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Vol.
13 No. 46…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…November 15, 2010
History,
Attitudes and Practices
By John Burl Smith
There
is no greater demonstration of the love for freedom than in the struggles of
enslaved people in societies like that of the 
of America. Attitudes and practices that developed during
slavery did not die with the abolition of that horrible institution. The
violence practiced was reinforced by customs and laws that resulted in the
deaths of thousands of slaves. The mind-set that developed over the hundreds of
years of successive generations of slave masters, empowered by the inherited
venom from their forefathers, did not simply vanish with the stroke of a pen.
Where
does the redemption of the enslaved begin when they did not hold the lash over
their own heads and when the law was a club that so-called civilized men used
to beat once free human beings into submission? It is impossible to open up the
head and remove experiences endured, instantly wiping away lessons learned and
habits seared into the brain in order to survive the lash of merciless masters.
Who
but a female slave knows the demeaning existence of a life of breeding, not
like a queen bee, but a human sow, producing children to feed the master's
avarice? How does one erase thousands of exposures to mental snapshots captured
during acts of cruelty, pain and brutish humiliation inflicted upon one's
mother and father as siblings are sold? Can such utter disregard and contempt
for humanity be reversed in a society that owes its very existence to the bent
backs upon which the proud and wealthy sit?
The
individual can not emerge psychologically free in a slave society where
attitudes are the chains that bind and tethers slave descendants to non-viable
economic conditions. A society that claims to extend freedom to all, yet
embraces customs that deny the inherent equality of human beings, while
limiting access to the means of advancement has simply disguised or redefined
what it means to be a slave rather than extended freedom.
Societies
built on enslavement are common in the Western Hemisphere, particularly in the United
States of America, Caribbean Islands and Brazil. Other parts of the world once
embraced slavery and exploitation of human beings as cheap labor, yet those
societies evolved and achieved a measure of conciliation. One such area is Cape
Town, South Africa.
Author Robert Shell provides a comprehensive, well documented analysis of the
evolution of the slave trade, slave life and slave society at the Cape of Good
Hope from its establishment by the Dutch East India Company (1652) to the legal
abolition of slavery by Great Britain (1838). Shell researched the Cape
extensively for his book Children of
Bondage: A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope
in which he argues that the slave era was the true gestation period of modern
South African history, creating and shaping attitudes and practices that
continued long after formal abolition, rather than developing during the
frontier epoch or industrialization.
Shell posits that the domestic household, where intimate and far-reaching
relationships developed between masters and slaves, profoundly shaped all other
forces and institutions in South Africa. Slavery formed the basis of economic
and social life in the early Cape, building the infrastructure for later
relationships and attitudes beyond the Cape. Shell approached the subject from
the slave-owning household's perspective, which viewed the family as the
fundamental unit of organization and subordination.
The division of labor was based on gender, racial descent, Creole status and
geographical origin. Shell makes clear that even though slaves were considered
part of the family organization, they remained perpetual outsiders. This status
did not minimize the violence and harsh treatment of slaves. They were
relegated to slave housing, required to undertake the most arduous work, could
be sold at any time, were passed from one generation to the next and generally
treated as property.
The
slave trade changed dramatically between 1652 and 1822, when approximately
63,000 slaves were imported to the Cape from four main areas which shifted over
time: Africa provided 26.4%, India 25.9%, Madagascar 25.1%, and Indonesia
22.7%. Initially, Cape slaves came from West Africa, then beginning in 1706
through 1780 slaves came from the East Indies; there after, the trade shifted
back to Africa.
The
change in rule from the Dutch East India Company to Great Britain in the early
19th century began the evolution of slavery. The legal abolition of the
Transoceanic Slave Trade in 1808 also profoundly altered the character of the Cape
slave society, which continued for another twenty years. Increasing numbers of
locally born slaves or Creoles did not affect attitudes and practices regarding
slavery and the family organization.
