Maybe it is time we reflect back on Jim Crow

SargeUNN

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Fri Sep-10-10 11:09 AM
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Maybe it is time we reflect back on Jim Crow

I grew up in Jim Crow Mississippi so the horrors of it are still fresh in my memory. I think we have forgotten how that time was given it's power and what price was paid for this stupidity. I now live in Arizona where the same horror is starting to show up and looking at our nation with the Muslim debate. So I feel it is time I speak out and hopefully those who don't see how stuff like the debate on the community center, the false preacher burning a faith's holy book takes a constitutional right and moves things into a criminal act that hurts our world. Maybe we are just too far removed from Jim Crow to see how such stupidity endangers our society and that is not abnormal if it is forgotten. If one is far enough removed from the horrible results they don't know.

I can remember at the age of 6 playing Dixie Youth Baseball, how we had 3 games a day when we played. If you had the second or third game you would be encouraged by the adults to go pick up rocks and throw at the black children outside the fence because they had the gall to stand on the grounds not owned by the league and watch. If you hit enough of them or bloodied one real good you were praised.

I remember seeing black bodies hanging from a tree where the KKK had hung them for the horrible crime of being black, of playing with the black maid's grandson and his friends but when we went for ice cream they had to sit in a small room on seats that was just 2 boards with their ice cream costing the same as mine but served about 1/3 the amount that melted fast because of the hot Mississippi heat.

I remember a black man beaten badly in front of the police but got no protections because the law was powerless to help. I remember Fred Daimer having his house burned down because he allowed black people to register to vote so his house was burned one night and he died in the fire. I remember the civil rights workers in Philadelphia Ms. being murdered because they were registering black voters.

I remember how I spoke out for my black friends and was called a ni---- lover which got me beat up more than once. I remember a black girl that was nice to me and who I wanted to go out with and wanted to go out with me but we would have been killed or at least badly injured. I remember teenagers riding through the black section of town with the Confederate Battle Flag on top of the car as they would go up on the sidewalk or grass as if they were going to run down one of the blacks, but the blacks better not respond because they would either be killed or arrested on some trumped up charge.
I could go on and on, but the point is how these acts could happen and be fine. It all came because religious leaders, politicians, and other "respected" civic leaders exercised their freedom of speech to promote violence against these black people. If 2 little girls died in a Birmingham Church so what, the blacks should have not be so outspoken to want equal rights.

Both sides of that time had their rights to speak, although the blacks got fire hosed, beaten, dogs released on them but the whites didn't. The violence that came about wasn't the responsiblity of the ones who fed the flames because it was their right, however they didn't feel they should be responsible for the results.

Sure freedom of speech should be assured but if that speech creates lawlessness then the speakers should be and must be held accountable, because they incited the denial of others right as well.