Somerville Voices » Freedom of Information furthering investigative journalism
These are Melissa McWhinney’s notes from the Boston Globe’s Freedom of Information conference back in May. I wish I’d known it was happening and could have gone. Lots of great advice and resources in the notes.
This is very funny—and it is an absolutely brilliant bit of musical improvisation from Louis Armstrong and Danny Kaye. I think my favorite moment is when Louis says "but don't forget Fats Waller" to rhyme off of Danny's Gustav Mahler, and without missing abeat Danny replies "I wouldn't do that" in what to my ear sounds like a Waller imitation. Genius stuff, this.
Long time readers of Hungry Blues will know that my love of Louis Armstrong began with his deep importance for my dad. I also grew up listening to and watching the movies of Danny Kaye, who was another of my dad's artistic heroes.
[Editor's note: two of my friends are among those arrested in these actions to stop the these dangerous mountain top removal operations. ---BG]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MAY 23, 2009
CONTACT: Sludge Watch Collective 304-854-7372
COAL RIVER VALLEY, W.Va.-- This morning, eleven activists in two civil disobedience actions were removed by state police. As part of the continuing campaign to end mountaintop removal, six people locked themselves to mining equipment on a Patriot Coal-owned mountaintop removal mine on Kayford Mountain and another group floated a 20-by-60-foot banner on the surface of Massey Energy's Brushy Fork coal slurry impoundment near Pettus, W.Va. The activists are part of a coalition that includes Mountain Justice, Climate Ground Zero and concerned individuals.
At noon today, more protestors are expected to converge at the gate to the Brushy Fork dam with hundreds of pairs of shoes to represent the number of immediate deaths should the dam fail.
"The toxic lake at Brushy Fork dam sits atop a honeycomb of abandoned underground mines, " said Chuck Nelson, from Raleigh County, W.Va. "Massey wants to blast within 100 feet of that dam. The company's own filings with the state Department of Environmental Protection project a minimum death toll of 998 should the seven-billion-gallon dam break. EPA should override the DEP and revoke this blasting permit for the safety of the community." Nelson did not participate in the civil disobedience actions this morning, but is expected to speak at the Brushy Fork gate this afternoon.
The floating banner unfurled this morning atop Brushy Fork read, "West Virginia Says No More Toxic Sludge."
"If the dam fails, 7.2 billion gallons of toxic coal slurry will flood to 38 feet deep, 26 miles down the Marsh Fork of the Coal River, from Pettus, past Whitesville," Mike Roselle of Climate Ground Zero said. "These coal companies, the land companies and their corrupt politicians are destroying the headwater streams that supply drinking water to millions of Americans downstream."
In the Kayford action, independent photojournalist and Rock Creek, W.Va. resident Antrim Caskey was removed from the direct action site by police. She previously had been cited three times for trespassing while embedded with Climate Ground Zero.
"About 12,000-acres of Kayford Mountain has been destroyed by mountaintop removal coal mining," said Maria Gunnoe, Boone County resident and winner of the 2009 Goldman Environmental Prize. "Not another family should be forced to move because a coal company is going to blow up the mountain above them, then bury and poison their streams." Gunnoe did not participate in the civil disobedience actions.
The people who locked down on Kayford Mountain unveiled a banner reading, "Never Again."
"The regulatory agencies that are supposed to be the people's watchdogs are acting instead as the industry's guard dogs," said Willie Dodson of Mountain Justice, one of the Kayford protesters. "Neither Governor Manchin, the DEP, President Obama, nor the EPA are enforcing the law, so we have no choice but to come out here and do it ourselves."
On Feb 3, five people chained themselves to mining equipment and eight others were cited for trespassing while attempting to deliver a letter to Massey Energy insisting that the company cease all mountaintop removal operations on Coal River Mountain. Since then, four related actions have occurred in the Coal River Valley.
"We are forced to take action today because we have exhausted our legislative and litigatory options," activist Charles Suggs of Raleigh County said. "We have walked the halls and pounded the doors of our state and national capitols, asked the DEP to complete studies, met with the EPA, filed lawsuits, and what happens? Our West Virginia legislature passes bills to let the destruction continue, and opposes bills that would stop poisoning our water and bring permanent, sustainable economic development to the state."
