I am so undone right now. I'm enraged. I can't stop crying. And where are the Changeling and Brother Ass-Coverer?? Doing what they've been doing for Black folk since their asses were allowedin the Big House!And Clarence Thomas? He had one chance - THIS CHANCE - to rehabilitate his damned self, but he, of Pinpoint, GA, did not even dissent. {SMMFH}
The state of Georgia obviously hasn't changed and neither has the macabre "witnessing" as members of the MacPhail family watched the Davis execution (after his having spent 22 years in jail). I hope they've found their "peace."
Photo of the lynching of an unidentified African American male in a coastal Georgia swamp - 1902 (photo, courtesy of "Without Sanctuary")
Back of photo
Now here's the kicker:
"Coastal Georgia's whites maintained a paternalistic attitude toward blacks and had little faith in violence as a resolution to racial conflict. A lower than average dependence on black labor, a tradition of political involvement by blacks, a higher than average percentage of black land ownership, and, consequently, greater black independence from whites accounted for a significantly reduced threat of lethal violence toward blacks than in other regions of the Cotton Belt. Despite these facts, thirteen blacks were lynched between 1880 and 1902 in the Georgia low country. This photo most closely matches the written accounts of a man falsely accused of having assaulted a Mrs. Fountain and murdering her son, Dower Fountain, in 1902 at their store.
According to the Chicago Record Herald, "A bright bonfire was seen in the swamp in the direction a posse went Friday night and the members of the posse returned stating that they were satisfied with the night's work. It now develops, however, that their victim may not have been Richard Young, for whom the officers of the law are still searching. The remains of the burned negro were brought before the mother of Richard Young who says that they resemble her son in no particular."
These tiny documents were purchased by a flea market trader in a trunk stored in the attic of a prominent Savannah family during the dispersal of an estate.
Lynching, as example, usually proved an efficient means of intimidation and oppression. Richard Wright spoke to the heart of black anguish: "I needed but to hear of them to feel their full effects in the deepest layers of my consciousness. Indeed, the white brutality that I had not seen was a more effective control of my behavior than that which I knew." (emphasis mine)
I know my soror (and one of the founders of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.), Ida B. Wells, is turning over in her grave...
The Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning head of "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" speaks...
...and plenty of exceptional, "we're-so-much-better-than-those-savages-over-there-celebrating-American-death-in-the-streets" Americans - celebrate.
Did you now? Not what some folk are already saying (Warning: photo is graphic, even if not real). And really, after all this time hunting him, can you see them quietly disposing of the "trophy" - at sea?
And one other thing. While I totally agree with what Messrs. Sirota and Hedges have respectively said in their pieces below - a common, seemingly inherent "white-American" hypocrisy reared its ugly head, stuck out its tongue and said, "Nah, nigger ya'll still don't count."
This is bin Laden’s lamentable victory: He has changed America’s psyche from one that saw violence as a regrettable-if-sometimes-necessary act into one that finds orgasmic euphoria in news of bloodshed. In other words, he’s helped drag us down into his sick nihilism by making us like too many other bellicose societies in history -- the ones that aggressively cheer on killing, as long as it is the Bad Guy that is being killed. (emphasis mine)
I despair that we as a country, as Nietzsche understood, have become the monster that we are attempting to fight. (emphasis mine)
S-o-o-o, "we...have become the monster that we are attempting to fight." Really? And who was the monster during slavery, and the pursuant (and continuing) Jim Crow? To paraphrase Pogo Mr. Hedges - as a country - "We have met the 'monster' - and he is us."
James Allen's introduction to "Without Sanctuary" is as relevant of America today (thanks to WikiLeaks and YouTube) - as the very Americanera it portrays:
Without Sanctuary is a photo document of proof, an unearthing of crimes, of collective mass murder, of mass memory graves excavated from the American conscience. Part postal cards, common as dirt, souvenirs skin-thin and fresh-tatooed proud, the trade cards of those assisting at ritual racial killings and other acts of a mad citizenry. The communites' best citizens lurking just outside the frame. Destined to decay, these few survivors of an original photo population of many thousands, turn the living to pillars of salt.
After almost 45 years, Dr. King's, "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence"is still right. And having a society-identified, Black man in the Big House - with an apparent penchant for assassinations and a serious case of Can't Remember Shit when it comes to them - hasn't changed a damned thing. {smdh}
UPDATE:This piece in Spiegel Online is an interesting commentary on how the Changeling has "upped our status" in the world (every bit of snark intended). All I could think - upon seeing this photo #1 in the gallery of 13 (click on Photo Gallery: The Hunt for Bin Laden for others) was - "Natural Born Killers"...
