align themselves to this ideology. Conservatives talk about trying to reach out to the African-American community, but fail to understand that nobody wants to hang with people that hate you.  Blacks understand the source of this hatred, and are not likely to embrace it. Until conservatism renounces racism and purges racists from the Republican Party, they’ll never reach the African-American in any significant numbers. 

As pointed out by Professor Robert C. Smith, “African American thought has always been mainly a system-challenging, dissident thought.  However, until the 1950s and 1960s this thought had not been linked to a powerful mass movement. And the mere articulation of a dissident ideology does not produce conservatism until the ideology is embraced by significant social groups. Once it appeared that the black movement presented “ a clear and present danger” to the existing order, a self-conscious conservative movement would necessarily emerge, and it would also necessarily be for the most part a racist movement”.  It was in the 1950’s that the Conservative Movement had its beginnings as a backlash to the challenges presented by African American thought.  

In my previous book, Political Logic, I pointed to Russell Kirk and his book The Conservative Mind. 

“In his lecture on “The Origins of the Modern American Conservative Movement” given to the

Heritage Foundation in 2003, Dr. Lee Edwards cited Russell Kirk, author of The Conservative Mind as providing the central idea upon which American conservatism is essentially based, calling it ordered liberty”.

 

Kirk described six basic “canons” or principles of conservatism:

1.A divine intent, as well as personal conscience, rules society;

2.Traditional life is filled with variety and mystery while most radical systems are characterized by a narrowing uniformity;

3.Civilized society requires orders and classes;

4.Property and freedom are inseparably connected;

5.Man must control his will and his appetite, knowing that he is governed more by emotion than by reason; and

6.Society must alter slowly.

 

Edwards states that “the work established convincingly that there was a tradition of American

conservatism that had existed since the Founding of the Republic. With one book, Russell Kirk made conservatism intellectually acceptable in America. Indeed, he gave the conservative movement its name. 

Lest we minimize the writings of Kirk, we should point out that one of his biggest supporters was “Mr.Conservative”, President Ronald Reagan. Reagan said this of Kirk:

“As the prophet of American conservatism, Russell Kirk has taught, nurtured, and inspired a

generation. From . . . Piety Hill, he reached deep into the roots of American values, writing and

editing central works of political philosophy. His intellectual contribution has been a profound act of patriotism. I look forward to the future with anticipation that his work will continue to exert a profound influence in the defense of our values and our cherished civilization.”  

—Ronald Reagan, 1981 

For several years he was a Distinguished Scholar of the Heritage Foundation. In 1989, President

Reagan conferred on him the Presidential Citizens Medal. In 1991, he was awarded the Salvatori

Prize for historical writing. Dr, Kirks conservative credentials are established. He is a conservative. He is qualified to speak on the meaning of conservatism. 

This prompted me to examine a few of Kirks ideas which he put forth as his 10 principles of

conservatism, in addition to his 6 “canons”. Kirk begins with his first principle as being that “the

conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order”.  

He states, “Twenty-five centuries ago, Plato taught this doctrine, but even the educated nowadays find it difficult to understand” . The problem of order has been a principal concern of conservatives ever since conservative became a term of politics. Putting it mildly, Plato’s view was that we are ineradicably social, and that the individual person was not, and could not, be self-sufficient. In fact, Plato offered up humans like so many animals that could do nothing for themselves unless they had constant and detailed direction from those who were to be their leaders:  

“... And even in the smallest manner ... [one] should stand under leadership. For example, he should get up, or move, or wash, or take his meals ... only if he has been told to do so. In a word, he should teach his soul, by long habit, never to dream of acting independently ... There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.” (The Republic.) 

In his chapter on southern conservatism, Kirk writes “that while human slavery is bad ground for

conservatives to make a stand upon, yet the wild demands and expectations of the abolitionists were quite as slippery a foundation for political decency” Describing “Negroes” as “the menace of debased, ignorant and abysmally poor folk” he argued they “must tend to produce in the minds of the dominant people an anxiety to preserve every detail of the present structure, and an ultra-vigilant suspicion of innovation”. 

Ok…so this is the guy that influenced Ronald Reagan.  His views were also more or less adapted by William F. Buckley, National Review, and other conservatives after Brown v Board of Education. 

Professor Robert Smith of the University of San Francisco writes; “Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s Buckley and National Review opposed the civil rights movement. In 1957, Buckley wrote an editorial entitled “Why the South Must Prevail”. He wrote; “National Review believes that the South’s premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, and then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority. Sometimes it becomes impossible to assert the will of minority, in which case it may give way, and the society will regress; sometimes the numerical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence”. 

This sentence stands out to me: “ It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority”. It appears that Mr. Buckley had Kenya  in mind with this comment.  “The question, as far as the White community is concerned , is whether the claims of civilization supersede those of universal suffrage.” Actually, the question becomes, how civilized is a society that enforces racist White Supremacy?  Is Mr. Buckley defining “civilized standards” for all of us, including those living under the suppression of a racist overlord? I seriously doubt that anybody living under Jim Crow thought they were living under civilized standards. Being denied the most basic human rights including the right to vote, to an education, to being on a street after sundown, and facing the prospects of being  lynched if you defied  the norms of this kind of community hardly paints a picture of a civilized society to these eyes. 

This led me to Ronald Reagan. In 1980, Ronald Reagan began his campaign, not with a speech on supply side economics. He began it with a speech supporting “states rights” just outside Philadelphia, Mississippi at the Neshoba County Fair, the very community where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964. This was a deliberate appeal to white racists that he was on their side and was part of a Republican strategy going back to the 1960’s to build a conservative majority on the basis of racism.  

This is not a way to attract blacks to the conservative movement.  But that was never the intention. The conservative isn’t looking to appeal to Blacks. They’re looking to suppress them. 

I found this an outrageous move on the part of Ronald Reagan. Of all the locations in the United States to launch a campaign…he picks this one? What did he think that would say to the African American community? It’s pretty clear whose votes he was courting.   

According to Smith; “The South is and always has been the most conservative part of America, 

conservative in an almost militant promotion of Lockean principles and institutions, and the only part of the country that claimed some kind of Burkean aristocratic conservatism. The South has also always been the most racist part of the country.  This is probably the most direct connection between racism and conservatism in America; despite all the denials of southern intellectuals and politicians, past and present, the South’s militant conservatism was rooted fundamentally in its hyperracism”. 

“The schizophrenia that is part of “southern thought”, is that while it embraced John Locke for whites, it denied Locke to blacks. But at the same time, many of the South’s leading thinkers rejected Locke because slavery could not be squared with his idea of inalienable natural rights. It was one thing to deny Africans civil rights as northern whites did, but to deny them liberty and their property in their labor was more difficult, leading to a full-bore embrace of a bastardized Burkean Aristocracy”. 

