HungryBlues

"People would be surprised . . ."

In my Mississippi news roundup the other day, I emphasized the reported comment of former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers. Jordan Golub, who heads the Royal Confederate Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, recalled a phone conversation he once had with Bowers:

"Bowers said, 'I don't think the KKK is the way to go in the present day,'" Gollub said, explaining that organizations such as the Council of Conservative Citizens may be more successful now.

To understand what the CCC is, you have to know the history of the White Citizens Councils. Susan Klopfer has provided a good, brief history of the two organizations in the comments:

Shortly after the first Citizens Councils or CC (home grown by Robert "Tut" Patterson of Itta Bena) became a reality, the New York Post sent a reporter into the Deep South on a fact-finding mission. Reporter Stan Optowsky spoke plainly in his assessment, calling the Councils “a loose federation [with the] avowed purpose [to] battle the principle and practice of integration, and to crush all – the Negro and white – who dare advocate the colored man’s rights.”

After spending five weeks doing research, the reporter declared the “actual purpose was to elect the ‘right’ candidate; to maintain cheap labor; to eliminate a gnawing business competitor; to protect a shaky job; and to make ‘a few fast bucks.’”

Help in growing Citizens Councils soon came from Patterson’s “neighbor,” Senator James O. Eastland, who wanted to grow an even larger organization for himself. In the summer of 1955, Eastland announced it was “essential that a nation-wide organization be set up” to “mobilize and organize public opinion” throughout the United States in order to combat school desegregation.

The senator said that a “great crusade” would be required to fight the NAACP, CIO, and “all the conscienceless pressure groups who are attempting our destruction.”

And so within a month of Eastland’s statement, the Federation for Constitutional Government (FCG), a short-lived organization, was formed in Memphis. Representatives from twelve Southern states came together with the support of Eastland, Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, former Governor Fielding Wright of Mississippi, U. S. Representative John Bell Williams of Mississippi, and other politicians.

Patterson, Judge Thomas Brady and William J. Simmons were elected to positions on the executive committee. John U. Barr of Louisiana was selected president, and it was Eastland’s intention that the Federation would “coordinate” the work of the Citizens Councils and several other organizations.

Many members of the Citizens Councils did not share this view, however, and in April 1956, sixty-five representatives from Citizens Councils in eleven Southern states secretly met to form their own “overseer,” the Citizens Councils of America. The following October, CCA selected Patterson as secretary.

From 1954 to 1989, Patterson spent his time growing the Citizens Councils through the CCA, as he traveled thousands of miles around the Southeastern states to meet with members and their leaders. As Council numbers grew to over 300,000 members, Eastland helped out, by calling on state governments to fund the movement.

It would be Patterson who with Gordon Lee Baum co-morphed the Councils to their current neo-nazi existence as the CCC or Conservative Citizens Councils in 1985. Baum had been a regional director in the first Citizens Councils.Patterson remains actively involved in CCC, and still writes for the organization’s journal, The Informer.

The Bowers remark speaks to the numbers and the political power of the CCC:

An Intelligence Report from the Southern Poverty Law Center reported that names of CCC members are not public. But after collecting the names of 175 members mentioned in council publications and elsewhere, the Report “was able to document ties to racist groups of 17 of those members — almost 10 percent of the total.” Claiming 15,000 members in 1999, CCC was in the news when Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott landed in hot water after speaking before the group. Lott spoke again in 2005, as various state legislators and judges were scheduled to attend CCC meetings.

Meanwhile, "a significant number of members have been linked to unabashedly racist groups including the Invisible Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan; the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan; the National Association for the Advancement of White People; the America First Party; and the neo-Nazi National Alliance. Others have ties to militant ‘Patriot’ organizations such as the extreme-right-wing Populist Party and David Duke.”

Most fascinating, perhaps, in Susan's comment is the passage at the end, recounting her interview last fall with Robert "Tutt" Patterson.

At the age of 84, the senior Mississippian used his thick wooden cane tip to tap out the framed certificates on his wall awarded after World War II and for Indianola’s Citizen of the Year. The mid-morning interview took place at his home office in Itta Bena, where a book on the Reich stood out on his mahogany desktop.

The Patterson home is set on a large lot next to a bayou. “We were able to purchase all of the land down to the water. It’s safer and no one can just move next door,” Patterson pointed out.

The conversation moved to the Pattersons’ children and their individual achievements. One daughter married a Moroccan – “Moroccans are like Europeans, you know. They have kings.”