US President Barack Obama and members of his national security team, including Vice President Joe Biden (left) and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (second from right)watchedtheoperationlive in the White House situation room. (emphasis mine)
Art by Leon Kuhn - h/t Black Agenda Report
It doesn't matter how his faithful try to spin this one - let's just be clear - that megalomaniacal, little caramel drop amid all those white faces - sitting there, watching the carnage LIVE like it was a sequel to those "Saw" movies - is just like the rest of them.
UPDATE II: Seems Obama & Co can't help but swirl down Disraeli's toilet of 'three kinds of lies': "Lies, Damned lies and statistics." I don't know whether to laugh at, or feel sorry for, Brennan (sacrificial lamb that he was) as he regurgitated this stupid shit:
Qualifying the narrative of the assault that he offered to reporters, Brennan explained that some of the information came from live video feeds of the raid. "I wasn't there," he said. (emphasis mine)
WTF??!! Ask your damned bosses!! Glued to the f*ckin' plasma as they were, it was surely as close to "being there" as being there could have possibly been!
Y'all really need to stop insulting "we the people's" intelligence because obviously - THEY certainly f*ckin' know!!
Ah-h-h-h-h, but our really "knowing"was never the intent of the Changeling's puppet masters was it?
If "they" killed Bin Laden in Abbottabad then "they" also bombed a large number of wedding parties in Afghanistan, "they" murdered 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha and "they" gang-raped a 14-year-old before murdering her, her six-year-old sister and their parents near Mahmudiyah. If "they" don't want to be associated with the atrocities then "they" need to find more to celebrate than an assassination. Vengeance is, in no small part, what got us here. It won't get us out. (emphasis mine)
"The compound hadneither an Internet nor a telephone connection. According to the New York Times, the al-Qaida terrorists inside burned their rubbish themselves rather than putting it outside for collection." (emphasis mine)
Now, like I said - I'm no computer wonk - but I'm just finding it hard to believe that:
U.S. Enemy #1, who eluded not only our military forces, but our "intelligence" analysts for damn-near 10 years, lugged "... five computers, 10 hard drives, and scores of removable media including USB sticks and DVDs" around with him all that time on the run - yet burned his trash! But just for shits-n-grins, let's say he did. How'd he use them? Guess he had one of those super-duper-too-encrypted-to-track, wireless broadband Internet connection cards. Or, as some media outlets are now reporting - fiber optics cable.
U.S. Enemy #1 would take the time to run and bury (they are buried aren't they?) some damned fiber optics cable and NOT dig a damned get-away tunnel for himself and his family!
While Krauthammer's take on the Democratic strategy of painting the Tea Party as extremists in his, "Visigoths at the gate?" is hardly far-fetched, we already know, or should know by now, that they're no different than the other side of the aisle. What was more interesting (and typical Krauthammer) was this :
Sweet irony. Fear-over-hope rides again, this time with Democrats in the saddle warning darkly about "the Republican Tea Party" (Joe Biden). Message: Vote Democratic and save the nation from a Visigoth mob with a barely concealed tinge of racism.
First, this is so at variance with reality that it's hard to believe even liberals believe it. The largest Tea Party event yet was the recent Glenn Beck rally on the Mall. The hordes descending turned out to be several hundred thousand cheerful folks in what, by all accounts, had the feel of a church picnic. And they left the place nearly spotless -- the first revolution in recorded history that collected its own trash. (emphasis mine)
Funny how my brain works sometimes - because I see nothing but irony in Chuck's smarmy display of schadenfreude and his mocking of what is so obviously clear (at least to me) in both of the linked pieces. Reading them, my often, auto-pilot mind just began to drift to the many recurring images of some other,"cheerful folks in what, by all accounts, had the feel of a church picnic" -a scant, 80 years ago. But they got all dressed up in their Sunday-go-to-meetin' clothes for their big event!
(Click Then... for an excerpt of a first-hand account of the August 17, 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana - from the then, 16 year-old, third-intended victim, James Cameron, who died in 2006).
The Now... photo may have been missing its "Strange Fruit" on that day, (they've even unashamedly co-opted, and twisted that history for monetary gain!), but neither Chuck, nor anybody else can convince me there weren't people in that crowd who were either around, 80 years ago - OR- are descendants of someone who was. Somebody please - DO tell me how that's not relevant to their little, "Restoring Honor" get together!
And seeing as you guys are not bigots or racists or anything - what, pray tell, are you trying to say here Chuck?:
"And they left the place nearly spotless -- the first revolution in recorded history that collected its own trash."
First of all, unless I slept the revolution during which the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy actually fell, I'm confused about the whole "revolution" thing. But I digress.