“Southern conservatism is an integral part of American conservatism. And if one looks at it, you’ll find racism at its core. Its militant laissez-faire capitalism, it’s emphasis on the soil, limited government, states rights, concurrent majorities, tradition, and all the rest are little more than reactions to modernity and to anti-racist movements.”

Chapter 6: White Supremacy. As American as the Constitution

Chapter 6 

White Supremacy: As American as the Constitution.

“The problem with any ideology is that it gives you the answer before you’ve looked at any of the

evidence. You’ve got to mold the evidence to give you the answer that you’ve already decided you have to have”. – Bill Clinton 

 

White Supremacy and racism is foundational to America. It’s codified in our constitution.

Article I Sec. 2.(basing a state’s representation in the House on its Free population and 3/5 of all other persons) 

Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

 

Article I Sec. 9. (Barring congress from abolishing the slave trade before 1808) 

The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person.

 

Article IV Sec. 2. (providing for the return of runaway slaves) 

A person charged in any state with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another state, shall on demand of the executive authority of the state from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the state having jurisdiction of the crime. 

No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due. 

 

By design, the United States was created as a White, male dominated society. Without a doubt, not all of our founders were of this mind, however, there were enough to block any attempt to force it to live up to its stated claim that “All men are created equal”. Clearly, some were more equal than others.  If all the states were going to take part in this new venture, then concessions would have to be made to bring others into the fold. Many of our founders were in fact, slave owners. Washington and Jefferson were two of the more notable in this regard.  It would take almost another 100 years and a civil war to change that. Lincoln managed to do it, and he was hated in the south for his position. When he was elected, the southern states seceded from the union even before he took office.  The view in the South was that the Federal government had no right to tell them how to run their economy and slavery was essential to it.  

The articles of secession coming from Mississippi are very clear.

 

A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of

Mississippi from the Federal Union.

                                                                                   

“In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course. “ 

“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.” 

In an article by James W. Loewen, published in the Washington Post, Mr. Loewen presented a few facts which he titled “Five myths about why the South seceded”. 

1.   The South seceded over states’ rights.

Confederate states did claim the right to secede, but no state claimed to be seceding for that right. In fact, Confederates opposed states’ rights — that is, the right of Northern states not to support slavery. 

On Dec. 24, 1860, delegates at South Carolina’s secession convention adopted a “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.” It noted “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery” and protested that Northern states had failed to “fulfill their constitutional obligations” by interfering with the return of fugitive slaves to bondage. Slavery, not states’ rights, birthed the Civil War.  

South Carolina was further upset that New York no longer allowed “slavery transit.” In the past, if Charleston gentry wanted to spend August in the Hamptons, they could bring their cook along. No longer — and South Carolina’s delegates were outraged. In addition, they objected that New England states let black men vote and tolerated abolitionist societies. According to South Carolina, states should not have the right to let their citizens assemble and speak freely when what they said threatened slavery. 

Other seceding states echoed South Carolina. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world,” proclaimed Mississippi in its own secession declaration, passed Jan. 9, 1861. “Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of the commerce of the earth. . . . A blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and The South’s opposition to states’ rights is not surprising. Until the Civil War, Southern presidents and lawmakers had dominated the federal government. The people in power in Washington always oppose states’ rights. Doing so preserves their own. 

2.   Secession was about tariffs and taxes.

During the nadir of post-civil-war race relations — the terrible years after 1890 when town after town across the North became all-white “sundown towns” and state after state across the South prevented African Americans from voting — “anything but slavery” explanations of the Civil War gained traction. To this day Confederate sympathizers successfully float this false claim, along with their preferred name for the conflict: the War Between the States. At the infamous Secession Ball in South Carolina, hosted in December by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, “the main reasons for secession were portrayed as high tariffs and Northern states using Southern tax money to build their own infrastructure,” The Washington Post reported. 

These explanations are flatly wrong. High tariffs had prompted the Nullification Controversy in 1831-33, when, after South Carolina demanded the right to nullify federal laws or secede in protest, President Andrew Jackson threatened force. No state joined the movement, and South Carolina backed down. Tariffs were not an issue in 1860, and Southern states said nothing about them. Why would they?

Southerners had written the tariff of 1857, under which the nation was functioning. Its rates were lower than at any point since 1816. 

3.   Most white Southerners didn’t own slaves, so they wouldn’t secede for slavery.

Indeed, most white Southern families had no slaves. Less than half of white Mississippi households owned one or more slaves, for example, and that proportion was smaller still in whiter states such as Virginia and Tennessee. It is also true that, in areas with few slaves, most white Southerners did not support secession. West Virginia seceded from Virginia to stay with the Union, and Confederate troops had to occupy parts of eastern Tennessee and northern Alabama to hold them in line. 

However, two ideological factors caused most Southern whites, including those who were not slave-owners, to defend slavery. First, Americans are wondrous optimists, looking to the upper class and expecting to join it someday. In 1860, many subsistence farmers aspired to become large slave-owners. So poor white Southerners supported slavery then, just as many low-income people supported the Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan in their bid for the 2012 presidency.  

Second and more important, belief in white supremacy provided a rationale for slavery. As the French political theorist Montesquieu observed wryly in 1748: “It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures [enslaved Africans] to be men; because allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow that we ourselves are not Christians.” Given this belief, most white Southerners — and many Northerners, too — could not envision life in black-majority states such as South Carolina and Mississippi unless blacks were in chains. Georgia Supreme Court Justice Henry Benning, trying to persuade the Virginia Legislature to leave the Union, predicted race war if slavery was not protected.  

“The consequence will be that our men will be all exterminated or expelled to wander as vagabonds over a hostile earth, and as for our women, their fate will be too horrible to contemplate even in fancy.” Thus, secession would maintain not only slavery but the prevailing ideology of white supremacy as well. 

4.   Abraham Lincoln went to war to end slavery.

Since the Civil War did end slavery, many Americans think abolition was the Union’s goal. But the North initially went to war to hold the nation together. Abolition came later. 

On Aug. 22, 1862, President Lincoln wrote a letter to the New York Tribune that included the following passage: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.” 

However, Lincoln’s own anti-slavery sentiment was widely known at the time. In the same letter, he went on: “I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.” A month later, Lincoln combined official duty and private wish in his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. 

White Northerners’ fear of freed slaves moving north then caused Republicans to lose the Midwest in the congressional elections of November 1862. 

Gradually, as Union soldiers found help from black civilians in the South and black recruits impressed white units with their bravery, many soldiers — and those they wrote home to — became abolitionists. By 1864, when Maryland voted to end slavery, soldiers’ and sailors’ votes made the difference. 

 5. The South couldn’t have made it long as a slave society.

Slavery was hardly on its last legs in 1860. That year, the South produced almost 75 percent of all U.S. exports. Slaves were worth more than all the manufacturing companies and railroads in the nation. No elite class in history has ever given up such an immense interest voluntarily. Moreover, Confederates eyed territorial expansion into Mexico and Cuba. Short of war, who would have stopped them — or forced them to abandon slavery? 

