Florida rules that stalking and killing a black child is legal

If people don't believe racism is alive and well, I tell them to go to Twitter. They have these handy things called hashtags: #. And you can follow it yourself. It's on full display there every single day and night.

Today, racists are crowing and happy with themselves. So don't tell me this hasn't strengthened and emboldened them. I can read for myself. Last night, after the announcement of the verdict in George Zimmerman's trial, they were gloating and joking that nationwide, "blacks and white liberals are furious"--and they were enjoying the HELL out of it. So before you say my headline is over the top, go over there and read, and then get back to me.

Trayvon Martin's murder has been ruled justified. And he was an innocent boy doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG.

Let's review.

A grown man (with an ongoing wannabe-cop fixation) followed an unarmed kid talking to a girl on the phone; jumped out of his car and stalked him (directly against 911 advice, even though he blatantly lied and told the 911 operator he was abiding by their advice) and then pointedly picked a fight with him, at night. The boy thinks he's a freak or pervert and says something like that to his friend on the phone. The white man's first words to him are "What are you doing?" instead of "Hey, I'm 'Neighborhood Watch,' what's up?" and there is a fight, in which the kid feels he is being attacked by a pervert, and fights back. Zimmerman, who deliberately broke 'Neighborhood Watch' rules by being armed and stalking a suspect, shot him in cold blood.

If the races were reversed? It is impossible to imagine, isn't it? Would a black man stalk and shoot a white kid without being arrested immediately and pleading out right away?

There wouldn't even have been any trial.

As Tavis Smiley commented this morning on TV: Under existing "Stand Your Ground" laws, it is understood that George Zimmerman could legally "stand his ground"--but Trayvon was not permitted to stand HIS ground and fight back. His act of fighting back against a strange attacker, was seen as proof that he was dangerous and deserved to die.

And so, there has now been a trial. A bad one. A trial with no African-Americans on the jury. Let me ask you, if the above reverse-race scenario occurred, would the jury trying the black man (if he didn't plead out, which he would have) be all black?

Again, it's a laughable reversal, isn't it?

It would never be permitted to happen.

Travesty does not cover it. This is a seriously racist country, and some places (like here and Florida) are obviously far worse than others. And plenty of racists defend Zimmerman's stalking-behavior and murder. (Right-wing commentator-queen Ann Coulter promptly tweeted "Halleluyah!" after the verdict was announced. )

It is open season on black males in the South. Well, let me amend that... the recent award-winning film FRUITVALE STATION, about the murder of Oscar Grant in Oakland, reminds us that it isn't just the South. Certainly, I saw comments on Twitter from as far away as the UK, saying rah-rah George Zimmerman.

I remember asking one frenetic Twitterer why they thought Trayvon seemed so "suspicious"; he looks like any one of the random regular kids in my neighborhood. I walk at night around here and I pass them all the time. They have their late-night candy in their hands, just as Trayvon did. They are polite and say hi to me, nodding amiably; I have never been afraid. One of the Twitterers said WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!? HE LOOKED SUSPICIOUS, HE LOOKED DANGEROUS!

No, he didn't. Only if you believe all black kids are intrinsically scary, could you claim such an outrageous thing.

It was due to the torrent of racist tweets that I knew what the trial's outcome would be, and said so, repeatedly, on our radio show. Local activist Traci Fant went to Sanford, Florida during the trial and called our show, making the same prediction. We knew that Zimmerman would be set free. He speaks for too many people; he is their hero.

The sacrifice of Trayvon Martin appears necessary to sustain the heart of racist America, since we now have a black president. The racists couldn't get rid of Obama, so this is their consolation prize. That's the only thing I can figure out.

I am deeply ashamed of our country and court system today.

~*~

Comments welcome, as always, but PRO-ZIMMERMAN COMMENTS WILL BE DEALT WITH VERY HARSHLY. As far as I am concerned, if you are pro-Zimmerman, you are a racist and I will be addressing you that way.

If you are pro-Zimmerman and somehow believe (i.e. lying to yourself) you are "not racist", you will hereby convince me that the race-reversal I offered above, could actually happen and the outcome would be exactly the same. There will be no other pro-Zimmerman discussion allowed here. NONE.

Take it to Twitter. They wallow in it over there.

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Bob Jones University's MACBETH witches wear dreadlocks

Above, the three witches of MACBETH, sporting dreadlocks.