Are the original Citizens Councils still intact? Patterson said they are still meeting around the Delta. “People would be surprised,” he said with a quick grin.

A Few More Mississippi News Items

• Ky. man says '60s suspect sold him guns

Prosecutors told reporters less than an hour after a jury recently convicted Edgar Ray Killen of manslaughter in the trio's killings the only two triggermen in the case, Wayne Roberts and James Jordan, are dead.

But the work of world-renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden and Mississippi state forensic pathologist Dr. Steven Hayne has revealed the possibility of additional gunmen.

• '64 confession kept from Killen jury - Clarion Ledger reporter Jerry Mitchell raises some more questions about the conduct of the prosecution in Mississippi v. Edgar Ray Killen.

Killen's lead counsel, Mitch Moran of Carthage, said he wanted to let the jury know the whole story, and that's why he tried to introduce the 1964 confession of Horace Doyle Barnette, who took part in the trio's killings.

In the 1967 federal conspiracy trial, an FBI agent read Barnette's statement into the record when Barnette refused to testify. But jurors only heard the names of Barnette and James Jordan, who pleaded guilty, in the statement. For the names of the others Barnette identified as being involved, a "blank" was substituted. The trial ended with the convictions of seven, the acquittals of eight and the mistrials of three, including Killen.

Moran explained: "I just felt like the jury had a right to know it all."

Although Killen could have been implicated by Barnette's statement, Moran said the statement shows Billy Wayne Posey, convicted in the 1967 federal trial, played a major role, but wasn't indicted by the state, while Killen played a minor role and was indicted by the state.

When Moran sought to introduce the confession in Killen's trial through the FBI agent's 1967 testimony, prosecutors objected.

When Moran said he'd be happy to fill in all the blanks so jurors could hear the names of all involved, prosecutors still objected.

• Killen jurors outline verdict

Timeline of jurors in the Edgar Ray Killen trial:

June 20: 2:48 p.m.:
Deliberations begin
Mid-afternoon: First vote: — 6 guilty, 6 not guilty of murder
5:32 p.m.: Jurors dismissed before second vote

June 21:
8:32 a.m.: Second vote: 7 guilty, 5 not guilty of murder
Mid-morning: Third vote:— 11-1, guilty of manslaughter
11:10 a.m: Final vote: 12-0, guilty of manslaughter

• Killen juror: Critics wrong about jury's actions - Killen juror goes on the record.

We found Killen guilty of manslaughter because that's what the evidence supported. . . .

We focused on what was presented in the courtroom, not what we'd heard over the last 41 years, and not what we either assumed or wished to be true.

• Will KKK fade into history?

The Mississippi White Knights is the strongest of the state's Klan chapters. Others listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center are: Bayou Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Fulton and Richton (its post office box is in Kiln), Southern White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Lucedale and Robinsonville, and Orion Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Star.

One Mississippi Klan group that didn't make the list because of inactivity is Royal Confederate Knights of the Ku Klux Klan headed by Jordan Gollub of Jackson.

"We haven't had a march since 2001," he said. "We had a march in Biloxi and a march in Carthage. It made you feel good that day, but I don't think it changes the political atmosphere. It doesn't put Bennie Thompson (the state's lone African-American congressman) out of office."

He recalled the last telephone conversation he had with one-time Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers, who headed the largest and most violent Klan organization in the 1960s, the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi.

"Bowers said, 'I don't think the KKK is the way to go in the present day,'" Gollub said, explaining that organizations such as the Council of Conservative Citizens may be more successful now (emphasis added).

Right Wing Tactics (II) - How Comcast Censors Political Content

David Swanson, co-founder of After Downing Street, explains how Comcast blocked all email containing the url of his organization for about a week, earlier this month.

We didn't know it, but for the past week, anyone using Comcast has been unable to receive any Email with "www.afterdowningstreet.org" in the body of the Email. That has included every Email from me, since that was in my signature at the bottom of every Email I sent. And it included any Email linking people to any information about the upcoming events.

From the flood this evening of Emails saying "Oh, so that's why I haven't heard anything from you guys lately," it seems clear that we would have significantly more events organized by now for the 23rd if not for this block by Comcast.

Disturbingly, Comcast did not notify us of this block. It took us a number of days to nail down Comcast as the cause of the problems, and then more days, working with Comcast's abuse department to identify exactly what was going on. We'd reached that point by Thursday, but Comcast was slow to fix the problem.