To claim that slavery would have ended of its own accord by the mid-20th century is impossible to disprove but difficult to accept. In 1860, slavery was growing more entrenched in the South. Unpaid labor makes for big profits, and the Southern elite was growing ever richer. Freeing slaves was becoming more and more difficult for their owners, as was the position of free blacks in the United States, North as well as South. For the foreseeable future, slavery looked secure. Perhaps a civil war was required to end it. 

As we commemorate the sesquicentennial of that war, let us take pride this time — as we did not during the centennial — that secession on slavery’s behalf failed.

 

Sociologist James W. Loewen is the author of “Lies My Teacher Told Me” and co-editor, with Edward Sebesta, of “The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader.”

Chapter 5; Hitching a ride on the Cultural Revolution

Chapter 5

 

Hitching a ride on the Cultural Revolution

 

    After high school, I briefly attended Southern Illinois University. To this day, I have no idea why. I had no interest in anything the school had to offer at that time. By this time, I was immersed in music and I left after one semester to pursue music back in Chicago. After a year of knocking around with a local band, I moved to the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington DC. My parents were now living there as my father was now working for the State Department. I was 20 years old, and I was there in one of the most extraordinary times of my life. It was 1968 and the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing along with an anti-war movement regarding Viet Nam. There were drugs everywhere and readily available for those interested in “dropping out” of conventional thinking. Racial animosity was disappearing among people my age, and harmony prevailed.  Then things erupted.  

On February 4, 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. delivers a sermon at his Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta which will come to be seen as prophetic. His speech contains what amounts to his own eulogy. After his death, he says, "I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody... that I tried to love and serve humanity,. Yes, if you want to, say that I was a drum major for peace... for righteousness."                                                                         

On April 4, Martin Luther King Jr. spends the day at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis working and meeting with local leaders on plans for his Poor People's March on Washington to take place late in the month. At 6pm, as he greets the car and friends in the courtyard, King is shot with one round from a 30.06 rifle. He will be declared dead just an hour later at St. Joseph's hospital. After an international man-hunt James Earl Ray will be arrested on June 27 in England, and convicted of the murder. Ray died in prison in 1998.  

Robert Kennedy, hearing of the murder just before he is to give a speech in Indianapolis, IN, delivers a powerful extemporaneous eulogy in which he pleads with the audience "to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world."  

The King assassination sparks rioting in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, Newark, Washington, D.C., and many others. Across the country 46 deaths will be blamed on the riots. 

On June 4/5, on the night of the California Primary Robert Kennedy addresses a large crowd of

supporters at the Ambassador Hotel in San Francisco. He has won victories in California and South Dakota and is confident that his campaign will go on to unite the many factions stressing the country. As he leaves the stage, at 12:13AM on the morning of the fifth, Kennedy is shot by Sirhan Sirhan, a 24 year old Jordanian living in Los Angeles. The motive for the shooting is apparently anger at several pro-Isreali speeches Kennedy had made during the campaign. The forty-two year old Kennedy dies in the early morning of June sixth. 

On August 26, Mayor Richard Daley opens the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. While the convention moves haltingly toward nominating Hubert Humphrey for president, the city's police attempt to enforce an 11 o'clock curfew. On that Monday night demonstrations are widespread, but generally peaceful. The next two days, however, bring increasing tension and violence to the situation.  

August 28 By most accounts, on Wednesday evening Chicago police take action against crowds of demonstrators without provocation. The police beat some marchers unconscious and send at least 100 to emergency rooms while arresting 175. 

Everything appeared to be out of control at this time. 1968 had seen the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. Then came 1969, which author Rob Kirkpatrick calls "a year of extremes."  It was a tumultuous time when it seemed as if history were being made almost every day:  

•For the first time, gays fought back against the New York City police as they raided a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village on June 28.  

•Camelot lost its luster when Ted Kennedy drove off a bridge at Chappaquiddick on July 18. His young female passenger drowned.  

•Neil Armstrong walked on the moon July 20, the first man to do so.  

•Charles Manson's followers killed actress Sharon Tate and four others in Los Angeles on Aug. 8.  

•Woodstock, the now-mythical music festival in upstate New York, began Aug. 15.  

•Lt. William Calley was charged on Sept. 5 for his role in the 1968 My Lai Massacre, in which American soldiers slaughtered more than 500 Vietnamese civilians.  

•In an effort to bolster his standing amid protests against the Vietnam War, President Nixon delivered his "silent majority" speech on Nov. 3. Nixon was also employing something called “the Southern Strategy” which was designed to attract those that were dissatisfied with the Democratic Party which was now embracing Civil Rights as the foundation of their platform. If you opposed Civil Rights, then the Republican Party was for you. 

Fortunately for me, my father was offered an assignment overseas with the State Dept. and asked if I wanted to move to the Philippines with them.  This would be an opportunity to live outside the country and reflect a bit on what I was looking for…which turned out to be myself. What I saw in the Philippines stunned me. I saw extremes of poverty and wealth. There was no middle class. These were the years of Ferdinand Marcos. They were years of brutal dictatorship. Of course the United States viewed the Marcos regime as a friend.  We always seemed to be friends of brutality.  

I left the Philippines after a year, and moved to San Francisco. It was quite different. Discrimination seemed to be absent. Black, white, Hispanic, gay, straight…everyone worked with everyone. During this time it was still safe to hitch-hike and I took advantage of the opportunity. I was first hitching rides around the city, and into Marin County. Then a friend and I decided to hitch to Chicago. I had no idea what to expect. I’d never attempted anything on that scale before. With hardly a dime in my pocket, and a sandwich to eat, we stuck out our thumbs and headed east. We would part in Chicago and I would continue on to the east coast. My parents had returned to the states and I thought I’d make it there for their anniversary. It took a week, but I made it to Falls Church VA in time much to their surprise. Of course along the way I had a gun pointed at me in Nevada and was told to get a haircut. After a short visit I took a Grayhound back to San Francisco. I now felt I was experienced enough to try it again when the opportunity presented itself which it did about 3 months later. This time, I left San Jose and headed north through the Redwood Forest, to Portland, then Seattle and then up to Canada. Once there I got a great ride from a man who stopped and got me breakfast. We then proceeded to Revelstoke BC. I thanked him for the ride and headed to the youth hostel in town.  There were many young travelers and they told me it was rough getting a ride from there. Some people had been there for a week. But…there was another way. A freight train came right through town a block from the Hostel and it headed east. I could always hop the freight if I wanted to leave. 

 Sure enough, within about an hour I heard the train coming into town. I grabbed my things and headed to the tracks where the train would roll through. It was moving too fast, but it was very long and began to slow down enough for me to run along-side it. It slowed even more and I could almost walk at the same speed. I found an open car and  climbed aboard, and hid up in the front of the car. The train slowed to a stop and I could hear some men walking up the track. They never checked the car and I was safe and ready for the next leg of this strange adventure. 

