The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Richard Day's picture

    The Ghost of Medgar Evers

    As early as 1955, Evers' activism made him the most visible civil rights leader in the state of Missisippi. As a result, he and his family were subjected to numerous threats and violent actions over the years, including a firebombing of their house in May 1963. At 12:40 a.m. on June 12, 1963, Evers was shot in the back in the driveway of his home in Jackson. He died less than a hour later at a nearby hospital.

    Evers was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery, and the NAACP posthumously awarded him their 1963 Spingarn Medal. The national outrage over Evers' murder increased support for legislation that would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Immediately after Evers' death, the NAACP appointed his brother Charles to his position. Charles Evers went on to become a major political figure in the state; in 1969, he was elected the mayor of Fayette, Mississippi, becoming the first African-American mayor of a racially mixed Southern town since the Reconstruction.

    http://www.biography.com/articles/Medgar-Evers-9542324

     

     

    Medgar Evers


    The damn studio was hot, AGAIN. Three times this year the AC is on the blitz. Fuck em. Who the hell do they think they are dealing with. Three hours a day. I have enough to contend with.

     

    Caller from Columbus:   If those fat head liberals think I'm gonna let my grandkids on that bus with those animals, those frickin monkeys, they got another thing comin. I have had it. Those commies on the supreme court put my grandkids on that bus with those animals. I have had it. I aint gonna take it anymore.

     

    Limbo:   "We need segregated buses. ... [I]n Obama's America the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering 'yeah, right on, right on, right on. Racism is genetic; the blacks are just as much racists as the whites. It is inbred folks, and nothing is goin to change that. If homosexuality being inborn is what makes it acceptable, why does racism being inborn not make racism acceptable?"  Read it at Media Matters

     

    Caller:  You are goddarn right rusher. And this Osama, I mean can you imagine that muslim nazi in OUR WHITE HOUSE. I am going to do everything I can to see him rot in hell. You know we are not powerless rusher. We have hundreds of thousands, hell millions who are going to stand up for what this country is all about. We have guns and camps and munitions when THEY come for us.

    Limbo:   LIMBAUGH: Wait just a second now [...] Marxist, socialist, fascist, yes. I never called him a Nazi. That's what his people are calling us. Nazi is a bad word but is Obama a fascist? You bet he is. He wants us all to march in step. He will not allow debate.  http://mediamatters.org/limbaughwire/2009/09/16#0029

    Caller:     Just between us white guys, we built this country just like that there Pat Buchanan says. Monkeys did not build this country. Us white guys did. Our fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers. That's who built this country. It twernt no Mexicali for sure. Hell, Mexicali's can barely handle adobe--which is nothing but sand and gravel really. Hell not much more advanced than the cave men rusher.


    LIMBOO: The president of the United States is sitting here and promoting this division. He is encouraging it. He has people in the White House: "Eh, we don't think it's so much race and so forth," but he could put a stop to this and should. If Barack Obama wants to be the president that he told everybody he was going to be during the campaign, he needs to schedule a speech -- not five appearances on Sunday shows and Letterman. He needs to schedule a speech and say, "Stop this stuff. This is not productive, this is not helping America, this is dividing America." He needs to say, "I know there is criticism of me and I know there's opposition to me. There have been criticism of every president. There's been opposition to every president." But I guess all of a sudden now, we're not allowed to do that anymore. We can't criticize Obama. We can't do that, because it's all racist, but he needs to stand up and make a speech. And he needs to say, "We are going to heal these racial divisions." If he were the real deal, folks, he would do this speech, telling the American people and the media and everybody to knock this racial stuff off, that he can handle the criticism. He was supposed to be the end of all this, and instead what we have now is his party pushing the notion that all the opposition to Obama is rooted in racism.

    I mean, how far have we come? How Orwellian the establishment has become? Any criticism of Obama's political agenda is pronounced blatant racism, but a school bus full of black kids beating up a solitary white kid couldn't possibly be racism. How Orwellian has all this gotten?