The fundamental elements of the early Cape economy and society were
crystallized during the slave era that began with the arrival of Europeans then
later exported to the frontier during the Great Boer Trek (1838). This period
offers a fascinating portrait of the development of languages, cultures,
religions, and attitudes of Cape inhabitants and is the fertile ground in which
the seeds of Apartheid flourished.
South
Africa's slave society has similarities, as well as contrasts, to that of the United
States. Both accumulated great economic wealth by denying slaves wages for
centuries. Both used systems of legal discrimination (Apartheid and
segregation) to keep former slaves powerless and to reduce competition. Also,
racism played a vital role in maintaining attitudes and practices which kept
whites in power.
South African whites, unlike whites in the US, found an accommodation with
their former slave descendants and engaged in reconciliation. To the contrary, US
white attitudes hardened into systemic slavery denial that continues even today.
Political leaders in the US refuse to engage in any dialogue regarding the
atrocities of slavery, not to mention apologizing to slave descendants. Similar
to the approach of Israel with its wall, US whites continue to build barriers
to reconciliation by denying that racism is a problem in the US.
Most blacks believe that the Obama administration missed a real opportunity to
begin to build bridges of understanding between slave descendants and whites
during the US' recent United Nations Universal Periodic Review of its human
rights record. Instead the State Department conducted the process in secret and
among civil societies, rather than initiating a dialogue on race, as it is
attempting between Palestinians and Israelis. If the US desires to be perceived
internationally as a trusted honest broker for peace and a human rights
champion, it must begin at home.
Chester Himes (1909-1984)
Born
July 29, 1909 in Jefferson City, Missouri, Chester Bomar
Himes and his two older brothers, Joseph and Edward, grew up in a 
struggling middle-class family. Himes spent most of
his childhood in southern towns and cities where his father taught in the
mechanical departments of black American colleges. Himes described his father,
Joseph Sandy Himes, as a "dark-skinned man plagued by the internalized
stigma of his blackness," while his mother, Estelle Bomar,
"as a fair-skinned woman privileged her white heritage and aspired toward
genteel refinement." Their differences were exacerbated by his father's
work, which placed his mother in close contact with poorly educated blacks.
In
1923, his father took a teaching position at Branch Normal College in Pine
Bluff, Arkansas. A tragedy took place there that profoundly shaped Himes's view
of race relations. His older brother, Joseph, Jr., was accidentally blinded and
refused treatment when rushed to the nearest hospital. Himes later wrote in his
autobiography The Quality of Hurt,
"That one moment in my life hurt me as much as all the others put
together. I loved my brother. I had never been separated from him and that
moment was shocking, shattering, and terrifying....We pulled into the emergency
entrance of a white people's hospital. White clad doctors and attendants
appeared. I remember sitting in the back seat with Joe watching the pantomime
being enacted in the car's bright lights. A white man was refusing; my father
was pleading. Dejectedly my father turned away; he was crying like a baby. My
mother was fumbling in her handbag for a handkerchief; I hoped it was for a
pistol."
After
that incident, the family moved several times in search of medical treatment
before finally settling in Cleveland, Ohio, where his parents' unhappy marriage
eventually ended in divorce.
A good student, after graduating from East High School, Himes enrolled in Ohio State
University. Before entering college, he fell down an open elevator shaft while
working as a busboy and suffered back injuries that plagued him for the rest of
his life. Ill health, failing grades and a prank led to his expulsion from
school. An alienated Himes became involved in misdemeanors and drug use. He was
convicted of armed robbery in December 1928 and sentenced to 20 to 25 years in
prison. He served seven and a half years.
While in prison, Himes wrote short stories that were published in newspapers
and national magazines, including The Bronzeman and
Esquire. His first short stories, "Crazy in the Stir" and "To
What Red Hell," portrayed the hardships of prison life and the capricious
nature of being black. According to Himes, writing in prison and being
published earned him the respect of guards and inmates, and it helped him avoid
violence.
In 1936, Himes was released on parole. Following his release he worked at part
time jobs and continued to write. Frustrated by employment discrimination in Ohio,
Himes, like thousands of other black Americans, moved to Los Angeles.
