Hungry Blues

Vimeo poster Ajamu Dillahunt writes:

Southern African American community resists corporate organized rightwing protestors. Above the shouts the community tells its story and why they need health care for all to overcome historic health disparities.

(h/t Jared Storey)

Though I did not know his name until today, Heinz Edelman has been one of my artistic heroes for decades. He was the illustrator and designer who made the visual landscape of the animated Beatles film Yellow Submarine. Heinz Edelman has died at age 75.

The movie’s mod-psychedelic look, which typifies the era’s spirited graphic art, emerged around the same time as the related psychedelic work of Terry Gilliam, Alan Aldridge and Victor Moscoso, but it has its own whimsical aesthetic. The bulbous Blue Meanies, which personify an evil mood as actual villains, pursue the innocent, well-coifed cartoon Beatles across an ever-shifting milieu of mysterious seas and holes that can be magically picked up and moved. The yellow submarine itself stops in an ocean of pulsating watches, representing time, to light a cigar for a friendly sea monster.

Notably, the designs prefigured contemporary music videos, especially in their use of dancing typography. Letters spelling out the lyrics “Love is all you need” morph into a strobing neon wallpaper pattern.

“He became famous because of his work on ‘Yellow Submarine,’ ” said the graphic designer Milton Glaser, a friend. “But that celebrity actually obscured his real talent and imagination.”

A highly successful advertising and editorial illustrator in Germany, England and the Netherlands, Mr. Edelmann was known for combining Impressionist and Expressionist sensibilities leavened with wit, humor and irony. He developed a distinct graphic style that influenced many artists in Europe and the United States. He was given a Masters Series exhibition at the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2005.

In the 1960s he was experimenting with a stylized, soothingly fluid, neo-Art Nouveau manner. That caught the eye of Al Brodax, producer of a successful animated Beatles television cartoon series for children. He chose Mr. Edelmann to be the chief designer of his first feature-length animated film, “Yellow Submarine,” built around a 1966 song of the same name, credited to John Lennon and Paul McCartney, with lead vocals by Ringo Starr.

It was not easy to get initial approval for “Yellow Submarine.” The Beatles were unenthusiastic about Mr. Brodax’s more conventional-looking cartoon series (not done by Mr. Edelmann), Newsweek reported in 1968; their manager, Brian Epstein, was a stumbling block as well.

The tide turned, Newsweek said, during a stroll through the Tate Gallery in London, where Mr. Brodax and Mr. Epstein happened upon J. M. W. Turner’s “Peace — Burial at Sea” and marveled at that painting’s intense colors.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we could get those colors to move?” Mr. Brodax asked.

Mr. Epstein replied, “We would need great art.”

Mr. Edelmann was the perfect artist, Mr. Epstein finally agreed, and “Yellow Submarine” had some of the Turner’s shimmering quality.

It was a career-defining work, “designed, for the most part beautifully,” Renata Adler wrote in The New York Times in 1968, “in styles ranging through Steinberg, Arshile Gorky, Bob Godfrey (of the short film ‘The Do It Yourself Cartoon Kit’), the Sgt. Pepper album cover, and — mainly, really — the spirit and conventions of the Sunday comic strip.”

Despite the huge influence of “Yellow Submarine” on the culture of the time, Mr. Edelmann admitted that he could never quite connect with the 1960s aesthetic. Once the film was complete, he altered his approach to avoid being pigeonholed as a psychedelic artist, becoming considerably less ethereal and decorative and turning to what was on the surface his darker side, though it was never really morose but rather ironic.

I am grateful to Mr. Edelman for his part in the creation of this imaginative world that has long been one of my favorite places to visit. Thank you, Heinz Edelman. Rest in peace.

Glad I checked my RSS feeds tonight and tuned into the Jack & Jill Politics coverage of the Valley Swim Club incident. I found Cheryl Contee's post with the video above ("Hi, my name is Elon James White and I'm broadcasting from 1952..."), and I found the ColorOfChange.org call for letters asking Attorney General Eric Holder to

investigate whether the Valley Club violated federal civil rights laws when it kicked out a group of children from the Creative Steps Day Camp and canceled the camp's contract.