NOTE: Massey's filing with the WVDEP that indicate sludge depth and distance ae available upon request.
Video, still images and breaking news will be posted continually to www.mountainjustice.org.
Pete Seeger turned 90 yesterday. I posted a slew of YouTube favorites on my tumblr last night in tribute to him. I capped them all off with this one.
I hope you had a great party, Pete. Sure looks like you did.
(via NY Daily News, Credits: Corkery/News)
(More photos.)
You might have seen the Jonathan Mann Paul Krugman song. Well Mann is back with a musical reading of the first of the recently released OLC memos (written by John Yoo and signed by Jay Bybee, aka the Techniques Memo) providing retroactive legal justifications for the US torture program.
My google alerts on "Hungry Blues" sometimes turn up interesting things. Steven Taylor of the Fugs has written a song that is also called Hungry Blues. It's very much in the spirit of the original song that my blog is named after. It's not quite as good, but it's a tall order to be asked to measure up to Langston Hughes and James P. Johnson. May the visions of both songs come to pass.
Steven Taylor Hungry Blues Poetry Project New Years Marathon from Thelma Blitz on Vimeo.
If you're new to this blog or just have never checked out the song on my About page, here's the Hughes/Johnson composition. More info about it is available on the About page (scroll to the end).
You may remember the story of Ja'eisha Scott. It broke almost exactly four years ago.
A Black kindergarten girl in Pinellas County, Florida had a tantrum in school. The school decided the best way to handle it was to call the police and request that the girl be charged and arrested. St. Petersburg Police officers responded to the call; the officers felt the best thing to do was handcuff the small child. Because handcuffs are not designed to fit five year olds they had to use plastic ties on the girl's wrists; they hand cuffed her ankles and kept her bound in the back seat of police cruiser for several hours, while they sought to press charges against her. Footage of the police forcing the girl's hands behind her back and cuffing her and of excerpts of tantrum went viral on the web and played repeatedly on TV for some days.
The city of of St. Petersburg settled with the girl's mother, Inga Akens, for $18,000 in an out of court settlement for claims against the police department. The Pinellas County School Board has refused to settle out of court; a lawsuit is now underway.
The suit accuses school officials of mishandling the situation when the girl threw a violent tantrum in class at Fairmount Park Elementary.
The girl, now 8, will need long-term therapy, says the lawsuit, filed March 12 in Pinellas circuit court by Inga Akins, 27, the girl's mother.
"As a result of this incident, (the girl) is petrified about attending school, is afraid of law enforcement officers, has been severely traumatized and suffers from fear and anxiety," the suit says. The girl "has a permanent impairment related to the situation with the police and will require continuing long-term therapy and neurodiagnostic testing."...
The suit, which accuses Fairmount Park Elementary and the School Board of negligence, malicious prosecution for calling police and a civil rights violation, seeks more than $15,000 in damages. Akins has hired high-powered attorney Willie Gary.
"Obviously, we deny liability and will defend it," said School Board attorney Jim Robinson.
I blogged the hell out of this story for several months. Here's a selection of my posts, by no means exhaustive:
It's disappointing to read in the new article about Inga Akins' lawsuit against the School Board that
A police investigation found race was not a factor; the lead officer, who isn't seen on the tape, was black. But the incident led the department to outline strict rules regarding the handcuffing of children under age 8.
In 2005, I emphasized that
By the time the police arrive and handcuff Ja’eisha it does not matter what color the officers are. Her treatment takes place in a context of persistent inequality and especially punitive attitudes towards African American students.... The presence of an African American police officer overseeing the handcuffing does not mitigate the racism inherent in the event.
I doubt current coverage of the lawsuit will
"[S]trict rules regarding the handcuffing of children under age 8" sounds like a bit progress, but does that even mean the practice has been forbidden? (And should 9 year olds expect to be handcuffed if they get out of line?) A ban on handcuffing young school kids would be a good start but it would not address the repressive atmosphere that Ja'eisha Scott and other Black kids have found themselves in.