After what seemed like about a half-hour, I could hear the sound of the cars being yanked in succession and the sound was getting closer. Finally the car I was in jerked into motion and we were moving.  As the train built its speed I ventured toward the back of the car and peered out to see what I could see. As I looked out I was astonished to see myself in the midst of the Canadian Rockies. The train was off the beaten path of highways and I could see waterfalls coming right out of a mountain. I couldn’t see either the front or the back of the train. It was very long. I watched the stars and the moon and the incredible mountains that only the engineers would see.  It was a magic carpet ride for sure.  

It was getting colder and I retreated back into the car to keep warm and fell asleep. I woke up when I sensed the train was slowing down and it felt much colder and this was in the late summer. I went to the back of the car and peered out again, and I thought I was in the Alps. Huge snow- capped mountains everywhere and the train was slowing down. I was in Banff National Park and about to enter the small town of Banff. The train slowed enough as it entered the town, and I hopped off. I would continue on from here via my thumb.  I cleaned up at a public restroom and went into a café for something to eat. There I met three girls headed to St Paul. They offered me a ride and I was on my way to the states. From St. Paul I found a ride to Chicago where I had relatives. I spent the day with them and had a great steak dinner. Strip steaks that my uncle Barbequed. One of the best meals I can remember eating.  My cousin gave me a ride into Indiana and we spotted a driver with Pennsylvania plates and asked him for a ride to PA. I switched cars and headed to Pennsylvania. I got off in Somerset and from there another ride to Washington DC.  Again, the trip took a week and I look back on it as one of the great adventures of my life. I was 22 years old. 

 I had grown up seeing bigotry and racism as a kid. I had travelled to the other side of the world and saw poverty and more bigotry. I’d lived in California and although my immediate environment seemed free of this ugliness, it was still there in abundance lurking just outside of my safe zone. I’d hitch-hiked across North America twice, and hopped a freight train taking me through some of the most beautiful sights that nature has to offer.  All of this had shaped me in some way that I still wasn’t completely certain of.  And although I was changing, and growing as a person, I was still existing in a hostile environment that fed off of prejudice, bigotry and hate.  I found that those that I knew were still immersed in this ideological prison that served as a convenient comfort zone for their ignorance. They were older, and certainly had different experiences than I had, and yet…they were still consumed by a narrow minded belief system that stunted their growth and perpetuated a divisive ideology.  Instead of opening their minds to what people had in common, their minds appeared closed to those that they determined were different and therefore a threat.  Ideologies are like that. They never admit new information. How can you grow, if you think you know,  all there is to know? 

The old familiar “dog-whistles” were there, including the scapegoating of others in order to mollify their own inadequacies.  The more things had changed, the more they stayed the same.

 

 

Chapter 4: Growing up

Chapter 4

Growing up

 

 My family moved from all white Forest Park, to all white Westchester Illinois which was another town that made up Proviso Township. My parents weren’t deliberately looking for a white neighborhood. They simply wanted a nice house with a good school.  They weren’t concerned with the color of their neighbors skin. There I attended Junior High School, and found the very same attitudes.  During the seventh grade, I had a Social Studies teacher that seemed to spend an entire month on the virtues of the  country of South Africa. I learned about the “heroic” Afrikaners that kept the black majority under their racist rule. That very same teacher staged a ridiculous production of “Little Black Sambo” for the PTA. One of my best friends had the starring role, black-face and all. He was carefully coached to speak his lines in an over-the-top exaggerated “black” dialect.  It was hideous.  All the kids in my graduating class would be attending West High which was all white. Not because it was officially segregated,  but simply because blacks didn’t live in the villages that were in that district. It was actually economic segregation.  During my last year of Junior High, my parents were looking to move once again, and I begged them to find a house that was within East High district. All my family had attended that school. All my Aunts, Uncles, both parents and my brother went there. I wanted the same experience. East High was also already integrated with kids coming from Maywood where the school was located. Most of my friends were bigots as were their parents. None of them could understand why I’d want to go to school with the “N”’s. They never imagined I wouldn’t want to go to school with them. 

 I entered High School in 1962. We had an enrollment of around 4,000 and about 35% were African-American. There were never any incidents at the school involving race relations. Not then at least. That would come later. There was one incident that caught my attention. It was the Senior Prom. The star athlete was a handsome black guy. He was taking a pretty white girl to the prom. The Administration wouldn’t allow it. So, my brother and his girlfriend, double dated with them. They skipped the Prom, and they went to Second City in Chicago and caught a show and then a dinner at a nice restaurant. I thought that was pretty cool of my brother.  I looked up to him a lot. He always set a good example for me to follow.  

The Civil Rights movement was beginning to take hold and I was immersing myself in folk music and blues music as opposed the pop of the time (although I was taken completely by the Beatles).  In 1964 word came that three Civil Rights Workers were murdered in Neshoba County Mississippi just outside of the town of Philidelphia. (Hardly the “City of Brotherly Love” that we know about).  

The following provides historical context for the first installment that appeared in the print edition of the Neshoba Democrat on April 28, 2004.— Jim Prince

 

“On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers were murdered in Neshoba County. The trio had come here to investigate the burning of the Mt. Zion Methodist Church in the Longdale community off of Mississippi 16 east. 

 The night the church was burned three parishioners were beaten, some severely. The murders of Michael Schwerner, 24, James Chaney, 21, and Andrew Goodman, 20, were part of a plot hatched by the Lauderdale County unit of the Ku Klux Klan and carried out by members of the Neshoba County unit. 

The civil rights workers were part of a broader national movement that hoped to begin a voter

registration drive in this area, part of the Mississippi Summer Project, what became known as Freedom Summer. 

A coalition of civil rights organizations known as COFO (Council of Federated Organizations) conceived of a project in the state with massive numbers of student volunteers who would converge on the state to register black voters and to conduct “freedom schools” which would offer curriculum of black history and arts to children throughout the state. 

Chaney, a plasterer, had grown up in Meridian, in nearby Lauderdale County, and even as a young student had been interested in civil rights work. Schwerner, a Jewish New Yorker, came south to Meridian to set up the COFO office because he believed he could help prevent the spread of hate that had resulted in the Holocaust, an event that had taken the lives of some of his family. (this obviously struck a nerve with me) 

 Chaney volunteered at the Meridian office, and the two young men began to make visits to Neshoba County to find residents there to sponsor voter registration drives and freedom schools. They made contact with members of Mt. Zion Methodist Church and Mt. Nebo Missionary Baptist Church, as well as other individuals. They made plans for a COFO project in the area. 

Tensions were mounting that summer as some of Mississippi’s segregationist newspapers propagated the idea of a “pending invasion” of civil rights workers. The state was a powder keg, as the Ku Klux Klan increasingly made its presence known and fears were heightened among both blacks and whites. In April 1964 the Klan burned about a dozen crosses in Neshoba County. The Neshoba Democrat spoke against the cross burnings and the coercion and intimidation employed by the Klan. 