Please sign the ColorOfChange.org petition to Attorney General Holder now. You can also send a letter to the Valley Swim club via the same petition page at Color of Change.

To recap, the Valley Swim Club, a private swim club that advertises open membership, accepted over $1900 from the Creative Steps Day Camp so their campers could have a place to go swimming this summer.

"When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool," Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. "The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately."

The next day the club told the camp director that the camp's membership was being suspended and their money would be refunded.

One of the most astounding of many astounding moments in this story was the public statement from John Duesler, president of the Valley Swim Club, which said:

"There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club."

As the ColorOfChange.org letter to Holder notes, canceling the Creative Steps Day Camp's contract

after learning that the children at the camp were largely African-American and Latino [is] a possible violation of section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

I was pleased to learn via a commenter at Jack & Jill Politics, named Miranda, that while we are waiting for appropriate response from the Department of Justice, a local Philadelphia college has come forward to offer the Creative Steps kids space in its pool.

[T]he staff at Girard College, a private Philadelphia boarding school for children who live in low-income and single parent homes, stepped in and offered their pool.

"We had to help," said Girard College director of Admissions Tamara Leclair. "Every child deserves an incredible summer camp experience."

The school already serves 500 campers of its own, but felt they could squeeze in 65 more – especially since the pool is vacant on the day the Creative Steps had originally planned to swim at Valley Swim Club.

"I'm so excited," camp director Alethea Wright exclaimed. There are still a few logistical nuisances -- like insurance -- the organizations have to work out, but it seems the campers will not stay dry for long.

NBC Philadelphia also reports that US Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) will investigate the discrimination claim.

"The allegations against the swim club as they are reported are extremely disturbing," Specter said in a statement. "I am reaching out to the parties involved to ascertain the facts. Racial discrimination has no place in America today."

If you haven't already headed over to ColorOfChange.org, please go now and ask Attorney General Holder to investigate possible violations of federal civil rights laws by the Valley Swim Club.

Oh, lastly, kudos to the owners of Gumdrops & Sprinkles in Wayne, PA who gave the Creative Steps kids a free day of candy and ice cream making while they are waiting for all the the details with Girard College to be worked out. If you want to show Gumdrops & Sprinkles some love for showing the Creative Steps kids some love, click on the store photo and leave Gumdrops & Sprinkles a comment on their Yelp page.

Pool Boots Kids Who Might "Change the Complexion" | NBC Philadelphia.

I had a knot in my stomach and could not sleep last night after watching those three white punks go after Jay Phillips. But telling over 60 kids that they are not welcome at a swimming pool that they have paid to use is a whole other level of cruelty—especially when the president of the swim club reportedly gave as reason that

[t]here was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club.

The kids don't need to know their history to be hurt by this, but it is also the case that they all have parents and grandparents who were alive when Blacks were kept out of white swimming areas. I hope to hear that the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice is investigating this incident.

(h/t the smart tart)

I came across this chilling report via Kulpreet on Twitter:

The original YouTube video of the racist scumbags attacking the Black man, Jay Phillips, is here.

I am glad to find the CBC reporting that the attackers have been charged:

Three men have now been charged with assault in an attack on Vancouver Island that appears to have been racially motivated.

The accused, aged 19 to 25, were arrested after Jay Phillips, 38, was punched and kicked in the parking lot of a Courtenay fast-food restaurant on Friday. The men have been released and are scheduled to appear in court at the end of August....

RCMP Const. Tammy Douglas said there are indications the attack was racially motivated and the Mounties have asked their hate crime team to look into it.

It is, however, being treated as an isolated incident and will not be labelled a hate crime until all the evidence is in.

"We don't believe these people are white supremacists or have those sorts of affiliations," RCMP Insp. Tom Gray told reporters on Tuesday.

The  answer to Kulpreet is more people have feelings of racist hate than we'd like to believe. Jay Phillips says the attack on him was not an isolated incident.

In an interview on Tuesday, Phillips told CBC News the attack was not an isolated incident.