In the 1940s, Himes worked briefly as a screenwriter and later wrote in his
autobiography that his brief career as a screenwriter for Warner Brothers
terminated when Jack Warner heard about him and said "I don't want no gotdamned niggers on this
lot." Himes wrote, "Up to the age of thirty-one I had been hurt
emotionally, spiritually and physically as much as thirty-one years can bear. I
had lived in the South, I had fallen down an elevator shaft, I had been kicked
out of college, I had served seven and one half years in prison, I had survived
the humiliating last five years of Depression in Cleveland; and still I was
entire, complete, functional; my mind was sharp, my reflexes were good, and I
was not bitter. But under the mental corrosion of race prejudice in Los Angeles
I became bitter and saturated with hate."
Himes provided an analysis of the Zoot Suit Riots in Los
Angeles for the NAACP magazine Crisis in 1943. He produced two novels, If He
Hollers Let Him Go (1945) and The Lonely Crusade (1947), which explored the
experiences of the wave of black immigrants, drawn by the city's defense
industries, and their dealings with the established black community, fellow
workers, unions and management. Offering a fatalistic vision of black
masculinity such "that the black male who does not subjugate his will to
the mainstream cannot survive in America," these novels challenged the
depiction of Los Angeles as a city in which blacks faced little discrimination.
In the first volume of his autobiography, The Quality of Hurt (1973), Himes
wrote that blacks in Los Angeles "were treated much the same as they were
in an industrial city of the South. The difference was that the white people of
Los Angeles seemed to be saying, 'Nigger, ain't we good to you?'"
After leaving Los Angeles, Himes lived in Harlem. Because his experiences
throughout the United States left him disenchanted, Himes moved to Europe
(1953) in pursuit of wider personal freedoms and greater publishing
opportunities. He wrote and published Third Generation (1954), Cast the First
Stone (1952), and The Primitive (1955). In The Third Generation, he explored
ways in which adults act out their racial self-hatred and transmit their
neuroses to their children.
He wrote a series of detective novels featuring Coffin Ed Johnson and
Gravedigger Jones, New York City police detectives in Harlem. The titles
include A Rage in Harlem (1957), The Real Cool Killers, The Crazy Kill (1959),
All Shot Up (1960), The Big Gold Dream (1960), The Heat's On
(1966), Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965), and Blind Man With A Pistol (1969). He
also wrote Pinktoes (1961) and Run Man Run (1966).
Himes won France's Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in 1958. Two of his novels were made into
feature films: Cotton Comes to Harlem directed by Ossie
Davis in 1970 and A Rage in Harlem starring Gregory Hines and Danny Glover in
1991. Also, in the 1970s, he received an award from the Carnegie Foundation.
His other works include Black on Black: Baby Sister and Selected Writings
(1973) and an autobiography in two volumes: The Quality of Hurt (1972) and My
Life of Absurdity (1976). Both volumes propose a life profoundly marked by
cultural and institutional racism.
In ill health following a series of strokes, Himes moved to Spain (1969) with
his second wife. He died on November 12, 1984 in Spain. (Sources: www.answers.com/topic/chester-b-himes,
http://authors.aalbc.com/chesterhimes.htm,
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_Himes
)
Zoot
Riots Are Race Riots (Excerpts)
Chester B. Himes
I
suppose you have been reading about the birth of the storm troopers in Los
Angeles, the reincarnation, or rather I should say, the continuation of the vigilantes, the
uniformed Klansmen; and all about the great battle which took place on Main
street and points east 
wherein the combined forces of the United States
navy, army, and marine corps, contacted and defeated a handful of youths with
darker skins. Yes, we have now defeated the "zoot-suiters";
all we have to do now is to defeat Germany, Italy, and Japan; or rather Japan, Germany,
and Italy; since Japan is the most formidable foe and therefore should come
first in any listing of our enemies.
Perhaps you don't know what it is all about. If you are a Negro, you should
know. But if you are one of those Negroes who profess not to know (and no doubt
there are plenty of you), I will be only too happy to inform you.
