Murders Around Mississippi

Part II: Shame on McCain, Palin for using an old code word for black

By Lewis Diuguid, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

The PBS documentary, “Soldiers Without Swords” shows heroic scenes of black World War I and World War II soldiers and touching moments of black people celebrating in the streets of America at the end of the Second World War. Until that film debuted in the 1990s, I and a lot of African Americans had never seen such moving, memorable footage. It had been excluded from the history we studied in school and from the mainstream media.

So it is no surprise to me that tens of thousands of white people spoke with one thunderous roar against my Oct. 21 Midwest Voices blog post, criticizing Sen. John McCain and his GOP presidential running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, for dredging up the old “socialist” label to apply to their Democratic rival for the White House, Sen. Barack Obama.

I wrote that the word “socialist” had long ugly historical roots. J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, used the term liberally to label white and black leaders as “un-American” because they dared to fight for equality. The news media and eventually textbooks reported on white people who became enveloped in Hoover’s crusade against socialists and communists during the Red scare. But the stories of how the FBI damaged black leaders didn’t make the press just as the everyday and success stories of African Americans were excluded from mainstream coverage.

Continued --

Here's a Mississippi Sovereignty Commission Link with a "report" on Socialists ...

Sumner Mississippi, Tallahatchie County Courthouse seen from across the Cassidy Bayou

We're passing on this important invitation --

Families of Emmett Till and Sean Bell will meet for the first time celebrating the Learn My History Scholarship Project Award.

Attendees will hear unreleased important words from Simeon Wright, the cousin of Till, and watch a sneak peak of the World Premier screening of "Learn My History... From the Past to the Present" written and produced by Ronnique Hawkins of The ALM Foundation (Anti-Lynching Movement, now Learn My History) and a producer of "The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till."

Hawkins will introduce this HISTORICAL event and film screening of her newest work that includes interviews with the families of Emmett Till, Sean Bell, Johnnie Mae Chappell, Frederick Douglass, The 3 Civil Rights Workers murdered in Neshoba County (Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney), Ida B. Wells, the re-united 'Central Park 5', Jam Master Jay, and various civil rights historians.

Her film also focuses on such late greats as Ossie Davis, and includes interviews with and/or mention of Carolyn Goodman, Dr. Adelaide Sanford, Ernest Paniccioli, Herb Boyd, sculptor Inge "Hands" Hardison, Cliff Frazier of the NYMLK Center, and various music icons including Afrika Bambaataa, Public Enemy, KRS One, and Ice T.

DATE: Thursday October 30th from 6-9 PM.

LOCATION: 3940 Broadway, New York, NY 10032 (between (165th & 166th st.) - Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial, Educational & Cultural Center.

Hawkins states that "Contributions are necessary to support this and future events for the preservation of our history. Entertainment and Refreshments complete the evening. Seating is limited, reserve yours soon."

(Learn more by clicking on this youtube video link at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGwK7qOqS_o (or go to Youtube.com and search: Emmett Till Learn My History.)

Requested Donation(if you mention this add) -

$25 for Adults - $15 for Seniors/Students/Teens.

Vending available, Thank you


Learn My History
PO Box 2435
New York, NY 10008

(212) 613-5787

Learn My History
PO Box 2435
New York, NY 10008

----Note-----

(The Sean Bell shooting incident took place in the New York City borough of Queens on November 25, 2006, in which one Latino and two African-American men were shot at a total of fifty times by a team of both plainclothes and undercover NYPD officers (two of whom were themselves African-American), killing one of the men, Sean Bell, on the morning of his wedding day, and severely wounding two of his friends.Three of the five detectives involved in the shooting went to trial on charges ranging from manslaughter to reckless endangerment, and were found not guilty.)

Penn. college students will compare struggles in U.S. South and South Africa

By ANDY ROSS
Staff Writer

Thursday, October 23, 2008 12:07 PM CDT

Around ten years ago Dickinson College history professor Kim Lacy Rogers traveled through Clarksdale and the Mississippi Delta seeking out stories from those who had lived through the Civil Rights movement.

Talking with black Mississippians from all walks of life, the oral history interviews Roger’s captured during that time culminated in 2006 with the publication of her book, Life and Death in the Delta: African American Narratives of Violence, Resilience, and Social Change.

Now, two years later, Rogers is headed back to Clarksdale. This time, however, the professor will be joined by seven of her students from the small school in Carlisle, Penn., each of whom will be comparatively examining the Delta’s racial history –– and current situation –– with that of another violent struggle for equality; Apartheid in South Africa.

Continued --

A note from civil rights film producer Keith Beauchamp --



Dear Friends,

Please remember to watch, "Murder in Black and White" hosted by Al Sharpton Oct. 5th - 8th on TV One 10pm EST (9pm CST).

Sincerely,

Keith A. Beauchamp
Executive Producer/ Director
"Murder in Black and White"
http://www.tvoneonline.com/

Sumner, Miss., site of the trial of Emmett Till's murderers. The Tallahatchie County Courthouse appears in the distance.Emmett Till,from Chicago,was visiting his uncle in the small cotton town of Money when he was murdered. The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, named for him, passed the U.S. Senate unanimously, Sept. 24.

by Ronni Mott
October 1, 2008

If there is any doubt that the wheels of power grind slowly, the U.S. Senate proved the point this week, when, after more than three years of delays, it unanimously passed the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, which will strengthen federal and local agencies’ abilities to investigate and prosecute unsolved civil rights era murders.


The act, which was first proposed in July 2005, after the Senate passed a resolution to apologize for lynching, passed in the House June 20, 2007, with nearly unanimous approval (422-2). Since then, it has languished for more than 15 months in the Senate due entirely to the “hold” put on the bill by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., which the Democratic Caucus’s Senate Journal Web site characterized as “petty procedural maneuvers.”

Continued in the Jackson Free Press

Labels: Barack Obama, civil rights movement, Cleve McDowell, cold cases, Delta Blues, Emmett Till