He said that he and other minorities in this town are often yelled at and pushed around — and they're tired of it.

We have yet to face and address our past and our past lives strongly in the present.

People using a particular racial epithet are "calling me a slave," Phillips said.

"I'm nobody's slave. That's a hate crime to me and I want these guys prosecuted to the maximum."

The men's intent was obvious, Phillips said. Beside the racial epithets, they threatened him and his family with violence.

"Get the hell out of town, we're going to come back and lynch you," Phillips recalled the men screaming. "I remember the word 'lynch' quite a bit — 'we're going to lynch you and your whole family.'"

It is fortunate that Phillips was able to defend himself. I admire his courage and his coming forward to speak publicly about the incident in solidarity with other racial minorities in his community.

Phillips suffered cuts and bruised ribs when the trio got him to the ground.

But his background in mixed martial arts made him more than a match for his attackers.

Phillips said he hoped news of the attack would benefit others in the community.

"I don't want this to happen to anybody — anybody," Phillips said.

"There's a lot of native people here, a lot of Asian people here. Nobody should have to go through this."

45th Annual Mississippi Civil Rights Martyrs Memorial Service & Conference March for Justice in Philadelphia, MS, June 21, 2009. Marchers carry crosses with names of Civil Rights Era murder victims. (Brian Livingston/Meridian Star)

July 4, 1964 was the last time Julia Dobbins saw her brother, JoEd Edwards. Eight days later, he went missing. Rumors were that the Klan took away the 21-year-old Black man and murdered him. His mother died in 1990 never having learned what truly happened to her son.

July 4, 1964 was the thirteenth day James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were missing. One month later, on August 4, 1964, the three civil rights workers' bodies were found buried in an earthen dam on the property of a wealthy local businessman, Olen Burrage.

July 4, 1964 was the sixty-third day Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, two 19-year-old Black men, were missing. Eight days later, on July 12, partial remains of Charles Moore were found in the Mississippi River, near Vicksburg, MS and eastern Louisiana. The following day, partial remains of Henry Dee were also found in the river.

July 4, 1964 was the 127th day since fourteen-year-old Catherine Walker ran past the adults at the crime scene on Poor House Road in Woodville, MS to her father Clifton Walker's car. Forever etched in her memory are the shattered windows, bullet holes in the door and her father's blood still visible on the seat and car floor. Catherine's mother Ruby died in 1992 never knowing who murdered her thirty-seven-year-old husband.

In 2005, after forty-one years, Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen, was convicted on three counts of manslaughter for his part in the murders of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner. In June 2007, after forty-three years, James Ford Seale was convicted on federal kidnapping charges for his part in the murders of Dee and Moore. No one has ever been charged with the murders of JoEd Edwards and Clifton Walker.

Numerous others were involved both in the Chaney, Schwerner Goodman and Dee-Moore murders. By 2007, all other known suspects in the Dee-Moore murders were dead, save one, named Charles Marcus Edwards, who testified against and helped convict James Ford Seale.  In 2005 at least nine people were living who were arrested and/or indicted in the 1960s in connection with the murders of civil rights workers. Two weeks ago, just following the forty-fifth anniversary of the Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman murders, Jerry Mitchell reported that more might be prosecuted.

"This case is being actively reviewed by the Civil Rights Division and the FBI," Alejandro Miyar, a spokesman for the division, told The Clarion-Ledger. "Our goal in investigating this case is to lend our assistance to authorities in Mississippi so that they may make a determination whether sufficient evidence exists for a state prosecution."

Five suspects are still alive in the case, including reputed Klansman Billy Wayne Posey, who told Mississippi investigators there were "a lot of persons involved in the murders that did not go to jail."

In February 2007, the FBI announced that it had approximately 100 Civil Rights Era cold cases that it was looking into. Each case seems inevitably to lead to others, including many not on the official lists. When, for example, Canadian documentary filmmaker David Ridgen set out to produce a film about the  murders of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, he soon found himself investigating the murders of Charles Moore and Henry Dee.