The Ku Klux Klan and other groups had become more active in response to increasing civil rights activity, especially since the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision outlawing school segregation. In addition to the Klan’s resistance, the state of Mississippi was continuing to monitor activists through the Sovereignty Commission, which worked in conjunction with the White Citizens Council, to use economic intimidation and threats to attempt to keep blacks in subservient positions.  

Undertaking such struggles for equality, exemplified by the trio was dangerous and courageous work.

In mid-June, Chaney and Schwerner traveled to Oxford, Ohio, to participate in the Freedom Summer volunteers training session being held there. While they were away, on June 16, Klansman assaulted members of the Mt. Zion church, looking for Chaney and Schwerner. Later in the evening, they burned the church to the ground. Having been alerted of the attack, Chaney and Schwerner, joined by new volunteer Goodman immediately drove south to investigate and offer solace to the church members. 

On Sunday afternoon, June 21, Father’s Day, the three young men drove to Philadelphia from Meridian and visited members of Mt. Zion. On the way back through town they were pulled over by a sheriff’s deputy. Chaney was charged with speeding and Schwerner and Goodman were held on suspicion of burning the Mt. Zion church.” 

The details of the murders came later. The group took the activists to a remote area and beat them until they died. Special treatment, however, was reserved for James Chaney, the one black in the group. The Klansmen, in addition to beating Chaney, also used a small handgun to shoot him through his penis and anus, ostensibly because he “knew better” than to be consorting with outside agitators looking to change the status quo in Mississippi. After several weeks of searching, and after recovering more than a dozen bodies not belonging to the missing civil rights workers, the authorities finally found them buried under an earthen dam. Several Klansmen, including Price, were arrested and tried for the brutal killings. The jury, made up of their cousins, friends, and sympathizers, found them all NOT GUILTY. Some time later, the federal government charged the murderers with violating the civil rights of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney. This time the Klansmen were convicted and served sentences ranging from two to ten years. And that…was called justice.
 

News of this nature was beginning to have its effect on the black students at my school and I felt

ashamed and helpless to stop the mistrust that had to be taking place. Still during my time there, our affections for each other were quite open. We were all friends in school and competed on sports teams together, even though we tended to go our separate ways outside of the school environment. By my senior year, two African-American girls were elected to the Home Coming Queens court. One of the girls was in several of my classes. She was a friend and much loved by everyone at school. She’d laugh at your stupid jokes and listen to your boring stories. She was a classical violinist and her father was a doctor. I voted for her, as did most of the kids in school, but she somehow wasn’t selected as Queen. She went on to study music at the University of Illinois, and later married a man named Robert Johnson. Together they founded BET and she became the first African-American female billionaire. Her name is Sheila Crump Johnson. 

I graduated Proviso East High School in 1966 and the next year something happened that was bound to happen sooner or later. Proviso East was pretty famous for an illustrious alumni that included, NBA Basketball stars Jim Brewer, Doc Rivers (coach of the Boston Celtics) All Star Michael Finley, NFL Hall of Famer Ray Nitschke, actor Dennis Franz, business woman Sheila Crump Johnson, Grammy winning folk singer John Prine,  and US astronaut Eugene Cernan…the last human to walk on the moon. 

Proviso East was caught up in a great deal of the racial turmoil that was prevalent in the country in the late 1960s. The 1967-68 school year saw local tensions become violent. 

In September 1967, a large fight, started in the school cafeteria when five aucasian girls were selected by school officials as finalists for the school’s Homecoming Queen, escalated as students were dismissed. Property damage, some caused by the use of gasoline bombs, and fighting caused more than 100 state troopers to be called in, and a strict curfew to be enforced. Principal Hubert Pitt announced that he would appoint a racially balanced group of students to select a new slate of candidates. Apparently after selecting two African-American girls just the year before, the school administration had decided not to let something like that happen again. God forbid one of them be elected Queen.  

One of my classmates was Fred Hampton. He graduated with me in 1966. Although black and white students at Proviso East rarely mixed socially outside of classes, because of his popularity among both groups, Fred was selected to be head of the Inter-racial Council, which met whenever there was racial friction. Fred could always calm the situation.  The year after we graduated, the principal called Fred back to ease the growing racial tensions.  

Fred promoted Black Power. The response of the media and most whites to the term Black Power was swift, negative, and over the top hysterical. Many saw Black Power as an attack on all white people.

Blacks saw it differently. It was about a positive message to them (the black community), to bring blacks together and build their confidence.  Fred said that “blackness was what was in your  heart, not the color of your skin”. But any symbol of black unity, including the modest Afro that Fred wore, threatened many whites.  By 1967, Fred was put on the FBI’s Key Agitator Index;  a list of activists that FBI director J. Edgar  Hoover ordered FBI agents to monitor closely.  Fred became a leader of the Black Panther movement in Chicago. He was killed in a police raid on Panther headquarters in October of 1969. Like Emmett Till before him, his body was viewed at the Raynor Funeral Home in Chicago.

 

Chapter 3: Emmett Till

Chapter 3

 

Emmett Till

 

      I read a story in the Chicago Tribune about a local boy named Emmett Till. He was a Negro (as African-Americans were called then). What happened to him hit me between the eyes like a hammer. I was 7 years old at the time. Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi on August 24, 1955 when he reportedly flirted with a white cashier at a grocery store.  Four days later, two white men kidnapped Till, beat him, and shot him in the head.  The men were tried for murder, but an all-white, male jury acquitted them. Till's murder and open casket funeral galvanized the emerging civil rights movement. 

In August 1955; Till's great uncle Moses Wright came up from Mississippi to visit the family in Chicago. At the end of his stay, Wright was planning to take Till's cousin, Wheeler Parker, back to Mississippi with him to visit relatives down South, and when Till learned of these plans he begged his mother to let him go along. Initially, Till's mother said no. She wanted to take a road trip to Omaha, Nebraska and attempted to lure Till to join her with the promise of open-road driving lessons. But Till desperately wanted to spend time with his cousins in Mississippi, and in a fateful decision that would have grave impact on their lives and the course of American history, Till's mother relented and let him go. 

 

On August 19, 1955—the day before Till left with his uncle and cousin for Mississippi—Mamie Till gave her son his late father's signet ring, engraved with the initials L.T. The next day she drove her son to the 63rd Street station in Chicago. They kissed goodbye, and Till boarded a southbound train headed for Mississippi. It was the last time they ever saw each other. 

Three days after arriving in Money, Mississippi, on August 24, 1955, Emmett Till and a group of

teenagers entered Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market to buy refreshments after a long day picking cotton in the hot afternoon sun. What exactly transpired inside the grocery store that afternoon will never be known. Till purchased bubble gum, and some of the kids with him would later report that he either whistled at, flirted with, or touched the hand of the store's white female clerk—and wife of the owner—Carolyn Bryant. 

