Gotham City Soul

I’ ve held forth about noose hanging in an earlier post about Jena. But now we’ ve got copycats on Long Island, and yesterday, Columbia University. I’ ve got two things to say about that, but before I say anything about racism being alive and well all over the United States, even in the so-called "enlightened" cosmopolitan areas like New York City, I’ ve got a message for the noose-hangers: I’m putting this out there to anyone who has hung a noose or is planning to hang a noose to try to intimidate black people: Why don’t you show your faces and admit that you’re racists? If you feel so strongly that black people should be degraded, subjugated, treated as second-class citizens, and stripped of their civil rights, why don’t you come say it to our faces. Why don’t you stand in front of the TV cameras waving your nooses? Your sneaking around only shows you for the cowards you are. You’re the same people who leave anonymous crud on message boards and blogs because then you do...

I’ve been down off my soapbox long enough I think. I’ve purposely not talked about the Jena Six case because I feel that it finally has enough media coverage.I'm not going to say anything that hasn't already been said, but I really wanted to go on record. Also, I think some folks are missing the point of it all. I don't believe that racial taunts should be met with violence. I do think that the administrators of the school* and local law enforcement should have done the right thing and thoroughly investigated and properly punished the white students who hung the nooses on the tree in the first place! I guess hope just always springs eternal with me. Instead, the students were suspended for a few days. They should have been expelled, thrown right out of that school and charged with a hate crime. They may be minors, but they're not children. That would have made it clear as day that that sort of behavior would not be tolerated. But they just slapped them on the wrist. I...

Although this blog is usually devoted to things New York, today we’re going down South to see a bit of delayed justice done. There are few things in this world that warm the cockles of my heart more than when criminals, particularly homicidal white supremacists, are brought to justice. I was thrilled when in 1994 they finally convicted Byron de la Beckwith , the man who murdered the civil rights activist Medgar Evers (I had a chance to interview his wife Myrlie Evers about that and many others things; one day I’ll post an entry on her and her own remarkable life). The story of Mrs. Ever's decades-long fight for justice was recounted in the 1996 film Ghosts of Mississippi. De la Beckwith died in jail in 2001. I was pleased when they put away Bobby Frank Cherry and Thomas Blanton (both sentenced to life) for being part of the conspiracy to bomb the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, resulting in the deaths of four little girls (if you haven't already, see Sp...