As I watched Summer in Mississippi [a 1965 CBC documentary], sequences flew by of the hundreds of frantic searchers from the US National Guard, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and local authorities who'd been ordered to scour the entire state and surroundings for the missing civil rights workers, beating bushes, flying helicopters, dragging swamps and rivers. The whole country was on edge. Would their bodies be found?

Then, a curious silence descends in the 1964 documentary when cigar-smoking white men in shirt-sleeves fish decomposing body parts out of the Mississippi River with sticks and bare hands. We see ribs and a femur, knotted loops of wire or twine, and a transparent, body-size bag being emptied out of the fetid water. The lazy, ever-present Southern droning of katydids is silenced by the penetrating voice of the late, great CBC narrator John Drainie: "It was the wrong body. The discovery of a Negro male was noted and forgotten. The search was not for him. The search was for two white boys and their Negro friend."

I stopped the film and wrote down five words and a question, "wrong body", "Negro male", "forgotten", and then simply, "who?"

Ridgen located Charles Moore's brother, Thomas, who agreed to work with Ridgen and be the main subject in Ridgen's documentary film about their investigation of the murders of Henry Dee and Charles Moore. Ridgen and Moore's work together led to the conviction of James Ford Seale. Their work also led to the other living conspirator in the murder, Charles Marcus Edwards, making an unprompted public apology in the courtroom to the families of Henry Dee and Charles Moore. Edwards apologized again in private, and both Thomas Moore and Henry Dee's sister, Thelma Collins, accepted the apology.

When I first met Thomas Moore and David Ridgen in March 2007, they mentioned another murder they had learned about. During their investigation, they were told by a retired Natchez police chief that there was another murder from 1964 in Southwest Mississippi that could be solved: the murder of a Black man named Clifton Walker.

A few months later, I was in Woodville to meet with a local NAACP official about another case I was researching. As I walked back to my rental car following the interview, a Black woman in her early 70s approached me.

"You a reporter?" she asked.

She wanted to tell me about Clifton Walker and about a number of other murders of Blacks said to have taken place in her tiny southwest Mississippi town.

The following day, by odd coincidence, I got a hold of Mississippi Highway and Safety Patrol documents on the Walker murder. A few months later, a Freedom of Information Act request yielded FBI documents on the case. In the Clifton Walker FBI file, there is passing mention of seven more murder victims. None of these seven names are on the current FBI lists of victims.

Other reporters who investigate Civil Rights Era cold cases have similar experiences.

Jerry Mitchell, who pioneered investigative journalism on this subject over twenty years ago, said in an email:

Working on an unpunished killing from the civil rights era inevitably leads to the discovery of more. I remember while working on the James Ford Seale case, I ran across a story in microfilm that showed that Seale had actually killed yet another African American, running over the elderly man in his truck in 1966, just a day after the man had voted for the first time. Seale was never prosecuted.

In 2007, Stanley Nelson, editor of the Concordia Sentinel, in Ferriday, LA, took a look at the FBI's list of cold cases and was surprised to find a Black victim from Ferriday, named Frank Morris. In December of 1964, Morris' shoe shop was burned, and he was forced inside of it by the arsonists.

Four days later, Morris took his last breath in Room 101 at the Concordia Parish Hospital. He suffered a long, agonizing death with third degree burns over 100 percent of his body. A Baptist minister said he never saw a man so severely burned as Morris, who was blinded by the flames.

Nelson's reporting has helped bring about the recent announcement that the case may go before the Concordia Parish Grand Jury. Nelson hadn't looked into cold cases from the 50s and 60s before the Morris murder caught his attention, but inevitably others emerged. In an email to me, Nelson explained how he learned about JoEd Edwards.

I first heard about JoeEd in the lone article about the Frank Morris case written by John Herbers for the New York Times in December 1964. I called Herbers and he could vaguely remember mentioning JoeEd's name in the story but did remember that a porter from a Vidalia motel had been missing a few months prior to the Morris arson. I started asking around in the black community and found a number of people familiar with JoeEd's case. And the story took off from there and continues to take me in new directions---even this week.