Given the number of recorded marches that have been held on the National Mall, I doubt very seriously that Chuck has trash stats to support that "first" thing. If he does, I'd like to see them. But heis right about one thing - they've gotten a lot better at leaving their gathering places nearly spotless. Before, they'd just burn what they considered their "trash" and leave it - for all to see:
Yes folks, that plume of smoke in the first photo is also the body of a Black man -burning. And according to the Without Sanctuary site:
Another version ofthis photopostcardwasmarketed with the negative etched, "Coon Cooking." (emphasis mine).
Trust me Chuck, we all know what you meant by your racist, hiding-in-plain-sight insult about "revolutions" collecting their own trash. But please, DO pat yourselves on the back about your progress in no longer leaving any evidence of your having ever gotten together for that "church picnic," which I suspect, will soon produce the same glee-filled faces as those in the Then... photo above.
Yeah, I know. I should juststop bringing it up all the time and; I should look forward, not back because; like the twenty-something, Black brother in my journalism class on identity (no less!) told me last year during a group critique of our second, graded essay - about ourselves: "You didn't need to put that in there, we know all about what happened, and that was a long time ago.
People like him are the exact reason why I needed - "to put that in there." Left to their own devices, the history we already barely know would become non-existent. That's not an option for me - becausemy history matters.
I took the assignment to write about ourselves seriously, which meant culling together the life experiences that had informed the person I'd become. What caused most of the class so much dis-ease, was the fact that I'd included a couple of paragraphs about the unexplained, and uninvestigated "drowning" of my cousin, Darryl which was, ironically - just a month and a half shy of his 14th birthday, and my - 21st (No, I don't make a habit of hanging out in cemeteries but, they're such great - and accurate - genealogical tools! Last name redacted for obvious reasons).
I don't know about you, but to me - if a person you know and love, is found dead - washed up on a beach he knew like the inside of a shrimp trap; with blunt, force trauma to his head and nowater inhis lungs; after having been reported missing to the police, who did little more than take a report the day before -that'sa life experience which informs who one becomes.
Let me be real clear here: If it's your cup of tea, to pay "The Price of the Ticket" - as if one's beginnings had no bearing on one's becoming - that's your journey. Mine involves, not denying truth for fantasy in order to be accepted into this - as they say in the Keys - "One Human Family." First of all, I was human all along. Second of all, who died and made them humanity's arbiters, deciding who is human enough, or "civilized" enough - and who is not?
All I can say is, the fact - that privileged, white supremacists, need to make Black folk savages in order to make themselves feel superior - is, and will forever be, their cross of inhumanity to bear. And those who cosign their fantasy - will be right there with them, lugging that load around until they reap what they've sown.
As I continue my own journey of reexamining everything (defined by Baldwin as,"doing your first work over"), I have found many of my "realities" mightily challenged on more than one occasion. But the one, immovable rock upon which I stand, the one reality that cannot be challenged - by anyone - is who I am, and what that means to me.
Which brings me to the question Brother Malcolm asked more than 40 years ago:
Can somebody please just "Make it Plain" for me? Who ARE these - Blacks, in Blue in Philly?:
Lawd ha' mercy! Look at how far we've not come! {smdh}
On a lighter and happier note - Y'all can laugh at 'Toine if you damn want to!
When some poor excuse for a man crawled in through the second floor window of their Lincoln Park, Alabama home in the projects trying to rape his sister, 24 year-old Antoine Dodson reacted exactly like I'd want my brother to act - Chase that mofo down! And if you can't catch him - go on the news and raise Holy-damn-hell until somebody pays attention! I ain't mad at him - that's Leonidas behavior! (No fan of war, for war's sake - I am a '300' fan!).
And neither am I ashamed of his, described-by-many, "ghetto" behavior. I've always hated the way "white" folks, and now many of us - conflate Black, with ghetto (Oh, don't act like you don't know what I mean!).
Not long ago, while my sons were still living with us, the youngest invited a white friend of his over for dinner. The son had on some shorts that were saggin', showing his underwear (a whole 'nother conversation for another day!). Everything was going fine until the visitor said something about that being "ghetto."
Everything stopped, for what seemed like an eternity, as the son looked at the friend and shook his head saying, "Man, you MUST not know where you are!" - just as I launched into my, "Do you even know what "ghetto is??" rant. Long story, short - what I said to him, was basically what Judge Lynn Toler said - (What?? TV is one of those challenges I'm still workin' on! After a steady diet of TV before, and after - there were color TVs,it's an ongoing battle!) - to this young,Black guy when he said, regarding how his white wife had yanked his ass out of another woman's car - "If I wanted ghetto, I woulda married a Black woman!" My sister DREW that little body up real tall on that bench - and - let-him-have-it!:
"Black is who you are, what you were and what you have survived. Ghetto is a state of being, something thrust upon you, something that happens to you."