Four days later, at approximately 2:30 in the morning on August 28, 1955, Roy Bryant, Carolyn's

husband, and his half-brother J.W. Milam kidnapped Till from Moses Wright's home. They then beat the teenager brutally, dragged him to the bank of the Tallahatchie River, shot him in the head, tied him with barbed wire to a large metal fan and shoved his mutilated body into the water. Moses Wright reported Till's disappearance to the local authorities, and three days later his corpse was pulled out of the river.  

 

Till's face was mutilated beyond recognition, and Wright only managed to positively identify him by the ring on his finger, engraved with his father's initials, L.T. Till's body was shipped to Chicago, where his mother opted to have an open-casket funeral with Till's body on display for five days. Thousands of people came to the Roberts Temple Church of God to see the evidence of this brutal hate crime. Till's mother said that, despite the enormous pain it caused her to see her son's dead body on display, she opted for an open-casket funeral to "let the world see what has happened, because there is no way I could describe this. And I needed somebody to help me tell what it was like." 

In the weeks that passed between Till's burial and the murder and kidnapping trial of Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, two black publications, Jet magazine and the Chicago Defender, published graphic images of Till's corpse.  By the time the trial commenced on September 19, Emmett Till's murder had become a source of outrage and indignation throughout much of the country. Because blacks and women were barred from serving jury duty, Bryant and Milam were tried before an all-white, all-male jury. In an act of extraordinary bravery, Moses Wright took the stand and identified Bryant and Milam as Till's kidnappers and killers. At the time, it was almost unheard of for blacks to openly accuse whites in court, and by doing so Wright put his own life in grave danger.  

Despite the overwhelming evidence of the defendants' guilt and widespread pleas for justice from outside Mississippi, on September 23 the panel of white male jurors acquitted Bryant and Milam of all charges. Their deliberations lasted a mere 67 minutes. Only a few months later, in January 1956, Bryant and Milam admitted to committing the crime. Protected by double jeopardy laws, they told the whole story of how they kidnapped and killed Emmett Till to Look magazine for $4,000. 

 

Coming only one year after the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education mandated the end of racial segregation in public schools, Till's death provided an important catalyst for the American Civil Rights Movement. One hundred days after Emmett Till's murder, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on an Alabama city bus, sparking the yearlong Montgomery bus boycott. Nine years later, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing many forms of racial discrimination and segregation, one year later it passed the Voting Rights Act outlawing discriminatory voting practices. 

Although she never stopped feeling the pain from her son's death, Mamie Till (who died of heart failure in 2003) also recognized that what happened to Emmett Till helped open Americans' eyes to the racial hatred plaguing their country, and in doing so helped spark a massive protest movement for racial equality and justice. Before Till's murder, she said, "people really didn't know that things this horrible could take place. And the fact that it happened to a child, that make all the difference in the world." 

This is the story as written by William Bradford Huie. It appeared in Look Magazine titled 

“The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi.” 

Editors Note: In the long history of man's inhumanity to man, racial conflict has produced some of the most horrible examples of brutality. The recent slaying of Emmett Till in Mississippi is a case in point.

 

The editors of Look are convinced that they are presenting here, for the first time, the real story of that killing -- the story no jury heard and no newspaper reader saw. 

Disclosed here is the true account of the slaying in Mississippi of a Negro youth named Emmett Till.

 

Last September in Sumner, Miss., a petit jury found the youth's admitted abductors not guilty of murder. In November, in Greenwood, a grand jury declined to indict them for kidnapping.

Of the murder trial, the Memphis Commercial Appeal said: "Evidence necessary for convicting on a murder charge was lacking." But with truth absent, hypocrisy and myth have flourished. Now, hypocrisy can be exposed; myth dispelled. Here are the facts.

 

Carolyn Holloway Bryant is 21, five feet tall, weighs 103 pounds. An Irish girl, with black hair and black eyes, she is a small farmer's daughter who, at 17, quit high school at Indianola, Miss., to marry a soldier, Roy Bryant, then 20, now 24. The couple have two boys, three and two; and they operate a store at a dusty crossroads called Money: post office, filling station and three stores clustered around a school and a gin, and set in the vast, lonely cotton patch that is the Mississippi Delta. 

Carolyn and Roy Bryant are poor: no car, no TV. They live in the back of the store which Roy's brothers helped set up when he got out of the 82nd Airborne in 1953. They sell "snuff-and-fatback" to Negro field hands on credit: and they earn little because, for one reason, the government has been giving the Negroes food they formerly bought. 

Carolyn and Roy Bryant's social life is visits to their families, to the Baptist church, and, whenever they can borrow a car, to a drive-in, with the kids sleeping in the back seat. They call Shane the best picture they ever saw.  

For extra money, Carolyn tends store when Roy works outside -- like truck driving for a brother. And he has many brothers. His mother had two husbands, 11 children. The first five -- all boys -- were "Milam children"; the next six -- three boys, three girls -- were "Bryant children." 

This is a lusty and devoted clan. They work, fight, vote and play as a family. The "half" in their fraternity is forgotten. For years, they have operated a chain of cottonfield stores, as well as trucks and mechanical cotton pickers. In relation to the Negroes, they are somewhat like white traders in portions of Africa today; and they are determined to resist the revolt of colored men against white rule. 

On Wednesday evening, August 24, 1955, Roy was in Texas, on a brother's truck. He had carted shrimp from New Orleans to San Antonio, proceeded to Brownsville. Carolyn was alone in the store. But back in the living quarters was her sister-in-law Juanita Milam, 27, with her two small sons and Carolyn's two. The store was kept open till 9 on week nights, 11 on Saturday. 

When her husband was away, Carolyn Bryant never slept in the store, never stayed there alone after dark. Moreover, in the Delta, no white woman ever travels country roads after dark unattended by a man. 

This meant that during Roy's absences -- particularly since he had no car -- there was family

inconvenience. Each afternoon, a sister-in-law arrived to stay with Carolyn until closing time. Then, the two women, with their children, waited for a brother-in-law to convoy them to his home. Next morning, the sister-in-law drove Carolyn back. 

Juanita Milam had driven from her home in Glendora. She had parked in front of the store to the left; and under the front seat of this car was Roy Bryant's pistol, a .38 Colt automatic. Carolyn knew it was there. After 9, Juanita's husband, J. W. Milam, would arrive in his pickup to shepherd them to his home for the night. 

About 7:30 pm, eight young Negroes -- seven boys and a girl -- in a '46 Ford had stopped outside. They included sons, grandsons and a nephew of Moses (Preacher) Wright, 64, a 'cropper. They were between 13 and 19 years old. Four were natives of the Delta and others, including the nephew, Emmett (Bobo) Till, were visiting from the Chicago area. 

Bobo Till was 14 years old: born on July 25, 1941. He was stocky, muscular, weighing about 160, five feet four or five. Preacher later testified: "He looked like a man." 

Bobo's party joined a dozen other young Negroes, including two other girls, in front of the store. Bryant had built checkerboards there. Some were playing checkers, others were wrestling and "kiddin' about girls."  