I understand it was a white manufacturer who designed the zoot-suit
and projected it upon an unsuspecting public. However that may be, all honest
historians will record the fact that white American youths were first seen
wearing them. As with all other aspects of our native culture, Negroes were
soon to imitate; and since we, as a people, possess vivid imagination, the true
artist's soul, and a penchant for personal adornment, we improved the zoot suit to its present sartorial splendor. When this
mania reached the west coast, Mexican youths took it and went.
Pachuo is a
Mexican expression which originally meant "bandit" but has
degenerated by usage into a description of a juvenile delinquent, a species of
youth common in America in all races. In Mexican districts in the county of Los
Angeles, small bands of pachuos have organized into
gangs to fight each other, to take each others' girl friends, to steal
automobile parts and loot fruit stores, or just to have a gang. We Americans
should understand this; we are strictly a gang-minded people. However, we are a
little more deadly in our gangs; we lynch Negroes, rob banks, kidnap babies,
extort merchants, beat strikers, etc.
Negro youths in Los Angeles county are not organized
into gangs, nor do they belong to the Mexican pachuo
gangs. Now, only a very small percentage of Mexican youths are pachuos. And all pachuos do not
wear zoot-suits. Certainly, all zoot-suit
wearers, including many movie stars, are not pachuos.
This is the way it began in Los Angeles. Army, navy, and marine
corps staffs, seemed to have chosen Los Angeles as the ideal place in
which to give white southerners leave. Whether this is intentional or not, only
they can say. But we find huge numbers of uniformed southerners in the city.
Most of them have no friends and know no girls.
Mexican
girls and young women are very pretty on the whole. They are olive-skinned with
big black eyes and thick, curly black hair. They have the warm disposition
usually attributed to Latins. Like American white
girls and women, they are hero worshipers. They might not trample each other to
death and turn a city upside down to see a Lindbergh returning from a non-stop
flight across the sea, but they have other ways of showing their adoration.
They have very expressive eyes.
Now in the beginning, until they learned better,
Mexican girls -- a few of them, a very few -- might have thought that all American
white youths in uniform were heroes. A few of them might have flirted.
There is some rare and inexplicable (not only inexplicable but
incomprehensible) ego in the average southern white man which makes him believe
he can have an affair with any dark-skinned woman anywhere on earth -- Los
Angeles being no exception. And when these southern whites see these pretty
Mexican girls, they become excited -- they are not used to girls so pretty.
Adventuresome servicemen go out in the Mexican districts, patronize the bars, roam the streets, trying to pick up these girls or take them
away from their boy friends. They actually believe that this is not only a very
simple thing to do, but right, for what else could pretty Mexican girls be for
other than to satisfy white men?
However,
Mexican boys do not like the idea of Mexican girls being picked up by white
servicemen. Neither do Negro boys like for Negro girls to be picked up by white
servicemen.
You have no doubt read that white women are accosted, insulted, and molested by
pachuos, and that this was primarily the cause of the
subsequent riots. Any white woman or girl living in a Mexican neighborhood, or
any who have to pass through such a neighborhood day or night, will gladly tell
you that Mexican men, both young and old, do not accost, insult, or molest
white women. They do not even look at them. They do not desire them. They do
not admire them. This attitude of Mexicans is very noticeable, and perhaps a
little strange.
However, I cannot say the same of a Negro district. Negro youths will crack at
anyone of any race who is nice looking. They will say, "A fine queen . . .
a reet cheet . . ."
They might go further.
But they will never go as far as white men toward Negro women in a white
district. A lone Negro woman, if she is young and nice looking, in a white
neighborhood, will get a purely commercial proposal from every third unescorted
white man or group of white men.
So now we have the riots. Your guess is as good as mine on how they began. It
is my belief that some Los Angeles policeman or group of policemen suggested to
some sailor or group of sailors that they get together and sap up on the zoot suiters. Every one knows
that it has been a long and bitter complaint of Los Angeles policemen that they
were not allowed to beat up the zoot suiters themselves. So perhaps they got the sailors to do
it for them.