In Pinellas County, Florida, it is standard procedure to call the police on small children who are having behavior problems. It is standard procedure to charge children in Pinellas County with felonies. It is standard procedure in Pinellas County to handcuff children as a means of discipline . It is standard procedure in Pinellas County to use police, criminal charges, and handcuffs disproportionately on African American children: 55% of children under 12 charged with crimes in fiscal year 1999-2000 were African American, though they were only 20.95% of the school age children in the state.
If you are unfamiliar with the footage of the handcuffing of Ja'eisha Scott, it is still online (see YouTube player, below). One of the things that is so remarkable is that when the officers arrived, Ja'eisha was seated and not acting out. You can hear someone, probably the assistant prinicipal, reporting on Ja'eisha's behavior. The cuffing looks like a punishment for the reported behavior more than it looks like restraint of a supposedly uncontrollable child. In 2005, it seemed to me that the assistant principal Nicole Dibenedetto's behavior needs to be scrutinized. Some reports contradict Dibenedetto's claims that she tried to pursue other avenues before calling city police to arrest a 5 year old. I am still flabbergasted to have read that Dibenedetto was disappointed when charges were not filed against five year old Ja'eisha Scott.
"To think we would consider charging a child of that age with a crime is almost comical,'' said Bruce Bartlett, chief assistant state attorney. Di Benedetto, 31, was disappointed charges were not filed because it was the third time the girl had behaved violently, the police report says (emphasis added).
If the characterization of Ja'eisha's past behavior is accurate, I would expect an assistant principal, concerned about the well-being and development of young children, to focus on much different interventions than criminal charges for temper tantrums.
With so many great African American figures dying too young, it is wonderful to celebrate John Hope Franklin's 94 years of life, filled with so many accomplishments. His book From Slavery to Freedom is an essential reference on my shelf of books on African American history.
John Hope Franklin at home in Durham, N.C., in 2006. (Derek Anderson for The New York Times)
Born and raised in an all-black community in Oklahoma where he was often subjected to humiliating racism, Franklin was later instrumental in bringing down the legal and historical validations of such a world.
As an author, his book ''From Slavery to Freedom'' was a landmark integration of black history into American history that remains relevant more than 60 years after being published. As a scholar, his research helped Thurgood Marshall and his team at the NAACP win Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 case that barred the doctrine of ''separate but equal'' in the nation's public schools.
''It was evident how much the lawyers appreciated what the historians could offer,'' Franklin later wrote. ''For me, and I suspect the same was true for the others, it was exhilarating.''
Franklin himself broke numerous color barriers. He was the first black department chair at a predominantly white institution, Brooklyn College; the first black professor to hold an endowed chair at Duke; and the first black president of the American Historical Association.
He often regarded his country like an exasperated relative, frustrated by racism's stubborn power, yet refusing to give up. ''I want to be out there on the firing line, helping, directing or doing something to try to make this a better world, a better place to live,'' Franklin told The Associated Press in 2005
Duke University has put up a tribute website for John Hope Franklin with more information, photos and a place to leave condolences for his family.
DAYTON — David Schock shed tears and felt prickles on the back of his neck as he heard the voice of Martin Luther King Jr. speaking on a long-forgotten recording from 1964 at the University of Dayton.
"I thought, 'I'm standing on holy ground here,'" Schock said from his home in Grand Haven, Mich.
Schock discovered the unlabeled reel-to-reel tape of King's speech at the UD Fieldhouse on Nov. 29, 1964, in a box of memorabilia owned by Herbert Woodward Martin of Washington Twp. Martin, a UD poet and professor emeritus, is the subject of a documentary film by Schock.
Martin, who never listened to the tape, assumed it was one that he had planned to record over. "Thank goodness I never did that," he said.
The 50-minute recording captures the late civil rights leader discussing the state of race relations before an audience of more than 6,200 people. King told the crowd: "We've come a long, long way, but we have a long, long way to go."
(Link)
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."
The great singer and pianist Blossom Dearie died on Saturday.
I first discovered Blossom Dearie's music in 2001, when I heard her song Manhattan in one of the musical interludes for a Fresh Air episode in the first weeks after 9/11. I had never heard Blossom Dearie and I was completely floored—by the lyrics, by the performance, by the perfectly nostalgic wistfulness that was overwhelming after the tragedy that had just struck, the recollection of innocence.
