Hungry Blues

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And then shut down the American Psychological Association.

It turns out this little tangential ethical concern about medical participation in interrogations is at the very center of how the US has been carrying out its torture policies. It has begun to appear that the involvement of psychologists in interrogations is, in fact, the smoking gun that proves torture is an integral part of US policy in the so-called War on Terror.

Though the American Medical and American Psychiatric associations have both prohibited their members from participating in interrogations of detainees, the American Psychological Association has been taking a more permissive stance.

Salon.com's Mark Benjamin:

Last summer, the APA adopted new ethical principles drafted by a task force of 10 psychologists, who were selected by the organization's leadership. That controversial task-force report, which is now official APA policy, stated that psychologists participating in terror-related interrogations are fulfilling "a valuable and ethical role to assist in protecting our nation, other nations, and innocent civilians from harm."

Why is the APA's stance so different from that of the other two associations? Could it be because the APA's policy recommendations were made by military men?

Salon has learned that six of the 10 psychologists on the task force have close ties to the military. The names and backgrounds of the task force participants were not made public by the APA; Salon obtained them from congressional sources. Four of the psychologists who crafted the permissive policy were involved with the handling of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, or served with the military in Afghanistan -- all environments where serious cases of abuse have been documented. . . .

Task force member Col. Larry James was the chief psychologist for the intelligence group at Guantánamo in 2003. In 2004, James was at Abu Ghraib working as the director of the behavioral sciences group in the interrogation unit there. His biography said he was sent to Abu Ghraib "in response" to the abuse scandal. Requests to interview James were rebuffed; U.S. Army Medical Command spokeswoman Cynthia Vaughn referred Salon back to the APA.

And it gets even creepier.

Col. Morgan Banks spent four months during the winter of 2001 and 2002 "supporting combat operations" at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, where serious abuses have been reported. Banks told Jane Mayer of the New Yorker last summer he had also "consulted generally" on Guantánamo interrogations, but could not recall any specific cases. Banks' biography lists him as one of the founders and the senior psychologist at the Army's secretive Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) program at Fort Bragg, N.C., where the military trains elite soldiers to resist torture in case of capture. The techniques used to harden those soldiers against torture -- sleep deprivation, isolation, sexual humiliation, bags on the head, long exercise -- have been used on detainees in Afghanistan, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. (Emphasis added.)

Remember Benjamin's Salon article from last month? There he reported that SERE "taught their methods to interrogators of the prisoners in Cuba." Now it seems that one of the torture teachers essentially wrote the book on torture techniques and then helped write the policy that would allow his students to be involved in interrogations.

Other military psychologists on the APA ethics task force include another SERE school veteran and two others involved directly in military operations.

If you listen to APA president Gerald Koocher, who hand-picked the ethics task force, or APA director of ethics, Stephen Behnke, you might feel slightly reassured to hear that "[p]sychologists take advisory or consultative roles in relation to interrogations to help ensure interrogations are safe, legal, ethical, and effective."

However, in at least one case, the psychologists on hand were actually calling the shots on torture.

[T]he presence of a psychologist did not prevent the interrogation of so-called 20th hijacker Mohammed al-Khatani at Guantánamo from turning brutal. Khatani was stripped naked, isolated, given intravenous fluids and forced to urinate on himself, and exercised to exhaustion during interrogations that lasted 18 to 20 hours a day for 48 of 54 days.

Part of the plan was to humiliate Khatani and submit him to extreme psychological stress. He became exhausted, disoriented and hopeless. He was called a homosexual, forced to wear a mask and dance, and leashed and made to perform dog tricks. Interrogators hung pictures of fitness models on his neck and had a female interrogator "invade his personal space," according to the unredacted interrogation log obtained by Salon.

To help break down Khatani's psyche, the interrogation team included a psychologist, Maj. John Leso, a member of the military's Behavioral Science Consultation Teams, called BSCTs. The teams are a newly minted tool in the "war on terror." They include psychologists who are supposed to help interrogators break down resistance and pry loose useful information. Former Guantánamo commander Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller called the teams "essential in developing interrogation strategies" in a September 2003 internal military report.

At various points during the questioning of Khatani, Leso's BSCT operators instructed interrogators to keep the prisoner awake, force him to stop staring at a wall, and advised on the effectiveness of techniques. "BSCT observed that detainee does not like it when the interrogator points out his nonverbal responses," reads an entry in the log from Dec. 29, 2002. (Emphasis added.)

If the BSCT operators were calling the shots just this once, that's one time too many.

There is reason to be concerned, however, that the Khatani interrogation was not an isolated incident. If BSCT operators are widely guiding interrogations, then Mark Benjamin may have just unraveled the torture scandal at the level of US policy decisions and how the APA stepped forward to enable them.

1

"In the 1960s, my husband helped the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission de-fund the pioneer Head Start programs in our state," said Courtney Tannehill, the widow of former Neshoba Democrat editor Jack Tannehill, "and he worked to promote the Commission's segregationist agenda to Mississippi industrialists."