A cousin of JoEd Edwards, Carl Ray Thompson, recalled that he and three friends were were picked up by Concordia Parish Sheriff Frank DeLaughter and taken to the Ferriday jail.

Thompson said DeLaughter beat his three companions with a white fire hose throughout the night. Thompson said the young men screamed so loudly that their voices reminded him of "pigs squealing."

Afterward, according to Thompson, DeLaughter told him and his friends to keep quiet about what happened or they "could all turn up missing like Joe-Ed." Nelson has also been told by a former FBI agent that an informant claimed Edwards was subsequently skinned alive in a secret Ku Klux Klan torture chamber.

There is much, much more of this, of course, and from other years and in other states. In 2005, for example, John Fleming, editor at large of the Anniston Star, discovered that James Bonard Fowler, the Alabama State Trooper who allegedly shot Jimmie Lee Jackson on February 18, 1965, is still alive and well and unrepentant. Jimmie Lee Jackson was the Black protester in Marion, Alabama whose murder sparked the Selma to Montgomery March. Several days after he was shot and beaten, Jackson died of an infection in the Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma. Fleming interviewed Fowler, who, in 2005, admitted to the shooting. Fowler claimed self-defense and was confident he would not be prosecuted. In 2007, however, Fowler was indicted on state murder charges; the trial is currently on hold over procedural issues.

Fleming has recently uncovered new information about the racial murder of Willie Brewster in Anniston, AL and is working on many of the Alabama and Georgia cases on the FBI's list; he has also heard of many others that have not been cataloged. Fleming cited two cases he has not yet looked into deeply, in an email to me:

a case in Perry County [where Jimmie Lee Jackson was killed] of a shopkeeper who shot a teenager in the back for back talking him and a Green County case of a man who had his tongue cut out and [was] left to die.

Fleming also learned of at least one other incident involving Fowler:

I discovered that he had shot another man in 1966, a drunk driver who he got into a fight with after he was arrested. It was ruled self defense at the time.

Nelson said to me:

There's no question that one case leads to another. Individuals who had some information on JoeEd told me about cases of black men who were beaten. This led to some other arsons of black and white businesses and homes and so on. It's hard to keep count, but the magnitude of these crimes is overwhelming and the leads never seem to end.

At one of the 45th anniversary memorials to Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner two weeks ago, Michael Schwerner's widow, Rita Schwerner Bender, said:

she hopes federal authorities will lend their assistance not only to [the Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman] case but also to any other case where enough evidence exists to pursue prosecution. "The clock is ticking," she said. "Time is running out."

***

Correction

I erroneously stated that "Nelson has reconstructed what were likely Edwards’ last hours—being brutally beaten with a firehose, allegedly by then Concordia Parish Sheriff Frank DeLaughter, inside the Ferriday jail." That sentence has been replaced with the current passage, above, detailing allegations of Carl Ray Thompson concerning DeLaughter.

Jerry Mitchell reports that US District Judge Tom Lee will allow a lawsuit to go forward that could break new ground on holding Mississippi government accountable for the murders of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore. The lawsuit has been filed against Franklin County, MS, by Moore's brother Thomas and Dee's sister Thelma Collins. The two men were 19-years-old when they were murdered by Klansmen in 1964.

It is the first such lawsuit filed to clear the hurdle of the statute of limitations since unpunished killings from the civil rights era since cases began to be reopened in 1989.

"This is a landmark case — an extremely significant case," said Jackson lawyer Dennis Sweet, a lawyer for the families of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, who were abducted and beaten by Klansmen on May 2, 1964, before being drowned in an old portion of the Mississippi River.

Reputed Klansman James Ford Seale is serving three life sentences for kidnapping and conspiracy in the case. His lawyers are appealing that conviction.

Lawyers defending Franklin County called the killings "abhorrent" but insisted the Klan was solely responsible: "There is no genuine evidence which exists linking the sheriff of Franklin County to the events alleged."

They argued the lawsuit should be dismissed because the statute of limitations is three years for this type of litigation and would have expired in 1967.

But Lee concluded that doesn’t mean the clock starts ticking immediately.

