Nuance Via Mullinax

I said a couple of things in my post about the James Bonard Fowler indictment that really deserve more nuance. Fortunately Kenneth Mullinax wrote an article last week that hits some of the notes that I missed.

I emphasized the importance of prosecution of the Fowler indictment for Jimmie Lee Jackson's family, but I overstated the case, to the exclusion of others. Quoting Margaret Burnham from my neck of the woods, in Boston, Mullinax reminds us that

the Fowler case has important implications for the nation.

"The Fowler case has much more significance than merely to the family of the victim," Burnham said from her Boston office.

She said the Perry County case represents a shared history from the days of legal segregation and repression of the constitutional rights of black Americans.

It represents our common burden as a nation, Burnham said.

She insists that the Jackson case isn't an Alabama or a regional story, but a major national story.

"These miscarriages of justice must be revisited. These are not efforts to bring pain to an old man, but an important effort to get history right," Burnham said.

In my earlier post, I let Rita Schwerner Bender, widow of another civil rights era murder victim, make the point about the need "to get history right," but there are also people in Jimmie Lee Jackson's own family making this point.

Jimmie Lee Jackson's cousin, Carlton Hogue, said many members of his family feel that Wallace and the state are as culpable as Fowler in Jackson's death.

"We are really angry more at the state of Alabama than the trooper," Hogue said.

He said that it was Wallace's troopers who drove from Montgomery at night to stop a riot in Marion that wasn't even happening.

"When you boil it down, Fowler was the vehicle for George Wallace's rage against black people," Hogue said.

Jones said he believes Wallace fostered a climate of hate that empowered whites with a sense that they could lash out at blacks and get away with murder.

"George Corley Wallace contributed to the climate of lawlessness in Alabama," Jones said.

"His words and his lack of action in not following through with Jackson's death showed the Ku Klux Klan and the killers there were no consequences to their actions," he said.

What I still don't hear in the reporting on the Jimmie Lee Jackson case are considerations of who else---in addition to James Bonard Fowler---may be directly responsible for Jackson's death. There may not be more people to prosecute, but this case is probably one of the best opportunities we'll have to "get history right."