"I am here today to acknowledge the truth about my husband's participation in Mississippi's brutal racist regime," Mrs. Tannehill continued in her address to a group of African-American and white community leaders in Philadelphia, MS. "If we cannot tell the truth about our past, we cannot establish the trust necessary for meaningful reconciliation and improved race relations in Neshoba County today, in 2006."

Sadly, I am putting words in Mrs. Tannehill's mouth. Though Courtney Tannehill is a member of the Philadelphia Coalition, the quotation above was an exercise in wishful thinking about what it might look like if the organization were truly engaged in racial reconciliation.

In June 2005, as reporters anticipating the trial of of Edgar Ray Killen streamed into Philadelphia, MS, current editor and publisher of the Neshoba Democrat and co-chair of the Philadelphia Coalition, James E. Prince III, bragged that

[t]he editor of The Neshoba Democrat is one of the first persons these reporters seek out. They came to talk to Stanley Dearman (still do) and to Jack Tannehill before him.

Since the indictment of Edgar Ray Killen in January there have been so many
reporters that I can’t possibly keep track of all the conversations and
interviews.

While Jack Tannehill's widow did not ever say the words attributed to her, above, there is indeed evidence that her late husband worked with the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, the state spy agency, to enlist business owners in "solving problems" associated with the Civil Rights Act and to keep Mississippi's Black children undernourished and undereducated.

2

On February 26, 1965, Jack Tannehill wrote a letter on Neshoba Democrat letterhead to Erle Johnston, Director of the State Sovereignty Commission (emphasis added):

Dear Erle:

On behalf of the East Mississsippi Management Club, I want to express our appreciation to for the very timely talk you gave us last Tuesday night. Without exception, every one of the 28 members present said they thoroughly enjoyed the program and learned so much of the Sovereignty Commission's work which they never realized meant so much to them and this state.

Information on the Commission's work and its policies and accomplishments was all new to many of the group. It caused them to realize that the Commission was sincerely interested in helping industrialists, as well as others, without being radical and advocating policies which might be detrimental to our progress.

As you know, this was a meeting of industrial management of east central Mississippi towns and cities at which the members discuss mutual problems in an informal manner. Every thing said and discussed is strictly 'off the record'.

Many of the members asked me to say that they felt now they had a place to get some assistance in solving problems which might arise from pressure groups and the recent enactment of the Civil Rights Act.

In short, those present appreciate the image you have been and are creating for our state. As one put it, "I'll have to change my opinion of the Sovereignty Commission's philosophy since listening to its director talk."

Erle, thanks again, and I hope you will return for this or another type meeting here in the near future.

Yours truly,

Jack [handwritten]

Jack L. Tannehill

cc: Gov. Paul Johnson

State Capital

While I often emphasize the Sovereignty Commission's spying activities, and its direct assistance to White Citizens' Council and the Klan, the Commission was also a public relations agency. The Sovereignty Commission emphasized its "dual function" in an undated informational pamphlet, which I believe was intended for the members of the MS state legislature in 1966:

The Sovereignty Commission has operated a dual function of investigation and indexing subversive groups and individuals operating in the state and also a public relations program to correct false statements about Mississippi and enhance the state's prestige to offset impressions made by a few regrettable incidents of violence. Information about subversives has been exploited on occasion to reduce their effectiveness.

In its public relations function, the Sovereignty Commission cultivated contacts with the editors of many of the major newspapers in Mississippi—including Jack Tannehill at the Neshoba Democrat. The meetings, such as the one organized by Tannehill, above, were far from unusual. Numerous Sovereignty Commission documents detail major industry and business leaders serving in official advisory roles for the public relations activities of the Commission.

3

In fact, the Mississippi agency's two functions frequently overlapped. In 1966, when Mississippi's white power structure pulled out all the stops to cripple existing Head Start programs and redirect federal funds to new organizations that whites could control, the Sovereignty Commission marshaled its cadre of newspaper editors for the cause.

Some background from Susan Klopfer's book, Where Rebels Roost:

The Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM) was one of the country's pioneer Head Start programs, providing poor children with medical care, hot meals and preschool training. Some employment was also provided for several hundred local people who worked as teachers and helpers. So of course it was target for destruction by the planter hegemony. . . .

All of Mississippi's Congressional representatives voted against funding the poverty programs in the first place. The Jackson Daily News compared such programs with those in "Soviet Russia . . . and Hitler's Germany."

Head Start and other poverty programs represented "the most subtle mediums for instilling the acceptance of racial integration and ultimate mongrelization ever perpetrated in this country," the JDN editorialized.

This attitude was shared across the state, as several CDGM workers were shot at by racists; local schools would not rent their buildings and buses to the program; and in one Delta town, Anguilla, plantation owners would not allow sharecroppers' children to enroll. Klansmen there burned a cross in front of the Head Start center to make their point.

Even though the new educational program was seeing successes, many white state political leaders tried their best to destroy CDGM, charging financial mismanagement. US Senator John C. Stennis was contracted and he demanded that Sargent Shriver, head of the US Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), withhold funds. (548)

And that's where Jack Tannehill and his colleagues came in. On October 7, 1966, Sovereignty Commission Director Erle Johnston wrote a memo to Martin Fraley, Director of the Mississippi state branch of the Office of Economic Opportunity, about a telegram sending campaign to shift funds from CDGM to a new state agency, Mississippi Action for Progress (MAP).