The judge quoted from a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision, which found that the statute of limitations "does not run until the plaintiff is in possession of the 'crucial facts' that he has been hurt and the defendant is involved."

The lawsuit brought by the families' lawyers — Sweet, Warren Martin, Margaret Burnham and Charles Ogletree — said the then-Franklin County Sheriff Wayne Hutto and Deputy Kirby Shell conspired with the Klan to commit these crimes, refused to investigate after and then covered up their evil deeds.

To date, the courts have been a vehicle for belated prosecutions of individual perpetrators of racially motivated murders from the 1950s and 1960s. Prosecuting the perpetrators is an essential step towards justice and accountability for these crimes. But the individual Klansmen who did the shooting, bombing, burning and beating of African Americans are only part of the story. State responsibility for the violent crimes against African Americans in Mississippi and elsewhere in the South must also be addressed for justice to be done. This lawsuit against Franklin County looks at very specific ways local law enforcement played a role in the crime and in covering it up.

According to Judge Lee's opinion that Thomas Moore and Thelma Collins can proceed with their case against Franklin County, these are known facts in the case:

When Seale was tried on the federal charge in 2007, [Charles Marcus] Edwards testified against him. Edwards implicated himself in the crime. He testified that after the men were kidnaped, but before they were killed, the kidnapers went to the Sheriff’s office and, with the sheriff’s aid but without a search warrant, searched the Roxie First Baptist Church in Franklin County. After the church was searched, the law enforcement officers left the scene without investigating the case or assisting Dee and Moore in any manner. The kidnapers then stuffed Dee and Moore into the trunk of a car and transported them across the river to Louisiana, where they were drowned. The Sheriff did nothing to secure the release of the men in the several hours that elapsed between the search and the drowning in Louisiana.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation thoroughly investigated the murders at the time they occurred in 1964. Their investigation included repeated interviews with Franklin County Sheriff Wayne Hutto and an interview with Deputy Sheriff Kirby Shell. At no time did Sheriff Hutto or Deputy Shell ever reveal to the federal authorities that they possessed information that was highly pertinent to the investigation. On July 13, 1964 Hutto was interviewed by the FBI and deliberately misinformed them of the facts. On November 4, 1964, Hutto and Shell were again interviewed by the FBI. Neither disclosed their participation in the events leading to the murders. On November 9 and November 12, Hutto was again interviewed by the FBI, and again failed to disclose his knowledge of the case. On November 6, 1964, when Seale and Edwards were charged with the crimes, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover issued a press release stating that the arrests “climaxed an extensive and lengthy investigation by FBI Agents and local authorities.”

In January 1965, before the charges against Edwards and Seale were dropped, Sheriff Hutto met with the county district attorney to discuss the evidence in the case. He did not reveal the role of his office in the search of the church on the day in question. Such information, if known to the assistant district attorney, would have implicated the Sheriff in the killings and provided critical evidence in the state’s case against Edwards and Seale. After the decedents went missing in May 1964, their relatives sought the assistance of their sheriff, Hutto. On or about May 9 he informed them that they were in Louisiana. On May 16, when the men could not be found in Louisiana, the relatives returned to visit Hutto. The sheriff told them he did not know their whereabouts but that he would try to locate them. That was the last contact the family members had with Sheriff Hutto about the matter. Thereafter, in July, the FBI took charge of the investigation.

This case may allow the families of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore to gain some more closure after decades of  having no redress for their loss, and it could become a model for other victims' families. Involvement by local government in the crimes and their cover up is not unique to the murders of Henry Dee and Charles Moore.

From Pam Spaulding:

Is this what the police in Fort Worth, TX call "Stonewall Commemoration"? A gay club called the Rainbow Lounge opened in the city and Todd Camp, the founder of Q Cinema and former reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, was celebrating his birthday at the club and two Stonewall docs were being screened.

That evening the Fort Worth Police decided to pay a visit and re-enact good-old-fashioned "law enforcement." Camp told the local LGBT news outlet The Dallas Voice about the incident: Photo of police pinning a patron to the ground. (by Chuck Potter via The Dallas Voice).