Today on Occupy the Microphone, we discussed Bob Jones University's newest production of MACBETH, which got a gushing (and what other kind is there?) endorsement from Sunday's worshipful GREENVILLE NEWS. As I have complained before (about a half-million times), the GREENVILLE NEWS has never ever criticized Bob Jones University, even when they appoint professional rape-apologists to their board, or suspend students for watching GLEE. As I have also said, they don't even print Letters to the Editors critical of BJU; segregation, racism, sexism, homophobia, students not being able to face their accusers, long-time faculty railroaded out of jobs because they state on internet forums that they don't like corporal punishment, etc... it's all peachy keen and wholesome as the dickens.

My all-time favorite GREENVILLE NEWS editorial (re: the aforementioned BJU scandal about the rape-excuser on the board) actually stated, "Whatever account is most accurate" (!)--which completely sums up the hands-off approach always applied to Bob Jones University, in which the words "investigative journalism" have absolutely no meaning.

What makes no sense is how the GREENVILLE NEWS obviously wants the big movers and shakers to relocate here; they want the international money-men to colonize Greenville even more than they have already. Do they understand that championing such an awful, embarrassing, oppressive institution is NOT the way to do this? Why not cut to the chase and simply print a banner headline advertising: GREENVILLE UNRESERVEDLY LOVES FUNDAMENTALIST WACKOS? I mean, if you are going to continue to rave about the wonderfulness of BJU without alluding to its repressive history (as well as its repressive present), that IS how it reads.

To name only the most recent example, the goofy, incorrect, thoroughly unscientific craziness in Bob Jones University's homeschool textbooks recently made the media rounds, singled out as an example of redneck stupidity and an occasion of extended hilarity on all the major networks. This craziness included rehabbing the kkk, who really were just misunderstood doncha know:

“[The Ku Klux] Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross. Klan targets were bootleggers, wife-beaters, and immoral movies. In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians.”—United States History for Christian Schools, 3rd ed., Bob Jones University Press, 2001

And making sure students understand that slavery wasn't all bad:

“A few slave holders were undeniably cruel. Examples of slaves beaten to death were not common, neither were they unknown. The majority of slave holders treated their slaves well.”—United States History for Christian Schools, 2nd ed., Bob Jones University Press, 1991

And you probably didn't know that dinosaurs and humans lived side by side?:

“Bible-believing Christians cannot accept any evolutionary interpretation. Dinosaurs and humans were definitely on the earth at the same time and may have even lived side by side within the past few thousand years.”—Life Science, 3rd ed., Bob Jones University Press, 2007

In addition, fire-breathing dragons might be real, just like on GAME OF THRONES!:

“[Is] it possible that a fire-breathing animal really existed? Today some scientists are saying yes. They have found large chambers in certain dinosaur skulls…The large skull chambers could have contained special chemical-producing glands. When the animal forced the chemicals out of its mouth or nose, these substances may have combined and produced fire and smoke.”—Life Science, 3rd ed., Bob Jones University Press, 2007

And yes, unfortunately, I could go on. Further, Bob Jones University is one of the major suppliers of homeschooling textbooks worldwide ... and they make a lot of their money from this crackpot stuff.

But don't expect any criticism of this goofiness from our local newspaper of record. Not. One. Peep.

Maybe that's the worst part of it: The GREENVILLE NEWS is still pretending the place is a real school, instead of a fundamentalist cult. And this has the overall effect of making us all look like yahoos, every time we pick up their newspaper.

~*~

And so, the MACBETH production, like everything else at BJU, was deemed an unqualified success in the Sunday GREENVILLE NEWS account. But when I saw the photos of the three actresses playing the famous three witches in MACBETH, I was somewhat alarmed (but never surprised, considering who we are talking about) that their hair is all in dreadlocks.

What? (double-take)

Dreadlocks. DREAD. LOCKS.

Keep in mind that witches, to BJU, are real enough that they do not even allow their students to read the Harry Potter novels. Witches are unambiguously regarded as evil, satanic, bad. Thus, we must wonder why they consider dreadlocks specifically something that witches would wear? Why would they think that? I doubt anyone in Scotland in 1057 AD wore dreadlocks, know what I mean? But here in Greenville in 2013, who DOES wear them?

Think about that.