In line with your suggestion, we made contacts on Thursday, October 6, to have a variety of telegrams sent to Sargent Shriver supporting the new Action for Progress committee in Mississippi.

We composed telegrams and read them over the telephone and all were supposed to have been sent by Thursday evening. We made our contacts chiefly in those areas where CDGM had operated headstart [sic] schools.

The contacts were state senator E.K. Collins and thirteen newspaper executives, including Jack Tannehill at the Neshoba Democrat. Johnston indicated that the anti-CDGM telegram sending campaign was suggested by Fraley. Fraley was director of the state arm of the federal agency responsible for administering President Johnson's War on Poverty programs, including Head Start.

Before taking his post as director of the Mississippi Office of Economic Opportunity, Fraley was chairman of the Mississippi parole board. Frank Barber, a well connected political operative, who held high political offices in Mississippi and also worked for infamous racist and Mississippi Senator James Eastland in DC, characterized Fraley as "a man of all work-advisor, strategist, technician, tactician" for Governor Paul Johnson. The governor of Mississippi was, ex-officio, chairman of the Sovereignty Commission.

4

The telegram campaign against CDGM was suggested by the top advisor for the Sovereignty Commission's chairman to the director of the agency, Erle Johnston, who, in turn, asked Jack Tannnehill and his colleagues to participate.

[A]fter two years of investigations, surveillance, firings, audits, press attacks, closures and threats, CDGM died in December 1967. Mississippi Action for Progress or MAP gained control over most of CDGM's funding and projects. (Klopfer, 549)

Klopfer quotes John Dittmer on MAP, saying, "the poverty program in Mississippi had divided the black community into warring factions, often pitting the poor men and women who had become politicized in the early 1960s against the old, traditional, middle-class leadership.

Divide and conquer. Bait and switch. Keep some (less militant) Black people visible in the newly configured MAP-controlled Head Start programs, while obtaining more of all that good federal money for the benefit of white folks. I believe researchers will find some interesting results if they compare how many whites and how many Blacks got Head Start jobs and contracts under CDGM and then under MAP.

There has been some popular debate about whether Jack Tannehill was speaking about the Klan or about civil rights workers when, in an April 9, 1964 editorial, he wrote, "Outsiders who come in here and try to stir up trouble should be dealt with in a manner they won't forget." James E. Prince III, is the only person who has seriously claimed in public that Tannehill was not threatening civil rights workers but rather telling the Klan to get out of Neshoba County.

As usual, I think Prince is full of it, but focusing the historical debate on this one anecdote is a way to avoid the history of white supremacy in Neshoba County and in Mississippi as a whole. Jack Tannehill didn't just incite his readers to perpetrate violence against civil rights workers. He was active in the work of the white power structure to keep resources out of the hands of African Americans. He was also active in the white power structure's public relations campaign to sell to the world a fictional image of Mississippi while Black children starved and white, racist murderers roamed free.

5

"We challenge our fellow citizens to join us in an honest appraisal of the past."

The Philadelphia Coalition

June 21, 2005

RELATED POSTS

• Progress?
• Products of the Environment
• Foreword for Susan Klopfer's Where Rebels Roost: Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited (2005)

Even the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists have not stooped to the level that you have with personal attacks. Comment all you want on my written record and the facts. But let’s not resort to personal attacks.

James E, Prince III

Email to Ben Greenberg
June 16, 2006

Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman were not civil-rights workers. They were Communist Revolutionaries, actively working to undermine and destroy Christian Civilization.

An officer of the White Knights
of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi

The Klan-Ledger
Special Neshoba County Fair Edition
August, 1964

We wonder how Supervisor Jake Brown lives so well on his pay. We suspect that his liquor bill is almost as high each month as his salary for supervisor. He has a girl friend out on Highway 61 South who he spends a great deal of time with. A girl friend like yours must cost a great deal of money, huh Jake?

Other white supremacists

The Mississippi White Caps
February, 1963

Of all my experiences with The Philadelphia Coalition and the successful prosecution of Edgar Ray Killen, I am shocked most at how threatened you and the other ultraliberals are by conservatives who are willing to speak out on matters such as the civil rights murders in Neshoba County. Rather than join us at the table, you resort to smear campaigns to discredit.

Surprisingly, the resistance has not come from within Neshoba County or Mississippi. The resistance has come from the liberal left.

James E. Prince III

Email to Ben Greenberg
June 16, 2006

The public must always be made to feel that we are the ones who are doing work and that those who oppose us are foul traitors, scoundrels and blackguards. This is a life and death struggle. We must strive at all times to break and destroy our enemies, while maintaining good relations with the public.

Constitution of the White Knights
of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi

1965

James E. Prince III explains the resistance to progress on race relations in Neshoba County, MS this way:

Surprisingly, the resistance has not come from within Neshoba County or Mississippi. The resistance has come from the liberal left.

As someone whom Prince takes as an example of this so-called "liberal left" resistance, I must beg to differ. I wish I could say, in turn, that the problem boils down to Prince, the Neshoba Democrat (his news outlet), and the Philadelphia Coalition (the organization he co-chairs). If that were it, there would not be much work left to do.