Bobo bragged about his white girl. He showed the boys a picture of a white girl in his wallet; and to their jeers of disbelief, he boasted of success with her. 

"You talkin' mighty big, Bo," one youth said. "There's a pretty little white woman in the store. Since you know how to handle white girls, let's see you go in and get a date with her?" 

"You ain't chicken, are yuh, Bo?" another youth taunted him. 

Bobo had to fire or fall back. He entered the store, alone, stopped at the candy case. Carolyn was behind the counter; Bobo in front. He asked for two cents' worth of bubble gum. She handed it to him. He squeezed her hand and said: "How about a date, baby?" 

She jerked away and started for Juanita Milam. At the break between counters, Bobo jumped in front of her, perhaps caught her at the waist, and said: "You needn't be afraid o' me, Baby. I been with white girls before." 

At this point, a cousin ran in, grabbed Bobo and began pulling him out of the store. Carolyn now ran, not for Juanita, but out the front, and got the pistol from the Milam car. 

Outside, with Bobo being ushered off by his cousins, and with Carolyn getting the gun, Bobo executed the "wolf whistle" which gave the case its name:                                                                                                     

 

THE WOLF-WHISTLE MURDER: A NEGRO "CHILD" OR "BOY" WHISTLED AT HER AND THEY KILLED HIM.

 

That was the sum of the facts on which most newspaper readers based an opinion. 

The Negroes drove away; and Carolyn, shaken, told Juanita. The two women determined to keep the incident from their "Men-folks." They didn't tell J. W. Milam when he came to escort them home. 

By Thursday afternoon, Carolyn Bryant could see the story was getting around. She spent Thursday night at the Milams, where at 4 a.m. (Friday) Roy got back from Texas. Since he had slept little for five nights, he went to bed at the Milams' while Carolyn returned to the store. 

During Friday afternoon, Roy reached the store, and shortly thereafter a Negro told him what "the talk" was, and told him that the "Chicago boy" was "visitin' Preacher." Carolyn then told Roy what had happened.  

Once Roy Bryant knew, in his environment, in the opinion of most white people around him, for him to have done nothing would have marked him for a coward and a fool. 

On Friday night, he couldn't do anything. He and Carolyn were alone, and he had no car. Saturday was collection day, their busy day in the store. About 10:30 Saturday night, J. W. Milam drove by. Roy took him aside. 

"I want you to come over early in the morning," he said. "I need a little transportation."

J.W. protested: "Sunday's the only morning I can sleep. Can't we make it around noon?"

Roy then told him. "I'll be there," he said. "Early." 

J. W. drove to another brother's store at Minter City, where he was working. He closed that store about 12:30 a.m., drove home to Glendora. Juanita was away, visiting her folks at Greenville. J. W. had been thinking. He decided not to go to bed. He pumped the pickup -- a half-ton '55 Chevrolet -- full of gas and headed for Money. 

J. W. "Big Milam" is 36: six feet two, 235 pounds; an extrovert. Short boots accentuate his height; khaki trousers; red sports shirt; sun helmet. Dark-visaged; his lower lip curls when he chuckles; and though bald, his remaining hair is jet-black. 

He is slavery's plantation overseer. Today, he rents Negro-driven mechanical cotton pickers to

plantation owners. Those who know him say that he can handle Negroes better than anybody in the country. 

Big Milam soldiered in the Patton manner. With a ninth-grade education, he was commissioned in battle by the 75th Division. He was an expert platoon leader, expert street fighter, expert in night patrol, expert with the "grease gun," with every device for close range killing. A German bullet tore clear through his chest; his body bears "multiple shrapnel wounds." Of his medals, he cherishes one: combat infantryman's badge. 

Big Milam, like many soldiers, brought home his favorite gun: the .45 Colt automatic pistol.

"Best weapon the Army's got," he says. "Either for shootin' or sluggin'."

Two hours after Big Milam got the word -- the instant minute he could close the store -- he was looking for the Chicago Negro. 

 Big Milam reached Money a few minutes shy of 2 a.m., Sunday, August 28. The Bryants were asleep; the store was dark but for the all-night light. He rapped at the back door, and when Roy came, he said: "Let's go. Let's make that trip now." 

Roy dressed, brought a gun: this one was a .45 Colt. Both men were and remained -- cold sober. Big Milam had drunk a beer at Minter City around 9; Roy had had nothing. 

There was no moon as they drove to Preacher's house: 2.8 miles east of Money. 

Preacher's house stands 50 feet right of the gravel road, with cedar and persimmon trees in the yard. Big Milam drove the pickup in under the trees. He was bareheaded, carrying a five-cell flashlight in his left hand, the .45 in the right.Roy Bryant pounded on the door.

 

Preacher: "Who's that?"

Bryant: "Mr. Bryant from Money, Preacher." 

Preacher: "All right, sir. Just a minute."

Preacher came out of the screened-in porch.

Bryant: "Preacher, you got a boy from Chicago here?"

Preacher: "Yessir."

Bryant: "I want to talk to him."

Preacher: "Yessir. I'll get him."

 

Preacher led them to a back bedroom where four youths were sleeping in two beds. In one was Bobo Till and Simeon Wright, Preacher's youngest son. Bryant had told Preacher to turn on the lights; Preacher had said they were out of order. So only the flashlight was used. 

The visit was not a complete surprise. Preacher testified that he had heard of the "trouble," that he "sho' had" talked to his nephew about it. Bobo himself had been afraid; he had wanted to go home the day after the incident. The Negro girl in the party urged that he leave. "They'll kill him," she had warned.  

But Preacher's wife, Elizabeth Wright, had decided that the danger was being magnified; she had urged Bobo to "finish yo' visit." "I thought they might say something to him, but I didn't think they'd kill a boy," Preacher said.  

Big Milam shined the light in Bobo's face, said: "You the nigger who did the talking?"

"Yeah," Bobo replied.

Milam: "Don't say, 'Yeah' to me: I'll blow your head off. Get your clothes on."

Bobo had been sleeping in his shorts. He pulled on a shirt and trousers, then reached for his socks.

"Just the shoes," Milam hurried him.

"I don't wear shoes without socks," Bobo said: and he kept the gun-bearers waiting while he put on his socks, then a pair of canvas shoes with thick crepe soles. 

Preacher and his wife tried two arguments in the boy's behalf.

"He ain't got good sense," Preacher begged. "He didn't know what he was doing. Don't take him."

"I'll pay you gentlemen for the damages," Elizabeth Wright said.

"You niggers go back to sleep," Milam replied. 

They marched him into the yard, told him to get in the back of the pickup and lie down. He obeyed. They drove toward Money.

 

Elizabeth Wright rushed to the home of a white neighbor, who got up, looked around, but decided he could do nothing. Then, she and Preacher drove to the home of her brother, Crosby Smith, at Sumner; and Crosby Smith, on Sunday morning, went to the sheriff's office at Greenwood. 