The not awesome thing was the paddy wagon of homophobic police that showed up ... looking for trouble. My group and I were sitting on the back patio at a picnic table. Nobody was being wild out there. [The police] came through with flashlights, being loud asking what was going on out here, then asked why everyone was all the sudden being quiet. When one group started up their conversations again, they took one guy away. I left shortly after and as I walked through the front bar there were numerous cops with plastic handcuffs all ready to go. I [left] the bar and they [had] a big van in the parking lot and numerous cars on the street. And just so you know, it wasn't fire hazard crowded or seedy wild in there. ... The worst part is [friends later told me] that [the police] had numerous people face down on the ground outside. I just moved to Fort Worth from Dallas, so this is such a shock to me. I know Dallas would not put up with this.  ... I am still so shocked it is 2009 and this just happened.

From Solo Photo Book Month (via @doctorow):

“Snitchtown” is an essay by Cory Doctorow that first appeared in Forbes.com in June 2007. This SoFoBoMo project is an attempt to illustrate that essay with photographs of some of the 4.2 million CCTV cameras currently estimated to be active in Britain.

Stanley Nelson of the Concordia Sentinel reports major developments in the investigation of the 1964 murder of a Black man, named Frank Morris in Ferriday, Louisiana.

Federal and parish prosecutors are combining forces in the investigation of the 1964 murder of black Ferriday shoe shop owner Frank Morris and the case may go before the parish Grand Jury.

U.S. Atty. Donald Washington of Lafayette and Concordia Dist. Atty. Brad Burget told The Concordia Sentinel today the joint probe may also include the appointment of a federal attorney as an assistant district attorney in Concordia Parish.

"The DA's potential for a murder investigation is appealing to us," said Washington, who along with First Asst. U.S. Atty. William J. Flanagan of Shreveport met with Burget in Vidalia two weeks ago. Cynthia Deitle, Chief of the FBI's Cold Case Unit, also took part in the meeting by phone from Washington.

All pledged their resolve to Burget in seeing the case through.

The involvement of the DA's office marks the first time since Morris was murdered that local authorities will take an active role in this case. Morris, 51, died four days after the arson of his shop on Dec. 10, 1964, in what the FBI has termed a racially-motivated murder involving the Ku Klux Klan.

"Thank God," said Morris' granddaughter, Rosa Williams of Las Vegas, when notified of the announcement. "My heart is beating so fast right now."

Williams was 12-years-old and living with her aunt in Ferriday just a few blocks from the shoe shop when it was torched almost 45 years ago. She said since that time she and her family had almost lost hope that the murder would be solved, that her grandfather's killers would be identified and the motive revealed.

"I pray about this all the time," she said. "God answers prayers."

In case you are unfamiliar with Stanley Nelson's phenomenal reporting on the Morris case, here's some background:

[O]n a chilly December night in 1964, this good citizen's life was destroyed and the people who depended on him were left devastated. Morris lived in a building attached to the back of his shoe shop. A noise interrupted his sleep and he rose to investigate. Outside, he was greeted by two white men, one holding a can of gasoline, the other a single-barrel shotgun.

Morris was forced back inside the store. One of the men struck a match and Morris' shoe shop on Fourth Street, now known as E.E. Wallace Blvd., was soon ablaze as the flammable chemicals of his trade kept inside Morris' business quickly ignited.

In the back of the shoe shop, Morris' employee heard the commotion. He aroused Morris' sleeping 11-year-old grandson, and the two escaped out a back door, jumped a fence and ran to safety.

Before Morris emerged from the burning building, his clothes in flames, the two men jumped into a dark colored, late model sedan and fled town in the direction of Vidalia, possibly onward to Mississippi. A third man may have been involved as a getaway driver.

Four days later, Morris took his last breath in Room 101 at the Concordia Parish Hospital. He suffered a long, agonizing death with third degree burns over 100 percent of his body. A Baptist minister said he never saw a man so severely burned as Morris, who was blinded by the flames.