Rather, I beg to differ on the assertion that "the resistance has not come from within Neshoba County or Mississippi." While not limited to them, local and state players have been an ample source of resistance to progress and change.

See, for example, the following letter from the Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center's John Gibson to the editors of the Clarion-Ledger, another prominent Mississippi news outlet, based in Jackson. I have noted that the Ledger's response to recent developments in the Edgar Ray Killen case was far superior to that of Prince's Neshoba Democrat. Still, the Ledger did not print Gibson's letter, nor has it publicly pressed Mississippi's Attorney General Jim Hood and Neshoba County's Distric Attorney Mark Duncan on the questions Gibson raises.

From: Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center
To: Ronnie Agnew, Executive Editor, The Clarion-Ledger
Cc: David Hampton, Editorial Director, The Clarion-Ledger
Jerry Mitchell, The Clarion-Ledger
Date: March 20, 2006
Subject: Neshoba murders: Present all evidence to grand jury

Letter to the editor

It is interesting to note that your newspaper's editorial on the Till case states that "the FBI report should be presented to a local grand jury and, of course, acted upon if there is new information that could result in indictments. More important, the FBI report should be made public to answer any remaining questions." This is appropriate albeit long overdue.

The same is true for the Neshoba murders case. Had the District Attorney and Attorney General presented all important evidence to the local grand jury, perhaps there would have been several more indictments rather than only the indictment of Edgar Killen. The grand jury heard evidence as presented by DA Mark Duncan and AG Jim Hood for only one day or less in January 2005. The transcript of the 1967 federal trial for conspiracy to deny civil rights related to the murders is 3,000 pages long. That trial resulted in the conviction of four men who are still living: Jimmy Arledge, Sam Bowers, Billy Wayne Posey, and Jimmy Snowden. Others still living should have been convicted. It seems that a local grand jury would have readily indicted more people in 2005, if the grand jury had been presented the available evidence.

Why wasn't that evidence presented to the Neshoba grand jury in 2005?

Why isn't that evidence presented now to a grand jury?

Why isn't your newspaper calling for that evidence to be presented to a local grand jury?

Why was only Killen prosecuted?

John Gibson
Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center

--------------------------------------------------------

Clarion Ledger, March 20, 2006

Till case Report could begin final resolution

The FBI reportedly has finished its investigation of the Emmett Till case and has turned over its final report to District Attorney Joyce Chiles of Greenville for local action.

It has been more than 50 years since the 14-year-old Till was kidnapped, beaten, shot and thrown into the Tallahatchie River after the young black man was accused of whistling at a white woman. Roy Bryant, the husband of the woman, and his half-brother J.W. Milam, both now deceased, were accused of the crime, but acquitted by an all-white jury. They later admitted it.

The case was reopened in 2004. The FBI says the statute of limitations for federal civil rights laws has expired, but the state could pursue charges.

Despite the difficulty of prosecuting the old case, the FBI report should be presented to a local grand jury and, of course, acted upon if there is new information that could result in indictments. More important, the FBI report should be made public to answer any remaining questions.

The Emmett Till case is one of the most horrendous of the era. This latest effort to bring some justice has been worth it. It now should be left to Mississippi citizens to speak to the evidence.

The email, below, is the last communication I have received to date from James E Prince III concerning his demands that I remove comments posted here by one of my readers. The back story is in the post immediately preceding this one.

From: James E. Prince III <jprince at neshobademocrat dot com>

To: Benjamin Greenberg <minorjive at gmail dot com>

Date: Jun 16, 2006 9:56 AM

Subject: Re: FalseAndDefamatory

Mr. Greenberg:

The 5th Circuit is so far upholding the rights of bloggers like you to defame and slander, I am advised, although that does not prevent one from attempting to set new legal precedent. So at least for now you win on that count. But still, you are knowingly publishing false and defamatory statements, contradicting your own pledge on your website.

Is this the new liberalism, to knowingly harm another human being for sheer entertainment and attention?

I have in good faith asked you to remove statements by “Suzy Sharino” that are false and defamatory and clearly a very personal attack by a former disgruntled employee posing as a woman. No such person has ever worked for me nor do I know “her.”

Of all my experiences with The Philadelphia Coalition and the successful prosecution of Edgar Ray Killen, I am shocked most at how threatened you and the other ultraliberals are by conservatives who are willing to speak out on matters such as the civil rights murders in Neshoba County. Rather than join us at the table, you resort to smear campaigns to discredit.

Surprisingly, the resistance has not come from within Neshoba County or Mississippi. The resistance has come from the liberal left. (That’s the book in me.)

Even the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists have not stooped to the level that you have with personal attacks. Comment all you want on my written record and the facts. But let’s not resort to personal attacks.

From the outset what motivated me most in organizing the Coalition was justice along with peace and reconciliation that I have come to realize flows only from a regenerated heart. People like you make reconciliation difficult to achieve with your divisiveness and petty blog practices that serve no useful purpose other than to tear down. But in a Google age, you rule.

You are committing murder with the tongue and are no better than the band of thugs who took the lives of Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney.

