As much as Americans like to think of Germany’s Nazism as a foreign evil, Adolf Hitler and his henchmen drew inspiration and guidance from U.S. race laws, as documented in a new book, reviewed by David Swanson. By David Swanson…Read more →
Many whites counter the Black Lives Matter movement with the rejoinder “all lives matter,” a way of ignoring the ugly American history of torturing, shooting and lynching blacks, as Gary G. Kohls recalls, citing two notorious cases. By Gary G.…Read more →
On May 15, I attended the Jesse Washington Memorial in Waco, Texas.
On the hundredth anniversary of the Waco Horror, the mayor of Waco, Malcolm Duncan, Jr., formally apologized for the incident—the burning at the stake of Jesse—who was mentally handicapped and just seventeen years old. Jesse had been accused of killing a 53-year-old white woman named Lucy Fryar, and 10,000-15,000 white folks cheered as his flesh was publicly broiled and his body was reduced to cinder. Onlookers snatched up charred mementoes and the scenes of the atrocity became popular lynching postcards.
Some neighbors in our predominantly white western rural Massachusetts town of Williamsburg have hoisted the confederate battle flag up their flag pole and displayed it on the wall of their business. Why would some Yankee from rural western Massachusetts choose to fly this symbol of divisiveness and hatred? And why now, after it has been further tarnished by the egregious hate crimes committed in South Carolina and the resurgence of church burnings in the southern United States?
Author’s note: In light of the current so-called “riots” in Ferguson, Missouri, I thought it might be instructive to give some perspective as to what “race riot” really means. This is written especially for those legions of “holier than thou” white people who may be heard, seen and read as they rail against the “looters” and “rioters” in Ferguson in the aftermath of the murder of unarmed teen Michael Brown at the hands of now non-indicted white killer-cop, Darren Wilson.
