August 21, 2001

Mrs. Linda Johnson Rice

President and Chief operating officer

Johnson Publishing Company, Inc.

Chicago, Illinois

Madam:

As a child, one incident made an indelible impression, molding my basic perception of black/white relations in America. This gruesome act and white peoples' response to it clarified racism as a national illness. Ebony and Jet Magazines brought alive the true horror and terror of being black in America in August of 1955. A Chicago teenager missing for three days, Emmett Till was found in the Tallahatchie River. While visiting relatives in Mississippi, Emmett was beaten savagely, shot in the head and thrown into the river by white men. A teen myself, I became painfully aware that my skin color could get me killed at anytime, for any reason, by any white person and nothing would be done about it. At that moment, I understood for all times, the purpose of lynching and why blacks accepted segregation.

Madam, presently, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney is working to allow diverse voices in the Diaspora to tell the world about murders like Emmett Till’s and millions of others. The United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia, Racial Discrimination and Other Intolerances (WCAR) meeting in Durban, South Africa beginning August 31, 2001, is a forum slave descendants can use to break out of our isolation, step onto the world stage and take the microphone. Moreover, we need to resist Bush administration efforts to prevent any discussion of reparations and Zionism. Rep. McKinney is asking media outlets to help educate the world about racism in America. Johnson Publishing Company has an outstanding record for supporting efforts such as this one, and we hope you will come on board.

The greatest crime of slavery was it robbed Africans of any sense of their heritage. Atrocities, like Emmett Till's murder, rendered Africans helplessly petrified and controlled by behaviors that reflected docility, subservience, self-deprecation and ignorance. The LAW forbade teaching slaves to read and write. It was common practice to cut off ears, fingers, hands or pluck out eyes, when slaves were caught reading or writing. The ultimate punishment was death. Lynching was group terror. It reduced victims to a state of "learned helplessness." Mental pain was associated with books, scholarly activities and intellectual pursuits. Pain avoidance produced a less aggressive individual with no academic inclinations.

David Walker's 1829 Appeal caused panic throughout the South and raised white fears anew regarding blacks learning to read and write. Slaves caught with copies of Walker's Appeal were hanged on the spot. Blacks like Walker, Frederick Douglas, Denmark Vesey and Henry Highland Grant learned in spite of the threat of being hunted down and killed. However, the vast majority of blacks saw no benefit in risking life and limb for skill that the 3/5ths Compromise allowed blacks, like David Walker, to be killed for mastering.

After the Civil War, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments claimed former slaves and their descendants were equal to whites, under the US Constitution. The battle to find an accommodation that gave blacks more social mobility but less economic freedom than whites came to a head in 1895 with Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Compromise to segregation. In less than 31 years, the US Supreme Court in Plessy v Ferguson (1896) reestablished the 3/5ths Compromise Article 1 Section 2, making separate-but-equal the law of the land.

Over the next fifty years, attitudes, practices and the law kept blacks in economic slavery. Federal, state and local laws reinforced segregation to keep blacks less educated than whites. Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka (1954) outlawed separate-but-equal, but the court did not deal with the justification for segregation: The 3/5ths Compromise. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments left Article 1 Section 2 intact, and strict constructionist judges used it to redefine equal protection and due process in Bush v Gore. Even though blacks have the history laid out here, and even though whites were the ones who discriminated against blacks and benefitted directly from that discrimination, the US Supreme Court says "it would discriminate against whites to do anything to change this, if it might harm any white person."

Poets for Peace, a consortium of Atlanta artists, have called for an "International Speak Out" August 16, 2001 to dramatize our plight. They are asking everyone to send e-mails to WCAR demanding a place at the table. Local groups are hosting venues to give those without access to computers a means of participating in this dialogue.

Emory University in Atlanta provides an excellent opportunity for Ebony Magazine to highlight WCAR and racism in America. James Allen, author of "Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America," loaned Emory University his pictorial record. Pictures in this collection were taken during lynchings of black men. Emory is embroiled in a nasty controversy regarding when, where and how to display these photographs of racism in action. Some of these photographs and postcard photos are of lynchings that took place in Georgia. The "Women of Walton County" are examples of Georgia lynchings that terrorized entire communities.

Slave descendants cannot keep living the 3/5 Compromise lie and calling it freedom, justice and equality. No one ever thought screams of agony and pleas for mercy could be heard 46 years later. If those in the Diaspora can gain a voice at WCAR, Emmett Till and others like him can speak from the grave. Through Ebony and Jet's archives, we can put a face on racism in America. Rep. McKinney is only one person. To achieve her goal, we must stand with her. Please join us and help educate the world about racism in America! Thank you. John Burl Smith