I was pleased to find today that the Anniston Star published my letter to the editor, about possible charges against James Bonard Fowler for the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson in Marion, Alabama in 1965.
If you compare my original letter to what the Star published, you will find they edited out three main things.
1. This sentence: "Mr. Jackson died in Selma because he was refused treatment at Marion Hospital, after waiting there for some time."
2. This link to Albert Turner's account of the events in Marion on February 18, 1965:
http://library.wustl.edu/units/spec/filmandmedia/pdfs/TURNER.pdf
3. This sentence: "The quality of public discussion may have a direct impact on the actions of Alabama's Attorney General and the Alabama Bureau of Investigation."
I can think of reasonable editorial and journalistic reasons for the omission of number 2 and number 3: the Star may in general refrain from posting links in the letters to the editor, and I would allow (though not entirely agree) that it is beyond the scope of the paper's mission to influence the actions of law enforcement agencies and officials.
But why include the allegation that more officers than just James Bonard Fowler were responsible for Jimmie Lee Jackson's death and omit the statement about Marion Hospital? After all, it is a recorded fact that Mr. Jackson died in Selma, thirty miles away, though there was a local hospital in Marion that could have treated him. There is more evidence of Jim Crow refusal of treatment in the public record than there is of the horrific scene of police brutality, described by Albert Turner.
On March 31, the Star's editorial page carried these questions and observations:
How much smoother might the state’s transition from then to now have been had we in the 1970s formed a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the post-segregation South? South Africans, fresh from the end of official apartheid, can attest to the cleansing benefits of clearing one’s soul and guilty conscience, and of unburdening one’s pain and suffering.
Instead, the South wishing to bury what it found distasteful, has periodically endured old sins being found out.
We have chosen this course, either on purpose or by passive resistance.
Now, we plead with investigators to dig deeply into the details of Jimmy Lee Jackson’s death and bring justice, finally, to this case.
It seems that "Truth and Reconciliation" is a comfortable concept in reference to select, violent individuals. But such a process can only be meaningful if communities—North and South, East and West—begin to face the real ways Jim Crow—and other institutionalizations of racism past and present—cause death and ruin.
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