African Americans and white hippie pagan weirdos. You know, the evil people. In fact, it is African drumming that makes rock music uniquely evil and satanic, in case you didn't know. Things from AFRICA are automatically suspect in BJU-circles. (Interracial dating was prohibited on campus until 2000.)

And so, we have to ask, what do the dreadlocks on witches mean in this context? Was this an openly-racist decision by the wardrobe department, or as Sheila Jackson, my caller on today's radio show, said, is this "subliminal"? Are they aware of the implications of singling out a hairstyle associated with African-Americans and Afrocentric religion (the Rastafarians) and assigning this iconic hairstyle to the most famous trio of spell-casting witches in literary history?

Either way, it stinks... and it illustrates how backward and embarrassing they are, besides.

I am reminded of the many 70s productions of "Jesus Christ Superstar" that cast King Herod as a flaming gay man surrounded by an interracial group of gender-benders. Um, what was THAT supposed to mean? (And I think we can easily see that now, can't we?)

The difference, of course, would be that these productions of "Jesus Christ Superstar" are from about four decades ago... and BJU's dreadlocked MACBETH witches are from RIGHT NOW.

Yes, four decades behind. That's about right.

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The white South’s last defeat

... is the title of an article by Michael Lind on Salon. Some of it really rings true to me, and I thought I would do some quoting and commentary of my own.

The article is accompanied by a photo of the confederate battle flag in front of the State Capitol here in South Carolina. (sigh) Every time I go to Columbia (I think the last time was for Occupy Columbia), I see someone taking a picture of that damn flag, and it's pretty embarrassing.

Some excerpts from the article:

The white Southern narrative — at least in the dominant Southern conservative version — is one of defeat after defeat. First the attempt of white Southerners to create a new nation in which they can be the majority was defeated by the U.S. Army during the Civil War. Doomed to be a perpetual minority in a continental American nation-state, white Southerners managed for a century to create their own state-within-a-state, in which they could collectively lord it over the other major group in the region, African-Americans. But Southern apartheid was shattered by the second defeat, the Civil Rights revolution, which like the Civil War and Reconstruction was symbolized by the dispatching of federal troops to the South. The American patriotism of the white Southerner is therefore deeply problematic. Some opt for jingoistic hyper-Americanism (the lady protesteth too much, methinks) while a shrinking but significant minority prefer the Stars and Bars to the Stars and Stripes.

The other great national narrative holds that the U.S. is a nation of immigration, a “new nation,” a melting pot made up of immigrants from many lands. While the melting pot story involves a good deal of idealization, it is based on demographic fact in the large areas of the North where old-stock Anglo-Americans are commingled with German-Americans, Polish-Americans and Irish-Americans, along with more recent immigrant diasporas from Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

But even before the recent wave of immigration from sources other than Europe, the melting pot never included most of the white South. From the early 19th century until the late 20th, the South attracted relatively few immigrants.

Many, many Americans in the Midwest (where I am from) descend from German and Irish immigrants. This is likely one reason they are more tolerant of immigration in general.

Lind includes THIS FASCINATING MAP (reproduced at left, you can click to enlarge), pointing out that much of the south simply regards its ancestry as "American" (which I guess ought to be spelled "Amurrican"). That truly does speak volumes.

However, I would also point out the huge swaths of purple on that map, which are the majority-African-American counties. That might give you some idea of how old-school white people feel "surrounded" in the South (underscoring the facts in my post about how white-flight brought down the economy). It is my contention that MOST whites would feel that way, and it is notable that there is no such similar swath of purple anywhere else in the country. Although yankee whites feel superior to southerners in race-matters, that is because they are safely in the majority. When African-American populations reach a certain critical mass (my estimate is about 25-30%), then racial animosities manifest in the North as well as the South.

One of the first things I noticed when I moved down South was that there are lots of rural African-Americans here, as well as city-dwellers, something nearly unheard of in the North. In the North, various white threats to "move out to the country" are racist code; dog-whistling for 'escaping' from blacks. In the South, such comments simply mean that you are moving to the country so you can grow tomatoes and raise chickens; no dog-whistling intended. Here in the South, there is no place whites can go (other than the richest enclaves) to 'escape' from black people. Would white yankees be as tolerant, in the same circumstances? Since most currently choose to live in segregated enclaves, far more segregated than the neighborhoods of most southerners .... I hardly think so.