During the day on Friday we escalated our threats to flood Comcast's executives with phone calls and cancellations, and we gave them deadlines. Friday evening, Comcast passed the buck to Symantec. Comcast said that Symantec's Bright Mail filter was blocking the Emails, and that Symantec refused to lift the block, because they had supposedly received 46,000 complaints about Emails with our URL in them. Forty-six thousand! Of course, Symantec was working for Comcast, and Comcast could insist that they shape up, or drop them. But Comcast wasn't interested in doing that.

Could we see two or three, or even one, of those 46,000 complaints? No, and Comcast claimed that Symantec wouldn't share them with Comcast either.

By the time Comcast had passed the buck to the company that it was paying to filter its customers Emails, Brad Blog had posted an article about the situation and urged people to complain to Comcast.
http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001602.htm

Brad quickly added Symantec phone numbers to the story on his website, and we called Symantec's communications department, which fixed the problem in a matter of minutes.

So, why does this matter?

Comcast has a near monopoly on high-speed internet service in much of this country, including much of the Washington, D.C., area. Many members of the media and many people involved in politics rely on it. Three days ago, I almost decided to put a satellite dish on my roof. There's no other way for me to get high-speed internet, unless I use Comcast.

Comcast effectively censors discussion of particular political topics, and impedes the ability of people to associate with each other, with absolutely no compulsion to explain itself. There is no due process. A phrase or web address is tried and convicted in absentia and without the knowledge of those involved.

Now, did Comcast do this because it opposes impeaching the President? I seriously doubt it. Apparently the folks at Symantec did this, and Comcast condoned it. But why?

Well, we have no evidence to suggest that these 46,000 complaints actually exist, but we can be fairly certain that if they do, they were generated by someone politically opposed to our agenda. There's simply no possible way that we've accidentally annoyed 46,000 random people with stray Emails and mistyped addresses. We've only been around for a month and a half, and we haven't spammed anyone. In fact, during the course of trying to resolve the problem, Comcast assured us that they knew we hadn't spammed anyone. And once we'd gotten Symantec's attention, they didn't hesitate to lift the block.

But it had taken serious pressure to find out what the problem was and who to ask for a remedy. We only solved this because we could threaten a flood of negative attention.

This state of affairs means that anyone who wants to stifle public and quasi-private discussion of a topic can quite easily do so by generating numerous spam complaints. The victims of the complaints will not be notified, made aware of the accusations against them, or provided an opportunity to defend themselves. And if the complaints prove bogus, there will be absolutely no penalty for having made them.

And this won't affect only small-time information sources. If the New York Times or CNN attempts to send people Email with a forbidden phrase, it won't reach Comcast customers or customers of any ISP using the same or similar filtering program.

And there is no public list posted anywhere of which phrases are not permitted. This is a Kafkan world. This is censorship as it affects a prisoner who sends out letters and does not know if they will reach the recipient or be destroyed.

What if I had tried to Email someone about a serious health emergency during the past week, but they had been using Comcast and I had been including the address of my website in my Email signature? Is this not a safety issue?

(Read the whole thing.)

Right Wing Tactics (I) - The Stalking Of Andy Stephenson

Andy Stephenson, an activist for fair and transparent elections, died of pancreatic cancer on July 7, 2005. He had no medical insurance, but he was fortunate that a combination of good friends and a high profile as an activist led to a successful internet-based fundraising drive for the $50,000 surgery that his condition required.

The progress of the fundraiser, and therefore the Andy's access to treatment, was severely hampered by some malicious individuals. The passage, below, is excerpted from the first-hand account of Elizabeth Ferrari, who helped raise the money and helped Andy obtain care.

You can find documentation of Andy's medical treatment here.

There needs to be a thorough investigation of the circumstances described by Ms. Ferrari.

The first weekend of our fundraiser was without incident, but our jubilation at raising $25,000 in only one hundred hours must have goaded the Bush right. Before the week was out, the rumors of fraud and malfeasance crept over the internet. I began to get anonymous email demanding to know Andy’s most personal information. During the second and last weekend of our effort, the contact information I had made available to donors resulted in my email box being spammed with hate mail. I at that point ignored it. It simply never occurred to me that our effort for our friend would become a political death struggle.

