I was honored to be interviewed by Jerry Mitchell for this article that came out in today’s Clarion Ledger.
A day after the FBI asked for the public’s assistance in solving 43 unpunished killings in Mississippi during the civil rights era, researchers say they know of at least 18 more slayings that haven’t been included.
“There definitely needs to be a bigger list,” said Margaret Burnham, professor at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston.
On Thursday, the FBI highlighted 43 killings between 1955 and 1967 in Mississippi.
Burnham said research has uncovered 11 additional cases. She said one name the FBI released is misspelled – it should be the Rev. J.E. Evasingston, who was killed in 1955 in Tallahatchie.
Ben Greenberg of Boston, a journalist and blogger investigating the Feb. 28, 1964, killing of Clifton Walker, north of Woodville, said he’s run across seven names in his research that don’t appear on the FBI list and weren’t cited by Burnham’s research. “And there might be more,” he said.
Three of those – Lula Mae Anderson, Eli Jackson and Dennis Jones – were found dead in a car in December 1963, not far from Poor House Road, where Walker is believed to have been killed by Klansmen….
Surprisingly, all seven additional names that Greenberg found were either mentioned or referenced in the FBI file itself.
He has obtained a copy of the file of the Walker case, but some of the most important information has been redacted, such as the names of the two suspects recommended for arrest by the FBI, he said.
If the FBI is truly interested in solving these cases, the entire files should be released to the families and the public, he said.
He recalled sharing some of the FBI files with the Walker family – files the family had never seen.
“A full approach to justice involves more than just procedures in the courtroom,” he said. “It also involves as full accounting as possible of the truth in the community where the murders occurred.”
Related Reading
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on February 15, 2009 at 10:57 am
If you are like me, and you struggle to find full throated enthusiasm for any of the Democratic candidates, I want to encourage you vote and to vote for Barack Obama.
In my most cynical moments I fear that there is little difference between Obama and Clinton and that neither will be a progressive President.
I’ve been saying to people that I like Obama best during his speaches, which have inspired and moved me. I often distrust my positive emotional responses to political candidates, but the presidency is, in fact, a symbolic position. In my book, Obama is the candidate who most clearly stands for meaningful political change and national cohesion based democratic and progressive values. We need the President to stand for these things. The devil will most certainly be in the details. Once Obama is in office, it will be up to us to hold him accountable for what he says he stands for and to make sure those details are not forgotten in excitement over the first Black president or in the resumption of business as usual in Washington.
If you are on the fence about Obama or about voting at all, read this email from Fred Berman to the Progressive Democrats of Somerville email list. It helped me.
Maybe Obama isn’t Kucinich, but then Kucinich couldn’t be elected.
Obama is willing to meet the challenge of building the tax base by increasing the amount of Social Security taxes paid by higher income earners; Clinton isn’t.
Obama was unwilling to support the Congressional resolution labeling Iran a threat; Clinton did.
Neither Obama or Clinton are proposing single payer, but Obama’s proposal will move us to single payer more directly, because instead of providing coverage through the commercial insurers (as Clinton proposes to do), Obama proposes the creation of a public insurance alternative.
If you think the soapbox isn’t important, look what George Bush has accomplished at the bully pulpit.
If you think that people around the world will see no difference between Goerge Bush and Barack Obama at the helm, will think that a change in leadership is just four years of more of the same…. you’re wrong. Electing Obama will be the clearest message that the American voting public can send to the world that we’ve woken up and we’re ready to change course.
If you were fooled by Ralph Nader into believing that Gore and Bush were just two sides of the same Demopublican coin, you must by now have seen the error of that thinking, or you are wearing blinders.
If you think that Gore would have invaded Iraq, would have opened Guantanamo, would have supported extraordinary rendition, would have pushed drilling in Anwar, would have fought stronger fuel economy standards, would have sliced funding for housing subsidies, would have cut back funding for substance abuse treatment, would have linked commitment to abstinence to foreign aid and AIDS treatment, would have supported the intrusion of religion in the public arena….. you’re wrong.
And if, after listening to the campaign rhetoric, you think that McCain/Huck/Romney would be no worse than Clinton/Obama then you haven’t been paying attention…
Voting DOES make a difference, even if the election doesn’t bring corporate power to a grinding halt.
It’s NOT worth sitting out the election if you can’t get everything you want in a candidate. Life isn’t about perfection or nothing. It’s about playing the hand you’ve been dealt, and moving on from there.
The future of war and peace, climate change, health coverage, the right to choose, water and air quality, affordable housing, worker health and safety, an unfettered Internet, human rights, public education, and the Supreme Court are all at stake.