The other young Negroes stayed at Preacher's house until daylight, when Wheeler Parker telephoned his mother in Chicago, who in turn notified Bobo's mother, Mamie Bradley, 33, 6427 S. St. Lawrence. 

Had there been any doubt as to the identity of the "Chicago boy who done the talking," Milam and Bryant would have stopped at the store for Carolyn to identify him. But there had been no denial. So they didn't stop at the store. At Money, they crossed the Tallahatchie River and drove west. 

 Their intention was to "just whip him... and scare some sense into him." And for this chore, Big Milam knew "the scariest place in the Delta." He had come upon it last year hunting wild geese. Over close to Rosedale, the Big River bends around under a bluff. "Brother, she's a 100-foot sheer drop, and she's a 100 feet deep after you hit." 

Big Milam's idea was to stand him up there on that bluff, "whip" him with the .45, and then shine the light on down there toward that water and make him think you're gonna knock him in.

"Brother, if that won't scare the Chicago -------, hell won't." 

Searching for this bluff, they drove close to 75 miles. Through Shellmound, Schlater, Doddsville,

Ruleville, Cleveland to the intersection south of Rosedale. There they turned south on Mississippi No. 1, toward the entrance to Beulah Lake. They tried several dirt and gravel roads, drove along the levee. Finally, they gave up: in the darkness, Big Milam couldn't find his bluff. 

They drove back to Milam's house at Glendora, and by now it was 5 a.m.. They had been driving nearly three hours, with Milam and Bryant in the cab and Bobo lying in the back. 

At some point when the truck slowed down, why hadn't Bobo jumped and run? He wasn't tied; nobody was holding him. A partial answer is that those Chevrolet pickups have a wraparound rear window the size of a windshield. Bryant could watch him. But the real answer is the remarkable part of the story. 

Bobo wasn't afraid of them! He was tough as they were. He didn't think they had the guts to kill him.

Milam: "We were never able to scare him. They had just filled him so full of that poison that he was hopeless." 

Back of Milam's home is a tool house, with two rooms each about 12 feet square. They took him in there and began "whipping" him, first Milam then Bryant smashing him across the head with those .45's.  

Pistol-whipping: a court-martial offense in the Army... but MP's have been known to do it.... And Milam got information out of German prisoners this way.

But under these blows Bobo never hollered -- and he kept making the perfect speeches to insure

martyrdom.  

Bobo: "You bastards, I'm not afraid of you. I'm as good as you are. I've 'had' white women. My

grandmother was a white woman." 

Milam: "Well, what else could we do? He was hopeless. I'm no bully; I never hurt a nigger in my life. I like niggers -- in their place -- I know how to work 'em. But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice. As long as I live and can do anything about it, niggers are gonna stay in their place. Niggers ain't gonna vote where I live. If they did, they'd control the government. They ain't gonna go to school with my kids. And when a nigger gets close to mentioning sex with a white woman, he's tired o' livin'. I'm likely to kill him. Me and my folks fought for this country, and we got some rights. I stood there in that shed and listened to that nigger throw that poison at me, and I just made up my mind. 'Chicago boy,' I said, 'I'm tired of 'em sending your kind down here to stir up trouble. Goddam you, I'm going to make an example of you -- just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.'" 

So Big Milam decided to act. He needed a weight. He tried to think of where he could get an anvil. Then he remembered a gin which had installed new equipment. He had seen two men lifting a discarded fan, a metal fan three feet high and circular, used in ginning cotton.

Bobo wasn't bleeding much. Pistol-whipping bruises more than it cuts. They ordered him back in the truck and headed west again. They passed through Doddsville, went into the Progressive Ginning Company. This gin is 3.4 miles east of Boyle: Boyle is two miles south of Cleveland. The road to this gin turns left off U.S. 61, after you cross the bayou bridge south of Boyle. 

Milam: "When we got to that gin, it was daylight, and I was worried for the first time. Somebody might see us and accuse us of stealing the fan." Bryant and Big Milam stood aside while Bobo loaded the fan. Weight: 74 pounds. The youth still thought they were bluffing. 

They drove back to Glendora, then north toward Swan Lake and crossed the "new bridge" over the Tallahatchie. At the east end of this bridge, they turned right, along a dirt road which parallels the river. After about two miles, they crossed the property of L.W. Boyce, passing near his house. 

About 1.5 miles southeast of the Boyce home is a lonely spot where Big Milam has hunted squirrels. The river bank is steep. The truck stopped 30 yards from the water.Big Milam ordered Bobo to pick up the fan.He staggered under its weight... carried it to the river bank. They stood silently... just hating one another.

Milam: "Take off your clothes." 

Slowly, Bobo pulled off his shoes, his socks. He stood up, unbuttoned his shirt, dropped his pants, his shorts. 

He stood there naked.

It was Sunday morning, a little before 7.

Milam: "You still as good as I am?"

Bobo: "Yeah."

Milam: "You still 'had' white women?"

Bobo: "Yeah."

That big .45 jumped in Big Milam's hand. The youth turned to catch that big, expanding bullet at his right ear. He dropped. 

They barb-wired the gin fan to his neck, rolled him into 20 feet of water.

For three hours that morning, there was a fire in Big Milam's back yard: Bobo's crepe soled shoes were hard to burn. Seventy-two hours later -- eight miles downstream -- boys were fishing. They saw feet sticking out of the water. Bobo. 

The majority -- by no means all, but the majority -- of the white people in Mississippi 1) either approve Big Milam's action or else 2) they don't disapprove enough to risk giving their "enemies" the satisfaction of a conviction. 

The images that came to my mind at that time, couldn’t even begin to come close to what I saw some years later. The pictures of Emmett Till lying in an open casket seared an indelible scar in my mind. He was unrecognizable as a human being. Mamie Till demanded that her son’s body be returned to Chicago. She defied orders of the Mississippi authorities, who had sealed his casket, and ordered that it be opened. Her son’s mutilated face displayed to the entire world what Southern racism had done.  

Thousands of Chicagoans walked by the open casket in 1955 at the Raynor Funeral Home, aghast at what they saw. Years later,  Rosa Parks told Mamie Till that the photograph of her son, Emmett’s disfigured face in the casket was set in her mind when she refused to give up her seat on the Montgomery bus.  

 

There were three lynching’s in Mississippi in 1955. All of them made the news up north.  I was a very young boy, and I was already aware of what hatred was capable of doing to people. I knew of the Holocaust in Germany and I knew of the horror that faced blacks right in my own country if they stepped “out of line” in the deep south.  I also knew that I detested bigotry and racism and those that practiced it should never be trusted. Something had to change, and that kind of change comes from inside of people.  They have to want to change, and I saw far too many that simply didn’t want to do that. They know it’s wrong, but try to find ways to justify it so they can convince themselves of their own righteousness.  It was at this time that I lost all interest in religion.