You are a disgrace to your father’s name.

Sincerely,

Jim Prince

--

James E. Prince III

Editor and Publisher

The Neshoba Democrat

P.O. Box 30

Philadelphia, MS 39350

601-656-4000

FAX 601-656-6379

jprince at neshobademocrat dot com

Early last month I posted an exchange of emails between myself and James E. Prince III, editor and publisher of the Neshoba Democrat and co-chair of the Philadelphia Coalition.

Last February, a person who identifies herself as Suzy Sharino, and who claims to be a former reporter for Prince, left a comment on HungryBlues, which enraged Mr. Prince. Sharino's comment was made in response to this post. There and elsewhere (more), I am critical of Prince and the Philadelphia Coalition, which has charged itself with "establishing a perpetual structure that will foster racial harmony and reconciliation" in Neshoba County, MS.

Prince claimed that Sharino's comments are false and defamatory. For that reason, Prince demanded that I remove them from my blog. Prince was unclear in those initial emails, which specific statements by Sharino were false and defamatory; instead, he insisted I remove the entirety of Sharino's comment and made vague threats about contacting his lawyer.

In my last email message to Prince, I explained that neither bloggers nor their ISPs are liable for comments left by third parties, like Suzy Sharino. I concluded by saying:

If you have a specific request to make of me, please make it with the appropriate rationale, so I can consider it. Be advised, however, that since the statements that you mention were made be [sic] a third party, retractions are purely a matter of my discretion. Your threats have no sway with me. You are of course welcome to make a comment on my blog to rebut any of Suzy Sharino's statements.

That was on June 4 in the afternoon. That evening, Prince wrote to me again, making specific denials by asserting that:

Among other things, my grandfather was never in the Citizens Counsel, I certainly didn’t embezzle funds from the Coalition and give them to Haley Barbour and I have never sexually harassed an employee.

Prince also denied that anyone named Suzy Sharino ever worked for him. He made an insinuation about Sharino's real identity and then amplified his previous legal threats:

You may smugly hide hide behind the “third party” assertion but it’s my reputation and I believe that I will ultimately prevail in having this post removed if we have to go all the way to the United States Supreme Court.

I can’t print statements in my newspapers that are knowingly false without consequences. I would not mind making a point with someone as arrogant as you and who clearly possesses such a reckless disregard for the truth. The First Amendment is not a license to mount a slanderous attack on anyone as you have allowed.

I did not respond to this, but on on June 5, Prince sent me two separate email messages that included what he believed to be evidence that he did not sexually harass a former employee, as Sharino had claimed. I did not consider Prince's evidence to be conclusive. To avoid acting or speaking impulsively, however, I took no further action and did not respond to Prince.

Having heard nothing further from me, Prince wrote to me again on June 16, saying that he is backing down from his legal threats for now. He then launched into a vicious attack, saying, among other things that I am "no better than the band of thugs who took the lives of Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney."

I did not want to respond to Prince in kind, so again I remained silent.

I have at this point decided on two courses of action.

1. The one allegation by Suzy Sharino that Prince addressed substantively was that Prince sexually harassed a former employee. Therefore, as a courtesy, I am deleting that portion of Suzy Sharino's comment.
2. I am publishing in its entirety Prince's last message to me. I believe it will say more than I ever can about the character of James E. Prince III.

Killen will stay in jail
By Jerry Mitchelll
Clarion Ledger

PHILADELPHIA — Circuit
Judge Marcus Gordon concluded today that Edgar Ray Killen should remain
in prison while he appeals his conviction for organizing the Klansmen
who killed James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner on June
21, 1964.

“I’m not sure I have the authority”
to grant an appeal bond, Gordon said at a hearing here Friday on
Killen’s request to get out of jail. He noted that the state Supreme
Court had rejected on a technicality the appeal of his decision to
rescind an earlier appeal bond and that Killen’s lawyers had not
refiled an appeal.

But Gordon added, even if he had the authority, there is “no evidence presented today” that would compel him to release Killen.

It is a sad irony to have to keep advocating for the right thing to happen in just this very small corner of the vast map of injustices in Mississippi. Still I am glad Killen will continue to do a little more of the time he deserves. He will not live long enough to adequately suffer appropriate consequences for his actions.

A year ago, on June 21, 2005, at the Neshoba County Courthouse, in Philadelphia, MS, former Klansman Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of manslaughter in the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman.

According to James E. Prince III, editor and publisher of the Neshoba Democrat, the Killen conviction announced "a new dawn in Mississippi, one in which the chains of cynicism and racism have been broken and we are free, free at last, thank God Almighty we are free at last!"

A year later, on July 1, 2006, a statue of a Confederate soldier, a monument to racism and slavery, was returned to the Neshoba County Courthouse lawn.

The monument was damaged in a storm in 1990, but the Neshoba County Monument Restoration Committee raised $13,500 necessary to restore the monument, first placed on the courthouse lawn in 1912.

Last year, following the Killen conviction, Stanley Dearman, past editor of the Neshoba Democrat and current member of the Philadelphia Coalition, stated, "There's some sort of cosmic justice working somewhere."

