He was just a teenager when they removed his body from the putrid waters of the Tallahatchie River in the Mississippi delta. One of his eye's had been plucked from the socket as it hang from his badly bloated face.
But that wasn't enough because what he did was so horrible he had to pay dearly. They'd make sure he'd do just that - PAY DEARLY. So a group of men formed a mob and stormed into the house at just past midnight and yanked the boy from his sleep and drove him off to teach him a lesson. They wrapped him in barbed-wire and beat him bloody until he was screaming for mercy.
But that wasn't enough because what he did was so horrible he had to pay dearly. So they shot him in the head. He stopped screaming as his lifeless body thumped on the ground.
They took him to a the river, weighed his body down with a heavy fan and discarded him like piece of nasty trash.
And just what was his crime? It's simple. Black boys have no business whistling and White women and should you dare challenge this unwritten law, prepare yourself.
After all, this was 1955 and there were certain times when just being black was a crime. Whew - glad those days are over.
By the late 1980's some 34 years later things are different. Gone are the days of being so brutally murdered by mere mention of being annoyed. These days when people commit ACTUAL crimes they ACTUALLY are brought to justice by the LAW and not some crazy case of vigilantism. That's why in New York City in 1989, those horrible Black boys were actually arrested and convicted of actually raping a white woman. After all, billionaire Donald Trump, for some reason took this case personally and spent more than 80 thousand dollars to put out ads calling for the death penalty saying "They should be forced to suffer." But he wasn't alone. Then Mayor Ed Koch called them "monsters" touting "I want them to be afraid."
Fear that ghetto crime could spoil this sanctuary struck a powerful chord, especially among the rich and the elected. Donald Trump, the real-estate magnate, would spend $85,000 on full-page ads calling for the death penalty in the jogger case: "They should be forced to suffer . . . ," Trump opined. "I want them to be afraid." Mayor Ed Koch was often quoted calling the arrested boys "monsters" and complaining that juvenile laws were too soft. Pete Hamill, looking back now, remembers a city on edge, maybe over the brink. "Aside from the savagery of the rape and the beating itself, there was a sense that the city was unraveling," he says. "That young people fueled by crack and rage, and armed with guns, were out of control."
http://cjrarchives.org/...
Turns out, those boys didn't rape anyone despite the media frenzied quotes of so-called "confessions".
So what then was their crime? well, it couldn't have been being Black at the wrong place at the wrong time because after all, it was 1989.
And if things were better in 1989, then they sure as hell were better 5 years later. That was the year Susan Smith lost all sense of her "motherliness" and did the unthinkable. For heinous reasons now known, after her dirty deed was done she decided it's not enough that she couldn't come to grips with her own inner hurt and pain, she needed to bring someone else in with her to share in her misery - better yet - take the brunt of her misery altogether. So she decided to cast her hurt on that someone. Any piece of trash would do (as long as she could make it believable). The light bulb went off in her head and it became all too clear ...
Police radios were abuzz. "Be on the lookout for a Black male. He's driving a carjacked 1990 Mazda Protegé with 2 small children still inside. This man may be armed and is considered very very dangerous. Approach with caution"
The people in that small town in South Carolina and everywhere else in the nation for all that matters prayed that those 2 children could return home to their loving parents.
Nine days later she could take it no longer and confessed that it was she that mercilessly killed her own children by drowning them in the river both still strapped by seatbelt in the car.
And here we are Ms. Todd (and press) 13 years past the Smith horror, 53 years past Till and just when we think we are finally over this ominous fear of Black skin, Black culture, Black rage, or just being Black, we stand in admiration of a man who just might become the first Black President of the United States of America. Despite the few bellowings of blowhards like Limbaugh erroneously attempting "his people" back to that fear, we think we are finally ready to accept and appreciate each others differences.
Then you come along, no doubt, knowing NOTHING or completely (or conveniently) forgetting about racial history in this country, and attempt to join El Rush-A-hole throwing the scourge of racial fears back into the American psyche.
Why Ms. Todd (and press) would you do such a thing? Do you really loathe Black people so much as did that mob in 1955, as did Trump in 1989, as did Smith 1995, that you would care NOTHING about what would happen to a would-be-suspect. What would happen to their lives and their family members should they have been falsely convicted of a crime they didn't commit or even a crime didn't happen? Did you have some sinister or grandiose plan to steal the election away from Obama by again using the always reliable fear card generated by racial hatred? or are you just without full faculties?
How did you feel when you got that sympathy call from Mr McCain and Mrs Palin? Did you feel like you did something that you can be proud of?
Whatever the reason, you should know that in this new millenium times are way too serious to be so careless, angry, evil, or whatever to want attention that badly that you can potentially affect the lives of real human beings who, like you, have hearts, have love in those hearts and want nothing more than love and be loved in return.