And Tell me what street compares to Mott Street in July
Sweet pushcarts gently gliding by
The great big city’s a wonderous toy
Made for a girl and boy
We’ll turn Manhattan into an isle of joy.
In 2001 or 2002 my wife and I went to see Blossom Dearie perfrom at Danny’s Skylight on W 48th Street in Manhattan, where she played regularly for years and where the photo, above, from the NY Times obit, was taken. Her voice had lost some of the whispery quality that used to characterize it, but she was still a master of understatement and timing—and her piano playing was brilliant as ever. It was one of the great performances that I have seen.
I've put together a new Opentape as a tribute to Blossom Dearie and her music. Click on the song list to listen.
(This blog post is adapted from one I posted earlier on my tumblr. Photo by Rahav Segev for The New York Times.)
May there be many more moments like this. Time is running out; I hope Mr. Elwin Wilson inspires courage among the countless others who also must come forward.
Elwin Wilson was an unabashed racist, the sort who once hung a black doll from a noose outside his home. John Lewis was a young civil rights leader bent on changing laws, if not hearts and minds, even if it cost him his life.
They faced each other at a South Carolina bus station during a protest in 1961. Wilson joined a white gang that jeered Lewis, attacked him and left him bloodied on the ground.
Forty-eight years later, the men met again — this time so Wilson could apologize to Lewis and express regret for his hatred. Lewis, now a congressman from Atlanta, greeted his former tormentor at his Capitol Hill office.
"I just told him that I was sorry," Wilson, 72, said in a telephone interview Wednesday as he traveled home to Rock Hill, S.C. For years, he said, he tried to block the incident out of his mind "and couldn't do it."
Lewis said Wilson is the first person involved in the dozens of attacks against him during the civil rights era to step forward and apologize. When they met Tuesday, Lewis offered forgiveness without hesitation.
"I was very moved," said Lewis. "He was very, very sincere, and I think it takes a lot of raw courage to be willing to come forward the way he did. ... I think it will lead to a great deal of healing."
Wilson said he had felt an urge to voice his remorse for years. He talked about his past activities a few weeks ago with a friend, and the friend asked him where he thought he might go if he died.
"I said probably hell," Wilson said. "He said, 'Well, you don't have to.'" (Source)
Before he apologized to Representative Lewis, Mr. Elwin did something perhaps even more difficult: he faced some of the people he had harmed in his own community.
Wilson's apology was first reported by The (Rock Hill, S.C.) Herald. After reading an article about local black civil rights leaders reacting to President Barack Obama's inauguration, he and another former segregationist called the paper saying they wanted to apologize.
The paper aired their comments and documented an emotional meeting with the local activists at a former whites-only lunch counter in downtown Rock Hill, where Wilson had antagonized demonstrators during a 1961 sit-in.
After meeting with the local activists, Wilson realized that Lewis must have been the young black man he had attacked at the bus station that same year, when a bus carrying two Freedom Riders rolled into town.
If Mr. Elwin had only apologized to Lewis, I would be moved and impressed. But it is even more urgent that the people within communities where racist terror reigned find ways to face the truth and work towards reconciliation. Many perpetrators and victims and immediate family of victims have already died. Those who remain are aging, many elderly. As my friend Stanley Nelson at the Concordia Sentinel has put it, we can't do much about slavery, but we can do something about this.
May 24, 1961: With his head still bandaged from a previous beating, young John Lewis is arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, along with 26 other Freedom Riders, for the "crime" of riding in the "Whites Only" section of an interstate bus. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)
I recently discovered Jewish African-America hiphop artist Y-Love. I started taking to him on twitter, and he pointed me towards this awesome "Nat'l Jewish Population Survey-inspired hiphop."
If you've been catching some of the buzz around Songs in the Key of Chanukah, then you've seen Y-Love before, over here:
I also recommend checking out Y-Love's blog.
Happy Chanukah (and Merry Christmas to my Christian friends)!
By John Dorsey Due, Jr.
The nation will pause and reflect on the massive "Revolutionary Kool Aid Suicide" of almost a 1000 Americans in their Jonestown refuge in Guyana and the assassination of Congressman Leo Ryan, thirty years ago, on November 18, 1978. This could be my final ten year acknowledgment of the Peoples Temple and Reverend Jim Jones.