I was in no way prepared for what followed. And, although I have no proof, what followed was a concerted political attack on Andy, on our progressive community, and especially on our ability to raise funds for our projects, as well as an attack on Andy’s productive work as an elections reform activist and watchdog.

What followed was a coordinated effort to block Andy’s medical care or his benefit from the medical care we could secure for him. In specific, the opposition had its agents make small donations so they could then call Paypal with allegations of fraud that froze Andy’s account. They also called Paypal, misrepresenting themselves as the hospital, to “verify” that this effort was a scam.

And it got more vicious from there. Due to the frozen
funds – exacerbating Johns Hopkins' mislaying of a deposit check -- and the confusion it caused us all, Andy’s surgery date was canceled by Johns Hopkins. It was with great difficulty that we were able to persuade the doctor to be put Andy back into the surgical rotation. That cost him two weeks while he suffered from the most aggressive, invasive form of cancer.

The smears and the rumors were seeded all over the internet. Ill, on hold waiting for his surgery, Andy and the rest of us cast about trying to answer questions that were more often simply calculated accusations meant to discredit us all, meant to make Andy’s health care as difficult as possible.

Andy called me one day, happy because he’d been given a new date. Then called again, because they’d moved the date up. He was terrified, sobbing and I was caught flatfooted. Torn between trying to mind Andy’s care and trying to stop or answer the horrible accusations being sown all over our community, I had very little to offer his terror, dealing with my own.

After Andy was admitted to the hospital, the rumors turned into threats. A bounty was offered for anyone who could sneak into his hospital room. It was said he was getting a face lift. A telegram was sent just to see if it could be successfully delivered. The harassment was nonstop. We tried to shield Andy from it, with less success than we would have liked.

A day or so after his surgery, Andy called me from his bed in ICU. I picked up the phone and he began to sing to me, “Come out, come out, wherever you are.” I started crying. And when we hung up, I offered that bit of good news to our on line progressive community at the Democratic Underground. Immediately, the opposition took that as evidence that Andy was not in fact recovering from a surgical marathon. And this was their pattern. Every specific I offered to comfort the community was taken up by Andy’s stalkers and used as evidence that we were frauds.

Andy left the hospital and spent two weeks recovering at a friend’s house, learning how to eat again, learning how to move, weaning himself from the morphine that he’d needed post surgery. During this time, one of his supporters in Baltimore had her car vandalized – a message was sent. Shortly after he left to return to Seattle, his second East Coast hostess was stalked to her home and she watched as someone tried to open her front door. His supporters everywhere were systematically intimidated and all the while, they tried to keep it from Andy.

Andy then went back home to Seattle, preparing for a medical course of chemotherapy and radiation. Once he arrived, he found that an anonymous tipster had managed to get his Medicaid shut down. It took us two weeks to get him back in the system. Andy had anaplastic pancreatic cancer and was again forced to wait weeks for follow up care.

By this time, Andy’s stalkers had set up a website. It purported to be concerned that the funds for his surgery were raised fraudulently. Thankfully by this time, Andy spent very little time on line. But it wore on his core advocates who were repeatedly attacked, defamed and baited.

We were threatened with everything from the FBI to the Washington State Attorney General. And of course, because our first concern was Andy, his attitude and his care, our response had to be measured or none. On a good day, we didn’t want Andy logging in and reading that he would soon be visited by federal agents to answer for the mythical hundreds of thousands of dollars we’d supposedly raised.

As late as a week before Andy died, we couldn’t keep this poisonous campaign from him. One of the last times he felt well enough to log into to his email, he found a multipage denunciation, supposedly being filed with his state’s attorney general. He called me, not so much in a panic. Panic was no longer a speed Andy had. He called me in despair, because he could no longer fight the barrage of hatred being leveled at him. I don’t remember what I said to him but I hope it helped for a moment.

The attack from the Bush right never paused, not even through the agony of Andy’s last days. Not at all.
Even the fact of his death is being disputed. Two days after his passing, his advocates are still being harassed, still receiving anonymous hate calls, “It was a scam.” The friend planning his service was visited by two men impersonating sheriffs on the morning after Andy passed. They were there to ask about fraud, they said.

Andy’s physical death has not stopped the attack, has not slowed the hatred, has not stemmed the steady stream of intimidation.

(Read the whole thing.)

After trial, Bender challenges Barbour (II)

This part is too important not to quote it also:

Recently, after the verdict and sentencing in the Edgar Ray Killen trial in Neshoba County, you indicated your belief that this closed the books on the crimes of the civil rights years, and that we all should now have "closure."