If we could - at a minimum - just stop using their labelling-to-demean techniques, we'd be on our way to a new understanding of who we are and what that means. Just sayin'.
Anyway...
Stepping and standing up for his sister, without hesitation, has proven to be doubly beneficial for 'Toine - and his sister. According to this piece - "Bed Intruder" YouTube Song Earns Antoine Dodson A House - they won't have to deal with that, "something thrust upon you" anymore:
Antoine Dodson and his sister have earned a whopping fifty percent of all the profits made from online sales of the Gregory Brother’s ‘Bed Intruder Song’. The song hit the Top 50 iTunes list in terms of sales so you can only imagine how much money the family must have made. Dodson told Us, “We made enough to move and get a house.” In addition to the house, Dodson plans to use the money to go back to school and move forward with his life. He says, “I signed up to finish my Associate’s Degree in business. That way I can take everything to the next level and be on a more professional level.” His ultimate goal is to open either a salon or a hotel. (emphasis mine)
Go 'head 'Toine! If nobody else understands that where you live, informs who you've become, but does not define who you will later be as you grow - I do. Hell, I'll make sure to click that link - every time I think about it, just so 'Toine can get his Bachelor's, and Masters too (their real educational value being debatable - having them, at least begins to thwart that, "qualifications" hurdle)!
I don't know anything about these Gregory Brothers besides what I've read here:
Evan: On the financial angle, Antoine is participating in all of the revenue from the sale of anything we do [with the song], 50-50. Michael: We’re really breaking “unintentional singing” ground, so we’re trying to set precedents by making it so that Antoine, or whoever that artist might be in the future, has a stake not only as an artist but as a co-author of the song. It’s like you said: He wrote the lyrics, he’s the one who put it out there. What we’re doing on iTunes and on any other sales, we’re splitting the revenue after it gets through Apple down the middle. And that [also applies] if we ever license the song for TV or a movie. Whatever happens to the song, he has a 50 percent writing credit.
Based on what they're saying (if they're for real, for real, that is), those crooked, greedy-assed record companies better watch out!
Kyra Phillips is a pretty smart cookie. She's found her niche and she knows it. I remember being in Alexandria, LA listening to her interview Michael Baisden. She was talking about CNN being "all over this story" and I couldn't help but laugh out loud as I drove back to my hotel. Neither she nor CNN were "all over" anything. But once the story could not be ignored, then she and CNN jumped on the bandwagon. And she's at it again.
"Without Sanctuary," the exhibit she featured in her story tonight first toured in New York back in 2000. I remember reading about it opening to much consternation from both the white and Black communities. The late Warren Spears, a former dancer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, produced a theater-ballet based on it in 2003. Tavis Smiley, someone I consider a Black leader (if we must have one), not a leading Black, featured it back in 2004 when he had his own show at NPR. And contrary to Ms. Phillips representation that the collection is rarely shown, it has been exhibited all across this country. Colleges here and abroad use it and/or the accompanying book to clear up the revisionist history that's been taught for so long. It had such an enduring impact on me that I've had it posted at the top of my blog since I created it. It's important we not forget the history which informs how we all still live our lives.
I guess what gets under my skin is the sense of co-opting I always feel when some whites in general and the white media in particular finally decide to tell our stories. But it's not just the telling of our stories it's the co-opting of our culture (a culture they had long belittled or just not cared anything about) for material gain or to advance certain agendas that gets me. I got the same feeling when Hillary Clinton's "It Takes A Village" was published. That's probably why I cringe every time a white woman calls me "girlfriend."
Black people have been telling our stories and pointing out racism, discrimination and bigotry ever since I've known myself. With the exception of the days of the Civil Rights Movement, we've pretty much always been accused of "whining" or not being satisfied or being paranoid. Nooses as pranks please! Our concerns are rarely taken seriously unless and until they are validated by somebody white. See, it's that type of institutional, internalized racism that nobody wants to address. That great, big old pink elephant of white privilege that looms in the corner of every room in this country.
I'm just not convinced that Ms. Phillips is that concerned about racism in America other than a means to an advantageous personal end. Before Jena, all I knew about her was her infamous, still-had-her-microphone-on, bathroom conversation about her control freak sister-in-law during CNN's live coverage of the presidents comments on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in 2006. But who knows, there maybe an "Edwina R. Murrow" lurking in there somewhere! We'll see.