CNN was going to tell this story again last night at 9:00 PM. But the Campbell lead-up at 8:00 p.m. was so boring---re-hashing the all day story of Governor Palin and the Republican Governor's Conference in Miami---that I fell asleep. When I woke up, it was David Letterman time, 11:30, time to enjoy his political jokes. When I turned back to CNN, the news network was showing the horror of the stacked up bodies in a repeat of their 9:00 P.M. special.
But my interest in the Peoples Temple story began before Guyana---in Indianapolis, Indiana---where my connection to the story was made.
In 1998, after watching a version on History Channel, I put it all together in my head. But I better hurry and put my own connection to the story in writing. In 1998, actors connected to me in this story who could have confirmed what I know were living---but they are now gone or about gone. That's the problem when, as a young adult, you hang with people 15-30 years older than you.
When I visited my grandchildren for my birthday, they announced that I am 74 years old. They are such big liars. I exist in a fantasy of denial. ("Grandpaw---I know how old you are" (who asked them?) "74!!")
Damn! She was fine. Brown skin. Not a high yaller---that I felt tended to be uppity in relation to me with my brown skin. Breasts. A behind. And she was aggressive---coming on to me. She came into the ice cream parlor where I was working part-time. I forget WHY I was working there part time. I got her phone number. But it must have been the short period of time between Indiana University Law School and working at the Indiana State Farm---a correctional facility.
But the opportunity to get it on with this fine woman---either for a one night stand or a relationship---was a diversion from my politics of the moment---and I did not call her.
Yet, in about a week, I saw here again in a drug store near my home---and she came on again---showing disappointment that I did not call her. (As I look at it now, this was strange---because the ice cream parlor was way in East Indianapolis---not near my home neighborhood).
She said I could make up not calling her by picking her up and taking her to church---to a Peoples Temple the coming Sunday. That relieved the sexual tension---because I could then play MY game of seduction by doing a neutral thing---where I would be in control.
Peoples Temple? I had no idea. She said it was integrated. So is the Unitarian church I attended. But I was suspicious when she told me the address---located in the Black Ghetto near downtown---and not in an upper class white suburb as was the Unitarian Church.
My new lady friend---I suspected was not college educated. Therefore, I began to imagine that Peoples Temple was like a Father Divine Church that I had read about---and that sparked my curiosity to see what was going on. While growing up as a child in the AME faith---in Terre Haute, Indiana---there was a piano---but no organ. There was no gospel music. Only Wesleyan hymns. No emotionalism---which was frowned upon. (The women who would forget where they were and get happy, would be rushed by church nurses in white uniforms down into the basement where they could shout and cool down before being allowed to come back up and join the congregation).
But back as a child while growing up in Terre Haute, Indiana, as I walked by Pentecostal churches, people seemed to be having a good time---the falling out---the jumping up and down, the tambourines. Visiting a service with a childhood friend, I enjoyed the testifying and the praising the Lord.
But I had always moved on because all that emotionalism was below my class as was taught in my Black Bourgeoisie upbringing as an AME.
So, I was eager to come by and pick up my new lady friend for church with two motivations---to execute my Sex game under my control and to observe an experience which must be like a Father Divine experience.
I came by the house where my new friend lived with her mother and sisters. Only she in the family was going to Peoples Temple. Their house was also in the hood. A typical working class Black family. I was already beginning to lower my expectations of my new friend---because you can be poor---but have a vision of rising---intellectually---not just financially---like having family members striving to go to college if you can't. Yet that did not turn me off like my mother would have liked it to; instead, I was more comfortable that I would not be put down and would be in charge.
Then we arrived at the church building---which was not like a traditional church---but a big warehouse---with a big neon sign that showed it was a church. There must have been more than a thousand people. Looking back now, having had experiences being in big assemblies, I think it could have been 2000 people there---and though my friend and I were not late, we had to sit near the back. Again, not like a traditional church: everyone was sitting on folding chairs. Not pews.