A day or so earlier, when Ben Chaney, the brother of the murdered African American, James Earl Chaney, criticized you for wearing a Confederate battle flag pin on your lapel daily, you responded by saying it was the symbol of the Mississippi National Guard, and if anyone didn't like your wearing it, "tough."

Not long ago, you actively resisted the effort in Mississippi to remove that Confederate symbol from the state flag. The Confederate battle flag has long been the banner of segregation and racism, not to mention that it has been widely embraced by the Ku Klux Klan throughout the Klan's hateful history.

While chairman of the National Republican Party, you attended functions of the Council of Conservative Citizens, known as the successor to the White Citizens' Councils in the state of Mississippi. When called on your participation with the CCC, you publicly refused to apologize or disassociate yourself.

Nor, it must be said, have you acted alone. In the same week that the Neshoba jury returned its guilty verdicts, your two Republican colleagues, U.S. Sens. Trent Lott and Thad Cochran, refused to join 92 other senators in a resolution of apology for the Senate's repeated failures to pass anti-lynching legislation. Had such federal legislation been passed, it is possible that many lives would have been saved.

Mississippi had the highest number of lynchings of any state in the country; The Clarion-Ledger counted 581, and presumably there were others never included in the count. The message to those who would continue to do harm is loud and clear: Murder of African Americans deserves no apology.

So long as such symbols and coded messages are conveyed by high public officials, your state continues to encourage racism, and the potential for violence which it spawns. The venom is spread, and hatred continues to flourish.

Restorative justice can only come with recognition of the past, acknowledgement of wrongdoing, and acceptance of responsibility in the present by government and individuals to ameliorate the harm done.

People in positions of public trust, such as you, must take the lead in opening the window upon the many years of criminal conduct in which the state, and its officials, engaged. Only with such acknowledgement will the present generation understand how these many terrible crimes occurred, and the responsibility which present officials, voters and, indeed, all citizens, have to each other to move forward

(Read the whole thing.)

After trial, Bender challenges Barbour (I)

Letter from Rita Bender, widow of Michael Schwerner, to MS Governor Haley Barbour, published in the Clarion Ledger last week:

It is unfortunate that it is not yet well known that the state of Mississippi funded the state Sovereignty Commission from 1957 through 1973. The funding came from taxes paid by the citizenry — which means that the African-American population of the state, some 40 percent of Mississippi's population, was forced to pay for the governmental entity which spied upon them; caused them to lose jobs and to be forced off the land they farmed; and participated in crimes of beatings, church burnings and murder.

The Sovereignty Commission funded the White Citizens Councils, which used this money to launch a campaign of disinformation both within the state and in the Northern states. The councils spread racist ideology which served to encourage violence.

The Sovereignty Commission used its funds to hire staff investigators and private detectives. It employed informants. Information gathered included license numbers and vehicle descriptions for persons identified as civil rights activists, as well as physical descriptions of these persons and their day-to-day activities. Medgar Evers was spied upon in this manner for years before his death. So were Mickey Schwerner and I.

The information gathered was passed on to law enforcement officers around the state, many of whom were themselves members of the Ku Klux Klan. There was no secret that the Klan and the police, sheriffs' departments and state highway patrol officers were often one and the same.

Bankers were notified of the identity of African Americans who attempted to register to vote, and bankers then called in loans. The commission contacted employers and land owners about persons attempting to register, or who were otherwise engaged in civil rights activities, resulting in people losing jobs or being forced off land which they had sharecropped for generations.

At the request of the defense, the commission investigated the jury panel in the first trial of Byron De La Beckwith for the murder of Medgar Evers in 1964. The commission reported back to the defense its findings as to which members of the panel were not expected to be favorable to Beckwith.

The defense was then in a position to eliminate these jurors from the panel. An arm of the state was assisting the defense in a case the state was supposed to be prosecuting. This is a grotesque perversion of the criminal justice system.

The commission provided its investigative reports to The Clarion-Ledger and other newspapers in the state until 1967, and those reports were then used by the newspapers to distort and defame the civil rights movement. (The Clarion-Ledger has apologized for its activities.)

The commission requested newspapers to suppress the reporting of violence against black persons. For example, the commission succeeded in preventing the reporting of the beatings and church burning in Philadelphia on June 16, 1964. This coverage was omitted from news reports to accommodate the request of a Philadelphia banker, who was seeking to convince an out-of-state investor to bring his business to Mississippi.