    I have serious concerns about today's media and their new standard, which is this: Any criticism of an African-American's policies, or statements, or misstatements is racist and that's it. Therefore, the question: Can this nation really have an African-American president? Or will the fact that we have an African-American president so paralyze politically correct people in the media that the natural scrutiny and process through which all of our presidents are put through and vetted do not occur because of the fear in the state-controlled media of themselves being called racist and the desire to be able to call everyone else racist?

     

     

    The room suddenly became dark. The phones dead and the electricity off.

     

    What the fuck is this, Limbo screamed. But there was no response.

     

    Where is that goddamn Spritzer when you need him. The money I pay that jackass, really....

     

    Suddenly a specter appeared as if from a holographic machine. First it arose out of nowhere as a spot in the center of the  room and then it began to grow, looming right in front of him.

     

    HOLY JESUS, the talk radio host yelled out.

     

    You will sit and listen, cried the specter.

     

    His heart was pounding, the sweat pouring down from his scalp, rivleting down his fat cheecks. My God, why hast thou forsaken me?

     

    God. You have the gonads to cry out to God. Since when did God ever have anything to do with your philosophy?

     

    I...I...I am a godfearing man. I swear. I have stood up for the rights of the ministry when liberals were persecuting...

     

    YOU WILL SHUT THE HELL UP AND LISTEN.

     

    The rusher felt a sharp pain in his chest. He could barely breathe and his head was stinging. He had been struck mute. Never having gone a full ten minutes without speech in his entire life, fear gripped him like it had never gripped him before.

     

    I am from what I had thought was another time and place. The river, the river you know. You ever go fly fishing rusher? You find 'a spot' and yet as you step into the water and step out and back in again, you never are really 'in' the same river.

     

    I thought I came from another time, another place. Like the water in the river, time flows. It ebbs and flows so that even in the same place, somethings have changed.

     

    And yet, as I step into this muddy swamp where the water has stopped flowing all together. Your pool is stagnant and reeks of dead things; of decomposition.  Your very mind stinks like a bloated and dead body in a closet built of sin and corruption and lies.

     

    I come from a time where souls like me were put in the back of the bus.

    I come from a time where the sign said: No coloreds allowed

    I come from a time where the sign read: No coloreds need apply

    I come from a time where the sign read: Take ye and drink unless thou art colored.

    I come from a time when a rope was readied for the colored ogler of a white girl's shams.

    I come from a time where the barracks for the mighty warriors of this country were marked 'colored' & 'white"

    I come from a time where the colored's were denied the vote.

    I come from a time where the colored's were denied attorneys.

    I come from a time where the colored's were denied parole for made-up sins because they were too good at the forced labor.

    I come from a time where 'nigger' was the right and proper sobriquet for 10% of the citizenry in this 'free country.

     

    You have denied this ever took place.

    You would deny that I took a bullet in the back of my head tryin to change my lot and the lot of tens of millions who suffered in bondage for four hundred years, de jure and de facto.

    You have denied the accomplishments of the negro race in this country.

    You have denied the pain, the gnashing of teeth, the injustice that are part and parcel of this nation.

     

    I had thought things would change over a period of  five decades.

    I thought the voices of the demagogues would become muted.

    I thought there had arrived unto the scene new voices of reason.

    I thought that justice would be the one goal of this entire country

    I thought that this nation would shoot a new beacon through the stratosphere proclaiming a new age.

     

    I have no more to tell you but I have this message from Our Heavenly Father as quoted from that famous thespian, Samuel Jackson:

     

    The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

     

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     Mary Travers of the popular folk trio Peter, Paul, and Mary died after a years-long battle with leukemia. She was 62. In the early '60s, Travers joined Peter Yarrow and Noel "Paul" Stookey to make music that mixed acoustic guitars with liberal politics. Their version of the Pete Seeger song "If I Had a Hammer" became a civil-rights anthem, and they performed the song at the 1963 March on Washington. The band recorded several Top 10 albums, and scored a No. 1 hit with "Leaving on a Jet Plane." The trio continued performing together until just a few years ago, when Travers was no longer able to perform because of her illness. Peter and Paul didn't sing her part, and were delighted when the audience would sing it for them.
    Read it at Associated Press

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW6NVcqcRVE




    I miss my Blessed Mary.