This we know: That during the first two nights of the rioting, no policemen
were in evidence until the gangs of sailors, out-numbering the pachuos two-three-four to one, had sapped up on the pachuos with belt buckles and knotted ropes. When the
sailors departed in their cars, trucks, and taxi-cabs, furnished them no doubt
by the Nazi-minded citizenry, the police appeared as if they had been waiting
around the corner and arrested the Mexican youths who had been knocked out,
stunned, or too frightened to run. We know that gangs of servicemen boarded
streetcars and glared at women and insulted men at will, with no police in
evidence. In fact, during the first three nights, by which time all manner of
servicemen had joined the storm troopers, it seemed as if there were no civil
officers at all in Los Angeles.
As long as the servicemen were getting the best of the fight, attacking and
stripping, beating and molesting, all dark-skinned people who wore zoot-suits or what might have been taken for zoot-suits, regardless of whether they were pachuos, war workers, juveniles, or invalids, everyone
seemed happy. The papers of Los Angeles crowed. "It was a gob job,"
they said. They rooted and cheered. What could make the white people more happy than to see their uniformed sons sapping up on
some dark-skinned people? It proved beyond all doubt the bravery of white
servicemen, their gallantry. Los Angeles was at last being made safe for white
people -- to do as they damned well pleased.
There will, of course, be repercussions -- serious repercussions. The Mexican
government has made representations. There are, of course, repercussions when a
Negro is lynched.
"But,
by God, it was worth it, wasn't it, Mr. Jones. By God, we put 'em in their place. I bet they'll think twice now before
they jump on one of our boys . . . Oh yes, that's right, or molest one of our
women . . . "But the outcome is simply that the South has won Los Angeles.
(Source: Published in the July 1943 edition of Crisis Magazine and found online
at
http://wadsworth.com/history_d/special_features/ilrn_legacy/waah2c01c/content/amh2/readings/zoot.html)
Witness: Cop said looters 'deserved to be shot'
By Michael Kunzelman
A
former New Orleans police officer on trial for gunning down a man outside a
strip mall in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath said after the shooting that
looters are "animals" who "deserved to be shot," a fellow
officer testified Friday.
The former officer, David Warren, is charged with fatally shooting 31-year-old
Henry Glover before two other officers allegedly burned his body in a car.
Prosecutors say Glover wasn't armed and didn't pose a threat, but Warren's
lawyers say he thought Glover was a looter reaching for a weapon when he shot
him.
Alec
Brown, a former officer who left the force in 2008, testified that he and
Warren argued about looters while patrolling after the 2005 hurricane. Brown
said he defended people taking food, while Warren said looters "were all
animals and they deserved to be shot, and that they were all destroying the
city."
Six
days after Glover's death, Brown found Glover's burned remains in a charred car
abandoned on a Mississippi River levee near a police station. Brown said he
reported it to a superior officer, Travis McCabe. McCabe is now a lieutenant
with the department. "He said that they knew about it, don't worry about
it. Police need to stick together," Brown said.
Later,
Brown said, he was discussing the burned body with another officer when McCabe
overheard. Brown quoted McCabe telling him, "I told you we already know
about it. Just leave it alone." That didn't stop Brown from asking Warren
about it later, while they shared a patrol car. "He put his head down and
said, 'I don't know, maybe it was just a looter,'" Brown said.
Four
other current or former officers, including McCabe, are charged with trying to
cover up Glover's death. Lt. Dwayne Scheuermann and
Officer Gregory McRae are accused of burning Glover's body. Former Lt. Robert Italiano and McCabe are accused of falsifying a report to
make it appear Glover's shooting was justified.
Bernard
Calloway, a friend of Glover's, said he and Glover had driven to the strip mall
on the morning of Sept. 2, 2005, to retrieve suitcases for a friend who had
left them there. Calloway said he saw Glover lean against the truck and light a cigarette just before he heard a shot ring out and a
man yell, "Leave now!"
After the shooting, a passing motorist stopped and drove Glover, his brother
and Calloway to a makeshift police headquarters at an elementary school to get
help. Instead, officers allegedly ordered the three men out of the car and
handcuffed and beat them while Glover remained in the back seat.