Each successive governor served as the Sovereignty Commission chairman. He was sent the investigative reports of the commission. Each governor had knowledge of the full range of shameful, illegal, and often violent activities encouraged or directly engaged in by the commission staff.

Why else can there not yet be closure? There were many acts of brutality, and far too many murders, which were never acknowledged. There are many violent criminals, living their lives among their neighbors in communities throughout the state, who have never been charged or punished for their crimes.

(Read the whole thing.)

Genius Scientist Discovers His Research May Be Used For Evil, Becomes Pacifist

No, damn it. Albert Einstein was a political radical and anti-racist.

When it came to how to handle Einstein’s ashes or his house on Mercer Street, everyone involved meticulously adhered to his wishes. But when it involved his ideas, and especially his concerns about what he called America’s “worst disease,” the fact that Einstein wanted his views made as public as possible seems to have slipped past his historians.

(Fred Jerome and Rodger Taylor, Preface, Einstein On Race And Racism (via Professor Kim).)

I've been going through a bunch of the documents from when my father was Executive Director of the Greater New York Council For A Sane Nuclear Policy and getting back into the history of the Left and the peace movement in the early 60s.

Albert Einstein was always one of my father's heroes. Maybe Dad knew the anti-racist part, but all I remember hearing is the bumbling genius pacifist in a wrinkled suit version.

More than one hundred biographies and monographs of Einstein have been published, yet not one of them mentions the name Paul Robeson, let alone Einstein’s friendship with him, or the name W. E. B. Du Bois, let alone Einstein’s support for him. Nor does one find in any of these works any reference to the Civil Rights Congress whose campaigns Einstein actively supported. Finally, nowhere in all the ocean of published Einsteinia – anthologies, bibliographies, biographies, summaries, articles, videotapes, calendars, posters and postcards – will one find even an islet of information about Einstein’s visits and ties to the people in Princeton’s African American community around the street called Witherspoon.

Oh this makes me mad...

Yet, despite Einstein’s clear intention to make his politics public – especially his anti-lynching and other antiracist activities – the history-molders have seemed embarrassed to do so. Or nervous. “I had to think about my Board,” a museum curator (who doesn’t want his name used even today) said, explaining why he had omitted some of the scientist’s political statements from the major exhibition celebrating Einstein’s one hundredth birthday in 1979.

Reminds me of the cover up on Helen Keller's radical socialism.

Thanks, Professor Kim, for blasting the truth into the blogosphere.

I think I'm going to have to get this book when it comes out next week.

Read the rest of the preface here.

Let Justice Roll Down . . .

I had not had the chance to blog this story about the reopening of the 1960s murder cases of Wharlest Jackson and of Charles Moore and Henry Dee in Mississippi. And now I'm glad I was behind, because I can also direct you to Donna Ladd's important investigative piece, just published today at the Jackson Free Press, which she did in collaboration with David Ridgen of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., with help from JFP photographer Kate Medley, JFP reporter Natalie Irby, and CBC intern Thabi Moyo.

Donna tells the story of how she and filmmaker David Ridgen followed Thomas Moore on his trip back to Mississippi, from his home in Colorado, after learning that US Attorney Dunn Lampton would reopen the case of his brother Charles' murder.  There is a lot that is good about this story: the depth that Donna went into the history of the murders; the rendering of Charles and Thomas' closely intertwined lives as brothers; the focus on their mother, Mazie Moore; the description of their way of life; the description of Mrs. Moore's suffering and of Thomas' and of how they endured the loss in silence—never speaking about it in the family, in the Black community, or in the white community; the voice of Henry Dee's sister, Mrs. Mary Byrd; and having some proximity to the experience of Thomas Moore—his long anger and sorrow and the measure of healing he is able to have now in his homecoming.

But the other good in this fine piece of journalism is not in the the words that Donna wrote but in what has come out of her and the others involved doing this work. Donna describes accompanying Thomas Moore to his brother's grave site:

It is dusk by the time we get to the cemetery back behind Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church where Charles Moore used to be a substitute Sunday School teacher. It is on a dirt road near Kirby, right off Seale Road N.W., across a cattle guard, encircled by a barb-wire fence. The rain has stopped, the sky is pinkish-gray, and the cicadas have followed us.