This year, Dearman was listed as one of the members of the Neshoba County Monument Restoration Committee. Did he help raise the $13,500 to restore the Confederate soldier to its place in front of the courthouse where Killen was convicted of manslaughter (but not murder)?

Tomorrow, Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen's attorneys will argue yet again for an appeal bond, based on Killen's deteriorating health. If they are successful, Killen may be able to spend the rest of his days yet again a free man.

Today, in a column in Jackson, Mississippi's Clarion Ledger, Gary Pettus said that if Killen is released it will be "a final victory for Mississippi's dark side."

Yesterday, the Neshoba Democrat, which is based in Philadelphia, MS, published an an article by Debbie Burt Myers, mostly rehearsing the arguments of Killen's defense. The article does not quote anyone stating what would be wrong with releasing Killen. The Neshoba Democrat has not, to my knowledge, published any coluumn or editorial demanding justice regarding tomorrow's appeal by Killen's lawyers.

The Neshoba Democrat is prominently linked at the bottom of the Philadelphia Coalition's website. James E. Prince III, editor and publisher of the Neshoba Democrat, is also co-chair of the Philadelphia Coalition, a multi-racial organization, which states its mission is "to seek the truth, to insure justice for all, and to nurture reconciliation."

Yesterday's edition Neshoba Democrat also included an article by David Sanders putting "in context" Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign speech at the Neshoba County Fair, in which Reagan said,

I believe in states' rights. I believe that we've distorted the balance of our government by giving powers that were never intended in the Constitution to the federal establishment.

Sanders' idea of context is to quote opinions that "Nothing about Ronald Reagan ever suggested — nothing in his policies, nothing in his background — that race was made an issue." Earl Ofari Hutchinson would beg to differ, as would I.

A year ago, the Philadelphia Coalition declared, "Others responsible for this crime must be brought to justice as well."

A year later, I received an email from the Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center, asking:

What happened to the Philadelphia Coalition's commitment to bring others to justice in addition to Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen in the Neshoba murders case of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner?

Did a commitment to the pursuit of a full measure of truth and justice on the part of the Philadelphia Coalition ever exist?

In addition to Edgar Ray Killen, there was sufficient evidence to arrest and/or indict on federal charges related to the murders the following men in the 1960s, all still living:

Jimmy Arledge - presently living, Meridian, MS

Sam Bowers - presently living, Central MS Correctional Facility

Olen Burrage - presently living, Philadelphia, MS

James Thomas "Pete" Harris - presently living, Meridian, MS

Tommy Horne - presently living, Meridian, MS

Billy Wayne Posey - presently living, Meridian, MS

Jimmy Snowden - presently living, Hickory, MS

Jimmy Lee Townsend - presently living, Philadelphia, MS

Richard Willis - presently living, Noxapater, MS

by MarshaRose

July 4, 2006

The Star-Spangled Banner" is the national anthem of the United States.  Francis Scott Key, a 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet, wrote the lyrics in 1814 after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland by British ships in Chesapeake Bay during the War of 1812.  It became well known as a patriotic song to the tune of a popular English drinking song, "To Anacreon in Heaven."  It was recognized for official use by the United States Navy (1889) and by the White House 1916), and was made the national anthem by a Congressional resolution on March 3, 1931.

Most of us cannot sing the song and those who can, only sing one verse.

Did you ever wonder why, if the song has four verses, only the first is commonly sung?

Well I’ll tell you.

Growing up in Baltimore, the place is so rich in history.  From America's infancy, democracy's first dream to today's realities . . . Baltimore always figured in the struggle.

My family has lived in Maryland since 1773.  My Great-grandfather, John H. Murphy, Sr., founded a newspaper more than 115 years ago (The Afro-American Newspapers). Moving to Baltimore in 1941, I learned at a very early age about being a Negro (that is what we were in those days).  In the 40's as a student in "segregated" elementary schools I was taught to hate the Jews because “they were Christ killers” and in the middle of war, hate the Germans and the Japanese, while the white man hated me—how absurd!

Every morning in our “separate but equal?” school, we stood to pledge allegiance to the flag – “with liberty and justice for all.” Justice? And oh, the field trips—Historic Baltimore is an abundant resource for teachers—the many many field trips to Fort McHenry—we ran across the ramparts, climbed on the cannons, peeped into the dungeons, imagined the bombs bursting in air—and the flag is still waving.

Oh, how many times had we as children, fought that war—Baltimore being the only school District in America where the children knew about the War of 1812 let alone the Battle of Baltimore?  Each time we held our heads up high and sang,—

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?

Not ever giving one thought to the mockery of the words –

No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

At that same time America was at war using segregated troops—some African-American soldiers were lynched in uniform.  Black newspapers were charged with sedition for “giving aid and comfort to the enemy” for telling the truth about discrimination in the U.S.

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Even as an adult I climbed on the cannon to watch the new flag with it's 50th star being raised at Fort McHenry. As we celebrated the taking of an indigenous peoples’ land—again not seeing the travesty in the words—

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,

Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,

What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,

As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses?

Would you sing these verses of the song?