William Tanner, the driver who stopped to help, testified Friday that officers
used racial slurs as they ordered them out of the car and onto the ground. All
of the men in the car were black. All of the five men on trial are white. At
the school, the men pleaded for the officers to get medical attention for
Glover. "They said we were just looters," Calloway testified.
1923 College-Town Lynching
By Alan Scher Zagier
Hundreds
looked on as an angry mob dragged a black University of Missouri janitor from
his jail cell in April 1923, publicly lynching him 
before he could stand trial on charges of raping a
white professor's 14-year-old daughter.
Historians say the instigators included some of Columbia's most prominent
citizens. The crowd that watched James T. Scott hang was filled with laughing
and cheering students from the first public university west of the Mississippi
River.
Eighty-seven years later, civic leaders have come together to confront an ugly
episode and correct the record on the death of Scott, who insisted the rape
allegation was a case of mistaken identity.
Local filmmaker Scott Wilson teamed up last month with the Boone County medical
examiner's office to successfully lobby state officials to change the cause of
death on Scott's death certificate.
The
primary cause is now listed as "asphyxia due to hanging by lynching by
assailants." A secondary cause of "committed rape" was removed
and now reads "never tried or convicted of rape."
"This
was done solely for one purpose," Dr. Michael Panella,
associate medical examiner, said of the original listing. "And that was to
justify an unjustifiable and heinous act."
Scott,
a 35-year-old married janitor at the medical school, was arrested April 21,
1923, one day after the reported rape of Regina Almstedt,
the teenage daughter of a German literature professor.
The girl identified Scott based on his distinctive "Charlie Chaplin"
mustache and a chemical odor she said her attacker carried. Scott maintained
his innocence to the very end. With the noose at the ready, he spoke of his own
15-year-old daughter. He also identified a cellmate whom he said confessed to the
attack.
Even the girl's father implored the 1,000-man mob to spare Scott until he could
stand trial. Hermann Almstedt was reportedly
threatened with a lynching of his own. Scott was killed eight days after his
arrest.
Several hundred people gathered Sunday at Second Missionary Baptist Church for
a service organized to raise money for a headstone for Scott's grave. A
nondescript grave marker now designates his burial site in what was once the
segregated section of the 190-year-old Columbia cemetery.
Organizers say the effort is about trying to heal wounds from a decidedly dark
chapter in local history.
Keynote speaker Patrick Huber, an associate professor of history at Missouri
University of Science and Technology whose undergraduate thesis discussed the
Scott lynching, said the killing was one of more than 4,000 racially motivated
lynchings in this country from 1885 to 1923 - including 75 in Missouri.
Communities
nationwide are working to re-examine histories of racist violent acts, said
Mark Potok, who tracks hate crimes for the Southern
Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. Among those places is Tulsa, Okla.,
which recently opened a "reconciliation park" recognizing a deadly
1921 riot that killed dozens, injured hundreds and destroyed thousands of
homes.
"There
are more and more places around America trying to come to grips with their
racial past," he said.
Minneapolis
resident Bradley Stewart was among those at the downtown Columbia church Sunday
night. His sister Janna, a southern Missouri lawyer, described how their late
father talked about attending Scott's lynching as a 4-year-old. Stewart said he
came to the service "to bury family ghosts."
Columbia mayor and longtime resident Bob McDavid said
he only recently learned about Scott, but told those gathered that an event
recent enough to occur in their lifetime was one that never should be
forgotten. "The James Scott lynching did not happen in a different world,
in a different time or a different place," he said.
Disgruntled
says: Tasked by the Obama
administration to genuflect before the Jewish lobby, Vice-President Joe Biden met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on
last Sunday before speaking to the Jewish Federation of North America. Biden's speech drew enthusiastic applause from the audience
as he repeatedly stressed the Obama administration's unwavering and steadfast
support for the Jewish state of Israel. Biden
declared the Obama White House "represents an unbroken chain in American
leaders who have understood this critical strategic relationship" between
the two nations. A few days later, Netanyahu met with US Secretary of State
Hilary Clinton in a meeting devoid of any breakthrough on the stalled Middle
East peace negotiations. Basically, despite the stated disapproval of the US, Israel
continues to build settlements on territory seem as part of a future
Palestinian state, while claiming to be serious about its desire for peace. The
Obama administration looks like the tail that is being wagged by the dog.