Thomas is quiet as he strides to the back right corner of the cemetery. He slows down as he approaches his family plot; his shoulders slump as he bends over graves that are starting to cave in a bit to look at his brother’s tombstone. Its condition takes him back, and he seems surprised at an inscription he hasn’t read in years. It is handwritten into a block of concrete, like a child scrawling their initials into a wet sidewalk. The word “born” is crumbling away:

Cherlie Eddie Moor
B______ Aug. 10, 1944
Beried July 1964
Darling, we will miss you
Anywhere in Glory

It is the only time we will see Thomas seem embarrassed. “I got to get a new tombstone,” he says, adding, “A local guy did this. He didn’t spell his name right.” The grave is surrounded by family names—Moore, Buckles, Cameron; his mother and father lie at the head of Charles’ grave.

After Jackson Free Press reader Stephanie S. Dreher read this heartbreaking moment, she wrote the following in the comments section for the article:

Donna, is there any way I could work with Thomas to get Charles a new headstone? I've set many because I have participated in several headstone dedications. Since Thomas is so far away, I would like to volunteer to do this. Maybe there are JFP-ers out there who would like to help with the purchase? I spent my summers in west Lincoln county and east Franklin county as a child. I know this area and would like to help Thomas and his family with this.

Donna checked this out with Thomas and reported back:

I just talked to Thomas, Steph, and he said he would be honored for the young people of Mississippi to take up a collection for a monument to his brother. He said he would e-mail you directly about it at the address you have linked there. Let's definitely get started passting the hat tonight at Hal & Mal's. I think it's a beautiful step.

We should also think of a way of honoring Henry Dee in a similar way. Thomas, David, Kate and I went looking for his grave, but did not find it, yet (although we were promptly lost on dirt roads for an hour getting back!). So I'll give you details on his gravesite when I have them.

And so Stephanie has now taken up a collection for the Moore/Dee Headstone Fund. Anyone who'd like to make a donation can do so through Paypal. You can make a donation by clicking on this DONATE button, which will also stay in my sidebar as long as the collection is going on.

(Stephanie requests that you include "Moore/Dee Headstone Fund" in the subject of your payment form, so there is no confusion.)

And the ripples from this kind of communal desire for justice emanate outwards, palpably. Ray, whose comment from another piece at JFP I quoted previously, tells some of his own story and another of the many, many stories yet to be properly told about the past:

The school in this story reminded me of my little elementary school, Hinze - where we had no running water or cafeteria and the bathrooms were on the outside. We brought our sacked lunches and ate outside. I still love my little school that is still standing to this day. I even go by and walk the ground sometimes just to rejoice over old times. Sometimes I even find some of my boyhood friends there doing the same thing.

The mother in this story was an outstanding woman. I don't remember getting this many pairs of pants, apples or oranges. Perhaps it was because there were 10 or more of us.

There was a similar school in or near Philadelphia, Mississippi. I think it was near Mt. Zion. I went to Neshoba County in 1979 to investigate the title or deed to that school. The land deed records weren't clear and had so many missing portions that I eventually gave up in my effort to help the rightful owners repossess that land and building. In my pursuit of this, I visited the home of Bud Cole and his wife. I took a good look at Mr. Cole and could see the physical injuries he suffered to his head and limbs that dreadful evening at the hands of the Klan.* He still was unafraid and willing to help me. Needless to say, this encounter had a grave effect on me. I realized how lucky I was not to be born earlier, and that I had an obligation to take advantage of a new day that only great suffering, sacrifuce and pain had brought about. Most of all, I realized that my opportunity was a direct result of great physical and mental pain of so many who never personally gained a single thing.

And Donna has further communication with Thomas Moore, from which we learn:

OK, Thomas just called again, and we talked this time. He is REALLY excited about everyone wanting to help. He really, really wants to emphasize that he wants everything that is done to honor Charles and his family to also be done for the Dee family. . . .

He said he and his son (who is now a social worker in Colorado Springs) will get set up tonight so they can post here as well, and he's going to post his son's e-mail address, so y'all can communicate directly with him. But also feel free to post messages from Mississippi and beyond here for him as well.

And interested locals are getting together to work with Thomas Moore and his family in pursuing justice in this case.

I'll stop here, so you can go read all of Donna Ladd's "I Want Justice, Too" and start following the comments.

CORRECTION FROM DONNA LADD:
"We didn't do this story after Dunn Lampton said he was going to look at those cases. He made that decision during Thomas' trip here, as a result of it apparently. That happened several days into our story, and it is very exciting."