And noise. Not like in a Methodist church or Unitarian church---where in a back row, you can hear a pin drop. My friend did not have to tell me that the young white athletic man on the stage was Reverend Jim Jones. Speakers were set up all over the place; you could hear what he was saying over the noise, the cymbals, the organ and shouts. Everyone was in an uproar, responding to what he was saying.
If you succeeded in shutting your ears to all this noise, to what he was saying---what he said sounded pretty good, until he got to the monsters and the retribution and end of times forecast in the Book of Revelation. This was 1959-60, so the Gantry movie had not yet come out---but just like the Gantry movie---only magnified. Everything was staged---the mass healings and the frenzied exultations---Black and white---about equal.
But it came to me. This guy is a stone hustler. I realized that, somehow, I had been targeted as a mark to be brought to this place to be enrolled in this church because of its enthusiastic integration of Black and white that was not bound to an upper middle class mentality. After the service, there was a great banquet of food and fellowship with the people which was enjoyable, but something was not right. Everyone seemed brainwashed into an alternate reality, and it felt addictive to hang there and get involved there with my new lady friend.
The young lady was fine. But after I took her home---I never called her back. Because I felt I had been a target. I felt as if she knew who I was before she met me---as if this guy Jim Jones had ordered it. I don't want to read into the story what I now know in comparison to what I knew then. But as I recall, I just did not like or trust this Jim Jones---using so-called "integration" to be a white Father Divine. And Black people eating it up.
When I was selected to be the chairman of the Indianapolis NAACP Political Action Committee in 1958, instead of taking care of my law school classes, I was working demonstrations, picketing and pressing for an Indiana Human Rights Bill on public accommodations and employment. My partners were Willard B. Ransom, general counsel to Madam C. J. Walker beauty industries, and my mentor, Attorney John Preston War, counsel for the Indianapolis NAACP and legal director of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union. State Senator Nelson Grills and State Representative Andrew Jacobs were co-sponsors of the bill. It passed.
Indianapolis, like the rest of the State of Indiana in 1959---was strictly segregated. Poor whites lived in Southern Indianapolis---near the manufacturing centers. Blacks lived in Northern Indianapolis, from central Indianapolis---the Ghetto---near Indiana Avenue, extending north to the suburbs where upper middle class whites lived. Middle class Blacks were slowly moving into these areas near Butler University---the home school of the Disciples of Christ. (I learned in 1998 that the Disciples of Christ had sponsored Jim Jone's Peoples Temple---but later kicked him out---which was the reason he moved to California before moving to Guyanna.)
But after our human rights bill passed, Ransom, Ward and myself lost control or influence as to how the Indiana Human Rights Law would be structured and implemented. My alienation with Indiana then began to develop when the moderates chose Reverend Jim Jones to be a member of the Indiana Human Rights Commission. Even my friends did not understand why I was so adamantly against this so-called progressive integrationist, Jim Jones. He was one of the factors, along with my friends supporting him, for my deciding to come to Florida and the FAMU Law School in order to be part of the Southern Movement bursting in 1960.
So, in 1978, when the news of the Jonestown suicide was told to the world, and they noted that this Reverend Jim Jones, from Indianapolis, was the cult leader directing the so-called mass "revolutionary suicide" I was not surprised.
As if I had a premonition.
My friend John Due has sent to me his remembrance of Peoples Temple and Reverend Jim Jones as a guest post for Hungry Blues. John is now a retired civil rights-community organizer lawyer living in Gadsden County, FL. John and I met on the internet and have a mutual interest in the movement in Mississippi---where he worked during the 1964 Freedom Summer and where I currently investigate racial violence from that time. But before Due moved to Florida in 1960, he was an activist in Indiana. He sent this post to express how he felt how he was a mark for Peoples Temple and Reverend Jones and how we all must take care in any movement. ---BG
Folks I’ve got them hungry blues
And nothin’ in this to lose
People tellin’ me to choose
Between dyin’ and lyin’ and keep
on cryin’
Tired of them hungry blues
Listen ain’t you heard the news
There’s another thing to choose
A brand new world clean and fine
Where nobody’s hungry
And there’s no color line
A thing like that’s worth
anybody dyin’
I ain’t got a thing to lose
But them doggone hungry blues
James P. Johnson
Langston Hughes
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