Finally, People stood up—enough was enough—enough discrimination—enough disparity—enough injustice—enough inequality—enough of an unjust war—the words rang true—

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

“None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.”  (Pearl S. Buck)

Here is the full song – all four verses- for your singing pleasure — [below the fold]

[click to continue…]

By Marsha Rose Joyner

For: Linda

From: MarshaRose

“Child of pure unclouded brow

And dreaming eyes of wonder!

Though time be fleet, and I and thou

Are half a life asunder,

Thy loving smile will surely hail

The love gift of a fairy tale”.

by Lewis Carroll

Time and distance dims memories!

And we all edit our thoughts.

As the White Queen said, “What good is a memory, when it only works in one direction and that is backwards?” In this day of TV and make-believe we have become desensitized and some things are too beautiful to forget.

Thus was Linda!

“A tale begun in other days,

When summer suns were glowing--

A simple chime that served to time

The rhythm of our rowing--

When echoes live in memory yet,

Through envious years should say, “forget”

Linda lived a life of value undefined by property and prosperity.

She lived a life in pursuit of the beauty nestled in everyone and everything – a beauty that is unrecognized by most of us.

Linda led an ever-changing life exploring the unthinkable and the unknowable. Finding the magnificence that is buried deep beneath the surface.

Linda was compelled to give all that she had – a burden not generally appreciated nor understood.

I do not know the time nor the place when she came into my life – but today as I sit with the knowledge that I’ll not hear her happy voice or see her smiling face - I roam from room to room touching the material things that we shared, the precious items she willingly gave away; a set of 19th Century French classic books; a stack of Civil Rights era recordings, [“The Freedom Singers Sing of Freedom Now!” –Mercury Records –1964 – “The Freedom Movement Told by Coretta Scott King” – Caedmon –1969] and many more; her father’s sculptures and of course her love and wisdom.

Linda understood when we give away a small piece of ourselves we get an even greater reward.

And she did give –

I called her “The Modern Day Harriet Tubman”

This Jewish woman with all the gifts that upper middle class in New York can bestow – opened her household to anyone and everyone fleeing the south. Legends of the Civil Rights Movement, the people who most of us only read about and worshiped at their altar, were real to her – because they had stayed at her home.

Linda gave voice to students of other cultures where English was a second language. She opened them to the elements - a world of communications – gave them the courage to read, write and dream in English. She introduced them to poetry in French and Farsi as well as Mozart on the out of tune school piano.

“I have not seen they sunny face,

Nor heard thy silver laughter:

No thought of me shall find a place

In thy life’s hereafter-

Enough that now thou wilt not fail

To listen to my fairy-tale.”

"Love is grabbing hold of the great lion’s mane." The ancient, fiery, Persian poet Hafiz wrote. And she did!

Linda was a warrior: The struggle for equality and justice was never far from the surface. Linda was prepared to suffer for the greater goodness of the world without falling prey to the continued enticement of money and fame. Linda had to go her own way, embolden the weak, bringing light into darkness with a spirit unbroken by the heartbreak and false promises of a world that did not understand.

Playing Beethoven on her beautiful Baby Grand from her living room overlooking West Loch, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii – Linda told me “the ambient noise of your daily routine is about to increase.”

“That is not possible,” I replied.

Bang! Went the piano top. She stood up. The cats scattered.

“Oh yes, they want to build an incinerator in my back yard – we must stop it!”

I walked over to the Lanai doors - It was a clear, bright Sunday. The afternoon sun, moving toward the south facing shores was just beginning to cast shadows. The gentle winds and billowing soft clouds gave an imperceptible repose to the surrounding loch. The sheer beauty of the waves gently licking the shore belied the carnage, which took place here at West Loch- the site of one of the bloodiest events of WWII.

She was right. The noise did increase. We were back on the path again. This time against the modern day Klan dressed in three-piece suits – the corporations and the City & County of Honolulu government and we did stop the incinerator.

“Come; hearken then, ere voice of dread,

With bitter tidings laden,

Shall summon to unwelcome bed

A melancholy maiden!

We are but older children, dear

Who fret to find our bedtime near.”

Last October, Linda, ScottyB, my son, Christopher and I ventured down to Lowndes County. Me, complete with all of my fears and prejudices and Linda armed only with her camera – she so loved everything about the place. The people who'd been involved in the Lowndes County Movement; the overgrown cemetery with its many secrets; the rustic homes that had provided shelter from the rage; the smell of autumn; and the chill in the air. We should all be privy to her view of Lowndes County.

“Without, the frost, the blinding snow,

Thou shalt not heed the waving blast.”
Linda’s father told her “even if you do not practice being Jewish – always say you are Jewish so that Hitler will not have won”.

Linda lived and loved around the world – from New York, France, Iran, London, Hawaii, California, and “The Black Belt” being devoted to justice and equality - I think when her father welcomed her into the hereafter his first words to her “thanks to you – Hitler will not have won.”

“And, through the shadow of a sigh

May tremble through the story

For “happy summer days” gone by,

It shall not touch with breath of bale,

The pleasure of our fairy-tale”

Lewis Carroll

“Through the Looking-Glass

And what Alice found there”

MarshaRose

June 28, 2006

I wish I could show you one of Linda's photographs. I wrote to one of Linda's dearest friends, Marsha Joyner (who publishes on HungryBlues from time to time) that Linda had a genius for seeing the beauty in people. This was evident in many ways, but it was really striking in her photographs.