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*Ray is referring to the night of June 16, 1964 when Klansmen from Philadelphia and Meridian ambushed board members of the Mt. Zion Methodist Church, in the all Black Longdale, MS,  just outside Philadelphia. The Klansmen attacked after a board meeting, beating several people, including the Coles, very badly, and then returned later the same night and burned the church down. It was when, four days later, Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman arrived to investigate the church burning that they were arrested and then murdered the next day, on June 21, by the Klan and police, working hand in hand.

History Teaches Us

to cash in...

AP Reporter Heather Clark Albuquerque Journal reports on Shigeko Sasamori's experience as a survivor of the US atomic bomb, dropped on Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. Her story is one of the many we must repeat and remember:

The 73-year-old grandmother was a 13-year-old school girl when she saw the nuclear bomb drop from the blue morning sky over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945.

Sasamori traveled to New Mexico — the birthplace of the atomic bomb — on the 60th anniversary of the Trinity Test to ask scientists to stop nuclear warfare.

"I want to talk to their hearts and beg them not to do it,'' she said.

On that August morning in 1945, Sasamori said she and a friend were setting out to join a work crew that was going to clear a city street less than a mile from Ground Zero.

"I saw the airplane and I saw the bomb drop,'' she said in an interview. "I told my schoolmate next to me 'Look at the airplane, it's so beautiful.'''

Her 13-year-old friend was killed in the blast.

Sasamori then felt a force knock her to the ground.

"The next thing I knew, it's completely blacked out, like dead earth,'' she said. "I wasn't scared. I didn't have any feelings, emotions, nothing.''

As she sat up, she saw gray shapes of people moving silently through the lifting fog. They were covered with gray and black ash, their hair was burned and their blistering and hanging skin was visible through tattered clothing.

"I saw that everybody looked so terrible, just like they came from hell,'' she said. "No one was talking, no one was screaming.''

Ms. Sasamori now lives in Marina del Rey, CA. It is sad that she must witness the profiteering of the National Atomic Museum in Albuquerque:

The museum advertised the $125-per-ticket event on its Web site as a chance to relive the drama, secrecy, excitement and awe of the Manhattan Project. Participants were given a secret identity at the door of the museum and were treated to food, a cash bar, a '40s fashion show, slides of the Trinity test and a panel discussion by historians and test participants. On Saturday, they were taken to the Trinity test site in southern New Mexico for a tour.

"Many people are dead. Those people's souls aren't happy. Why are you celebrating?'' Sasamori said. "You are making a weapon to kill us. So, I feel that's not appropriate to celebrate.''

A museum spokeswoman did not answer a voice mail message and no one answered several phone calls to the museum Friday.

On Aug. 6, Sasamori said she will mark the 60th anniversary of the bomb being dropped on Hiroshima with a more appropriate ceremony: a moment of silence in her home town to remember the dead.

Ms. Sasamori was brought to the US for reconstructive surgery by Norman Cousins in 1955.

One-fourth of Sasamori's body was burned, her fingers were scorched to the bone and she had as many as 30 operations to repair the damage. Three years ago, she underwent surgery for intestinal cancer and doctors now think she has thyroid cancer. . .

Eventually, Sasamori decided to settle in the U.S. where she became a nurse.

Sasamori . . . said she is not angry at Americans for how World War II ended, but rather hates war itself and is saddened by the actions of those who made the bomb.

Thousands mark first atomic blast

WHITE SANDS MISSLE RANGE, New Mexico (AP) -- Emmett Hatch's grandmother ordered him to drop to his knees and pray on July 16, 1945, shortly after the world's first atomic blast.

She was awake at 5:29:45 Mountain War Time that morning in Portales to make breakfast and saw the explosion from more than 220 miles (350 kilometers) away.

"She thought it was the coming of the Lord, because the sun rose in the west that day," said Hatch, who was 8 years old at the time.

Hatch joined thousands of others at Trinity Site on Saturday in a restricted area of the White Sands Missile Range for the 60th anniversary of the dawn of the nuclear age.

The Manhattan Project resulted in the two atomic bombs that killed hundreds of thousands of people in Japan in August 1945, essentially stunning Japan into surrender and ending World War II.

(Whole thing.)

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Photo: Survivor, Shigeko Sasamori, recounts the day 60 years ago that an atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. (AP)