Disgruntled wants to know: Ahead of President Barack Obama's planned Asian tour in which he was
again slated to confront Chinese intransigence regarding the valuation of its
currency, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke defended
the new Fed plan to boost economic growth by buying $600 billion worth of
government bonds, a move seen as a devaluation of the US dollar. Critics of the
policy, including some members of the Fed, claim the move will ignite inflation
or create speculative bubbles. According to those in favor of the move, the
fear of inflation is misguided since retailers are unlikely to raise prices in
the current economic environment. Indeed, the official inflation rate was so
low this year that Social Security retirees will not
receive a cost of living raise for the second time in the history of the
program next year. However, with manufacturers, especially those producing
processed food items, decreasing the sizes of the goods, even though the prices
of these items are not rising, can we truly dismiss inflation as a problem
given this situation?
Disgruntled feels:
Skewed! On May 21, Clifford Grevemberg of Savannah
was allegedly grabbed and tased twice by Tybee police
officers outside the Rock House bar. Grevemberg, an autistic teenage with a heart condition,
fell to the pavement, suffered a broken tooth and scrapes to his face and
knees. The officers involved claim the teen appeared intoxicated and became
unruly. The charges against him were dropped. Officers involved in the incident
resigned or were fired, including the Police Chief. In response to the
incident, Clifford's family filed suit against the city and the officers
involved in the tasing. The city of Tybee Island
agreed to a pay $250,000 to settle the case. The district attorney has filed
criminal charges against the officers for using excessive force. Obviously, Grevemberg is white, because hundreds of blacks have been
killed and tasered by police for appearing to pose
threats and nothing happened to the cops involved; it is rarely considered
excessive force to kill a black person. Routinely, the cops are placed on
administrative leave with pay. Rarely are police fired and/or the victim or
family members awarded any amount in settlement of police brutality claims or
been appropriately compensated for injury and/or loss of life. It seems juries
in the cases of black victims are programmed to see the police as responding
correctly, even when an unarmed black man is murdered. The record clearly shows
that the system of justice or injustice in this country is skewed to favor
whites.
Mailbox:
E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls
Email
www.philly.com...Bartender claims patron racism at
Philly nightspot...A bartender has sued a popular Philadelphia restaurant and
bar where he works, claiming it discouraged nonwhite customers from visiting.
The federal lawsuit filed Tuesday by part-time bartender and lawyer Michael
Bolden claims the general manager at McFadden's Restaurant and Bar told a weeknight supervisor to end a promotion popular
with black clientele. According to the lawsuit, the manager wrote the employee
a text message that read, "We don't want black people we are a white
bar!" Bolden's lawsuit also claims a dress code banning patrons from
wearing baggy clothes, work boots and white T-shirts is part of a pattern of
discrimination. In an e-mail to The Philadelphia Inquirer, an attorney for the
restaurant's parent company denied the company has any policies of racial discrimination.
Email
www.ap.com...Black SC Civil War vet honored with grave
Marker...By Bruce Smith...Almost 100 years after his death, a black Union Civil
War vet from South Carolina finally has a veterans marker on his grave. The gravestone
for Henry Benjamin Noisette was unveiled Thursday in
a black Charleston cemetery. Noisette escaped slavery
and joined the U.S. Navy in 1862. The Charleston native served on the USS Huron
and saw action against Confederate defenses on the Stono
River near Charleston and the Ogeechee River south of
Savannah, Ga. After the war, he stayed in Charleston and died in 1911.
Descendants, black re-enactors and Citadel cadets watched as Noisette's great-granddaughter unveiled the marker.
Researchers only recently discovered Noisette's
military past.