To what I wrote before, I want to add that Linda Dehnad and Scott B. Smith were married on June 26, 2002 and then moved back to Alabama where Scott B had been active in SNCC and the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in the 1960s. In the 1960s, Linda lived in NYC and was a central cog in SNCC's New York office. At that time she was married to Danny Moses, who was also active in the Civil Rights and anti-war movements. They had a home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan which was a hub for many of the activists who came north from the South. From her first marriage, Linda is survived by three children, Jay, Julia and David.

Some of what I mean by Linda's genius for seeing the beauty in people is in these excerpts from an email she sent me on April 3 of this year.

I heard Taylor Branch talking in Lowndes County yesterday at the "Mother Church" at a book-signing, the best book signing I've ever seen, because all the people there who'd been involved in the Lowndes County Movement got up to talk and told stories and it was warm and tight and it felt historical. . . .

The first woman to introduce herself was Bernice Johnson, age 91, and I was thrilled because I've come across her name in books, and the name "Bernice" always stops me because of Freedom Singer Bernice (Reagon), and finally I see Bernice Johnson in the flesh. She was two rows ahead of me . . . and I crawled up and we shook hands and I told her, not too loud as to upset the meeting cause someone was speaking, I told her how I'd waited a long time to see her and meet her, and when she shook my hand it was like a clear message. I knew for sure that it meant something like "We are sisters, no doubt about that, and I'm as thrilled as you are." Second time I talked with her, was to ask if I could come over her house and take her picture because the lighting in the church made it hard, and her face is so beautiful I want to catch that beauty in a photo. We talked briefly about how I bet she had boys and men running all around her when she was young, and was she as beautiful then as she is now, and she just laughed and grinned and her eyes shone. Her daughter had to write the last two phone number digits cause she had forgotten them, and I also found out that her hearing aid had conked out and I couldn't figure out if it was fixable or her hearing was beyond help. That didn't seem to matter to her or to me. She squeezed my hand several times and it told me that it would be so much more fun to just get up and dance together and relate in some other way than with words. What struck me first was that it was exactly how I felt, and her message was clear and strong. . . .

Now I'm going to check out the pictures I took yesterday and I hope I have one I like of Bernice Johnson. I'll go visit her whether or not I do, and it wouldn't surprise me if we both got up to dance. Or might just sit in our chairs and do our dancing without standing. Lot's of the older women I was sitting with have an easier time walking than I do, but the doctor is going to put something that's not cortisone in my knees at 7:15 a.m. tomorrow and with luck I'll be standing up without groaning which would be good, because these women had all had a hell of a more difficult life than I have, and they have the right to groan before I do. I don't know. Maybe it makes me fit in more easily as we all laugh at each other's expression of pain.

DSCN0184.jpg, originally uploaded by BenTG.

I took this photo of Linda and Scott B when I was with them in Montgomery, AL last summer.

Those were the first words from Scott B. Smith, Jr when he reached me on the phone earlier this afternoon.

He wanted to inform me and all who knew her that Linda Dehnad, his wife, died this morning of undetermined causes at age 69. Linda went to Jackson Hospital in Montgomery, AL last night because she was suffering from severe stomach pain. It happened to be her and Scott B's wedding anniversary. Exteremely frustrated and at her wits end after waiting for more than five hours to have her pain treated and her condition addressed, Linda asked Scott B to take her home around 9:30 PM. Scott B took care of Linda through the night; he fell asleep for a couple of hours at about 4 AM. When he woke up again at about 6 AM, Linda was dead.

Scott B said, "Linda came back to Montgomery with me to work with the people of Lowndes County. Though she was treated badly, she loved Lowndes County. Linda was a warrior. She never stopped trying to work with people. Anything she could do: she was doing it. She was concerned about the children. When she was teaching and was asked to use corporal punishment, Linda said, 'I am not a slave owner. I am a teacher.'"

In her last years, Linda had ongoing pain from fibromyalgia. Lindaremained a gifted writer, teacher and photographer and a committed activist. She taught and mentored many, many people, including me (Ben).

Linda has requested that she be cremated. There will be a memorial service on Sunday, July 2, at the Unity Baptist Church in White Hall, Lowndes, County, AL. Church service begins at 11:00 a.m. Memorial service begins at 12:30 p.m.

Scott B welcomes phone calls, email and postal mail with condolences or memories of Linda. He would also welcome financial assistance to pay for Linda's autopsy. You can reach Scott B by phone at 334-262-7547. His mailing address is 2010 McKinley Avenue, Montogmery, AL 36107. His email address is scottbsmith_jr at yahoo dot com.

UPDATE#1 (6/28): I made a mistake on Scott B's phone number. Area code is 334, not what I had before. The number, above, is now correct.

UPDATE#2 (6/28): There is now a time for the memorial service, added above.

~
Read an interview/conversation with Linda Dehnad and her fellow Civil Rights Movement veterans, Jimmy Rogers and Bruce Hartford.