Chances are you’re not doing anything so important that you can’t spare 15 minutes to go to the poles, even if Buddha isn’t on the ballot.
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on February 5, 2008 at 2:06 am
Yesterday, I mentioned on Twitter that I gave a presentation at work about using an internal blog for sharing news and announcements.
Before I knew it, non-profit tech consultant Beth Kanter was interviewing me via IM about the presentation and the launch of the internal blog. I gave Beth my slides from my presentation and she put the whole thing together as a blog post called “Blogging Behind the Nonprofit Firewall: The ROI Approach.” If you are interested in the subject of using technology for social change, you should check out the rest of Beth’s blog.
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on January 24, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Desegregation, A Story of Quiescence and Violence
By Mario Marcel Salas
Violence against integration efforts would not end after the Brown v. Board decision, and patterns of hatred and segregation would be revealed in graphic media images in the North. In 1965, a decade after the desegregation of southern schools, school segregation in the North became national news. As a outcome of extreme segregated neighborhoods in the North, racist savagery erupted in Boston. The NAACP in seeking to end educational segregation supported black parents by confronting the Boston School Committee, and racist leader Louise Day Hicks, who stood fast in her claims that Boston’s black public schools were not inferior. Black parents took the Boston school committee to court, and a federal district court judge ruled that the school committee had intently maintained two divided school systems. The outcome that was imposed was that students were to be bused citywide to eradicate segregation. White racists never accepted it and just moved away causing the schools to stay segregated.
To a certain degree African American political power itself, in many southern states, was a continuation of the orchestration and control of the white elite in which “partial” freedom was granted to them as the result of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and later the Civil Rights movement. There were civil rights victories, but the colonial white elite controlled its extent. These racist white systems of control were not plantation based, but was based upon a state colonial matrix that helped them to recapture control of a newly freed African American population. This colonial system has never been destroyed but has morphed with time. It retailored itself to the legal victories and desegregation efforts by controlling the scope of change, while protecting white elitist positions of power. This is why many political scientists maintain that racism is permanent.
Many public schools across the United States were never truly integrated and San Antonio perhaps best describes the process by which many schools were desegregated. When Brown vs. Board became law, in 1954 and 1955, the white racist power elite, along with their economic and political allies, sought ways to appease desegregation efforts in many areas of the South. The legal, political, and social struggle by anti-integration activists blunted the Brown decision in a number of ways. Racist southern school boards, supported by their allies in state governments, brought suits challenging the Brown judgment, thereby creating escape routes to get around the intent of the decision. In many areas around the country social trickery, intimidation, and violence were used to uphold segregation or blunt the intent of the Brown decision.
Topeka, Kansas became the legal battleground on which school segregation was fought. The 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board declared that racist segregation of public schools was unequal and thereupon unconstitutional. The Supreme Court decision in Brown v. the Board brought much gravity to the racial model and the structure of U.S. society. Though the Brown decision did not begin the historic African American civil rights movement it provided the political fire and legal impetus for social action. While The Brown decision did not end segregation, it provided a legal foundation by which social action could be launched. However, the court decision raised questions as to how much authority it had over entrenched institutional and traditional racism that was embedded into the social fabric of society in a racial matrix that appears to have permanence in U.S. society.
The paternal system of white dominance, as codified in law, was overturned as the constitutional policies established by the Plessy v. Ferguson decision that validated the doctrine of “separate but equal” were ruled illegal. Interestingly, the racist “one drop rule” was also codified in the Plessy decision, as Homer Plessy was said to be only “one-eighth black.” Jim Crow laws reinforced this pyramidal structure of white racism throughout the South and established separate facilities for Blacks and Whites in every area of social life. Though the South had lost the war segregationist forces were able to “redeem” southern values through segregation and the perpetuation of the myth of “black racial inferiority.” The Plessy decision was a achievement for the “Redeemers movement,” and those who wanted to “save the South” from Reconstruction and the perceived threat of black rule.
For many years the Robert E. Lee model of separate educational institutions that focused on a curriculum of domestic skills instruction and manual labor was the societal norm of admittance into white society for freed slaves and their ancestors. This is why it took so long to bring black schools and colleges up to par academically. By choosing these pathways, racist paternalistic models of control could assign the boundaries by which the descendents of Africans could interact within a white racist society. Thus, the promises of emancipation and Reconstruction were sidestepped and structured to guarantee white racist rule in the United States. Booker T. Washington’s ideas became the affirmed model for white racist doctrines of paternalism. Consequently, African American movements for social equality fought within the boundaries set by racial models and codified by the Plessy decision. African Americans fought for equal pay for teachers, for equal school facilities, for equal libraries, and for equality on the same footing as whites beyond the racist vocational models prescribed for blacks. The Plessy decision legally defined the boundaries of these struggles, but did not completely control it as African Americans challenged the law and the legal boundaries in many cases.