This evil is believed to have been the work of the Ku Klux Klan although Frank Morris was not known to be involved in civil rights in Ferriday, a circumstance that adds mystery to his murder. As one local minister said in 1965, "The only type of society which the KKK desires to preserve is a society of hatred and of the devil himself."

The FBI investigated Morris' death but made no arrests. In the 1960s, the FBI was overwhelmed as the Klan terrorized the South. Scores were killed.

FBI agents have arrested white supremacist spewer of death threats Hal Turner. But why?

Sometimes I think I´m gonna lose my mind
But it don´t look like I ever do
I loved so many people everywhere I went
Some too much, others not enough

I don´t know, I may go down or up or anywhere
But I feel like this scribbling will stay

Maybe if I hadn't seen so much hard feelings
I might not could have felt other people´s
So when you think of me, if and when you do,
Just say, well, another man's done gone
Just say, well, another man´s done gone

This clip is from the fabulous documentary, Man in the Sand, about the making of Billy Bragg and Wilco's Mermaid Avenue record. Mermaid Avenue is the first in what has become a small series of recordings by artists tapped by Woody Guthrie's daughter Nora to set unrecorded Guthrie lyrics to music. After his death, it was discovered that Woody had left behind 1000 some lyrics that had never been recorded as songs with music.

I watched Man in the Sand last night on Netflix. I've loved Mermaid Avenue since it came out in 1998 but did not realize this documentary about the making of the record has been around nearly as long. It's really, really good. It's a like a diamond in the rough. So many sparkling, unpretentious moments of beauty. (Though it also grapples with the pretentiousness of Guthrie and of the artists who participated in the Mermaid Avenue recordings.)

The film worked on me emotionally on so many levels. The movie begins with Billie Bragg's quest for Woody's America, in an attempt to understand Woody well enough to approach the daunting responsibility of giving musical life to his unrecorded lyrics. These scenes and others throughout the film are deeply evocative of the times my father lived through and the left politics that shaped my family's experience and world view.

Then there are all the approaches to Woody.

Bragg's approach to Woody's America, which I already mentioned.

Woody's daughter Nora's approach to her father---how she has used her work as her father's archivist and as the midwife to the musical rebirthing of his songs to come to know him better and in ways that were not possible for her during his short lifetime; he was ill with Huntington's disease most of the time she knew him and he died when she was 17. Inter-cut with scenes of Bragg and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy and others recording Woody's lyrics are scenes of Nora speaking intimately, often fighting back her tears, about her family life, both her childhood memories of it and what she has come to understand later as a historian.

Arlo Guthrie appears in just one brief sequence---to recount how he learned that This Land Is Your Land was by his father one day when it was taught to him at school. He recalls running home in tears because the other kids knew his own father's song better than he did. Woody was already ill and not playing much music. But Woody, with physical difficulty, showed Arlo the chords and helped him learn to play it. So much of Woody's tragic complexity is in this brief story, which Arlo caps with a slightly coy rendition of one of the now famously long suppressed verses of the song.

Another tragedy that the film is now echo for is the untimely death of Wilco's Jay Bennett, who died very unexpectedly this past May at age 45. While there are many other evocative scenes from the film that I wish I could have found on YouTube, this one is lovely, with Tweedy's vocal more spare and plaintive than on the Mermaid Avenue version, accompanied just by Bennett, whose lovely piano playing is out of frame until the camera tracks around to the position where you can see the both of them in frame.

In many of the scenes with Billy Bragg and Jeff Tweedy and the others from Wilco and with Natalie Merchant and Corey Harris, it looked to me like they, as well as others involved in the project, kept getting these jolts, as if they are repeatedly startled by beauty they are finding in Woody's poetry and in the music it has inspired in them.

The film coveys the often painful contradictions among noble human values, the exultations of human creativity and the flawed humanity of the people who fight for equality and freedom and try to make enduring, beautiful things. It shows these many dimensions in Woody and in the people who came together to make more of his songs known and make him more knowable to us as an artist, as a social conscience and as a man.

Really nice performances from Bat for Lashes on KCRW. Happy Friday.