~
Mario Marcel Salas was born in San Antonio, TX in 1949. He joined the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee soon after high school, and became a civil rights worker for over 30 years. He was the leader of the last SNCC-Black Panther chapter in the United States in 1976. Now a full time professor at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio teaching American and State government, Mr. Salas writes for three African American Newspapers in Texas and speaks across the country at various colleges and universities.
§ Posted by Mario Salas on November 12, 2007 at 11:55 am
You can help raise money for the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership by sponsoring my good friend Jesse on his run in the Dublin Marathon.
Jesse Edsell-Vetter of Somerville will run the 26-mile Dublin Marathon Monday, Oct. 29, and has pledged to raise $4,000 to support Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership’s efforts to end homelessness.
Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership, a local nonprofit agency, is the state’s largest regional provider of rental assistance and housing supports, serving more than 15,000 homeless, elderly, disabled, and low- and moderate-income residents of greater Boston.
Edsell-Vetter is a three-year employee at MBHP and works as a property owner liaison in the Inspections Department.
“I’ve been homeless,” said Edsell-Vetter. “I know what that’s like, and what’s needed beyond having a place to live to break that cycle. I’m running to help others the way someone helped me.”
He is no stranger to marathons. He ran the Boston Marathon twice as part of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute team, and regularly participates in races of all lengths. The fact that he is able to run at all is something of a miracle.
“I was walking with a cane four years ago,” he said. After 14 knee surgeries, his surgeon told him that he was cured. “He said, ‘Do anything you want – go run a marathon.’ I don’t think he expected me to actually do it, but I wanted to see how far I could push myself.”
When I first met Jesse, he was walking with the cane. On the bad days, short distances were a big challenge. It is so inspiring to see him doing this now. Please help if you can.
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on September 20, 2007 at 1:31 am
J was out biking in Jamaica Plain, MA (part of Boston) on September 11:
I joined The Club. I took a header on South Street, the tire of my bicycle caught in the groove of the unused trolley track.
I tried to keep control of the bike, and managed to hang on to the handlebars until I had planted the bike sideways, skidding another good ten feet or so. I landed on my right side, bruising my right knee, right hip, and right elbow. I also have some hard to describe muscular pain under my right wing, so my shoulder is somehow involved as well. In addition, I have massive bruising in the knuckles of my left hand – I think that the handlebar came smashing down across my hand. I managed to ice it down pretty quickly, but it swelled a nasty amount nevertheless. There’s a bruise in my left instep – I think the pedal poked me there pretty hard.
Conditions were not good at the time: it was dusk, and it had rained earlier, so the pavement was slick. The rails were slicker than the pavement, of course, and I think it was my rear tire that got caught in the groove….
I knew I had to at least get between the right rail and the left rail in order to be in place to make the turn. There were no cars behind me or in front of me for about a block, so I decided I had the time to make an attempt. I recall seeing my front wheel skidding sideways left and right before I went into my slide – this is how I’ve deduced that it was my rear wheel that got caught.
I lost all traction, veeered from side to side, went over to my right and ended up sliding into the oncoming traffic lane, which would have been a very hazardous issue if there had been oncoming traffic. As it was, there was a car approaching about a block away when I went in to my slide, and the woman driving it stopped well before me and asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital. I got up off the pavement and quickly dragged my bike to the sidewalk, mentally checking my limbs and trying to determine if anything was broken. Two other passers-by were asking me if I was alright, and I asked for a moment to keep checking myself out. My left hand was beginning to swell, and felt pretty useless….
I’m thankful I’m alive.
Me, too, J. I’m thankful you are, too. I ride to work most days and can totally imagine it. And yeah, I’m with you. Say no to bringing back the trolley.
The tracks need to be paved over. End of story. They’re a danger to cyclists, they’re contributing to the deterioration of the pavement on South and Centre Streets, and the city has been promising to do something about it but sitting on their duffs for too long….
I was lucky. I hope nobody else gets seriously hurt.
This public service announcement was brought to you by Cyclists for Non-Lethal Roads.
§ Posted by Benjamin T. Greenberg on September 20, 2007 at 12:53 am
BLOG POSTS
COMMENTS
PODCASTS