This is the major reason white southerners don't like racial finger-pointing from yankees who live in all-white neighborhoods. I do not live in a white neighborhood, and I understand the sentiment.*

Back to Lind:

As difficult as it may be, outsiders should try to imagine the world as viewed by conservative white Southerners, who think they are the real Americans — that is, old-stock British-Americans — and the adherents of the true religion, evangelical Protestantism. In this perspective, the rest of the country was taken over by invading hordes of Germans, Irish and other European tribes in the first half of the 19th century, leaving the South, largely unaffected by European immigration, as the last besieged pocket of old-stock British-Americans, sharing parts of their territory with subjugated and segregated African-Americans.

This local British-American ethno-racial hegemony in the South was eroded somewhat by the migration of Northeasterners and Midwesterners to the Sun Belt following World War II and the advent of air-conditioning. And now, predominantly nonwhite immigration from Latin America and Asia threatens to make white Southerners of British Protestant descent a minority in their own region. Texas and Florida are already majority-minority states. It is only a matter of time before the same is true of every state in the South. Southern whites will go from being a minority in the nation as a whole to a minority in the South itself.

If Southern culture had a tradition of assimilating immigrants, then cultural “Southernness” could be detached from any particular ethnicity or race. One could be an assimilated Chinese-American good old boy or a Mexican-American redneck. To some degree, that is happening. And Southern whites and Southern blacks have always shared many elements of a common regional culture.

Indeed, one thing I find especially charming is young Asians with deeply-southern accents (little Asian children saying "Hey yall!" is too adorable for words) or young Mexicans at the White Horse Road Flea Market warning their brothers and sisters, "Its fixin to rain!" sounding as thoroughly southern as any other native South Carolinians. After all, they have been born here, and it was inevitable. There is a great deal of intermarriage among young white southerners and the new arrivals, and adorable kids of indeterminate race/ethnicity hollering "yall" has been the result. (And places like the White Horse Road Flea Market and the immensely-popular Anderson Jockey Lot is where we all come together.) I am one of the Midwesterners who moved here (in 1987) after the advent of air-conditioning (even though I often regard myself as a 'repatriated southerner'--since my mother's family was southern).

But the Old South ain't buying. Lind is right about that much:

[It] is difficult, if not impossible, for many white Southerners to disentangle regional culture (Southern) from race (white) and ethnicity (British Protestant). The historical memory of white Southerners is not of ethnic coexistence and melting-pot pluralism but of ethnic homogeneity and racial privilege. Small wonder that going from the status of local Herrenvolk to local minority in only a generation or two is causing much of the white South to freak out.

The demographic demise of the white South is going to be traumatic for the nation as a whole. A century ago, when European immigration made old-stock Yankee Protestants a minority in much of the Northeast and Midwest, one response was hysterical Anglo-American nativism. In a 1921 essay in Good Housekeeping titled “Whose Country Is This?,” then Vice President Calvin Coolidge, an old-stock Yankee from Vermont, explained: “Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend. The Nordics propagate themselves successfully. With other races, the outcome shows deterioration on both sides.” Patrician Yankees promoted immigration restriction to prevent “inferior” European races from further contaminating America.

And now we come to another fascinating map provided by Lind, also reproduced at left (again, click to enlarge): Evangelical Protestants, rates of adherence per 1000 population. It largely speaks for itself.

I was particularly curious about those bright red hot spots of Evangelical religious activity, which are mostly in rural areas. Snooping around (with the invaluable aid of Google Maps), I discovered some of these bright red spots are on (or near) the home-bases of various influential mega-churches: Morristown First Baptist (Morristown, TN); Heartland Worship (Paducah, KY); Victory Family Life Worship Center (Hugo and Durant, OK), Altus First Baptist (Altus, OK), First Baptist Church of Wichita Falls (Texas), Harrisburg Baptist and The Orchard (both in Tupelo, MS). That bright red square in Montana jumped right out at me also--possibly a Christian militia stronghold? Likewise, the spot in Idaho is very close to Ruby Ridge.

As we see, most of the orange swaths are in the South, and many of these spots also correlate to various mega-churches.

Lind again:

Just as white Southerners today are gerrymandering congressional districts and contemplating gerrymandering the Electoral College to compensate for their dwindling numbers, so the outnumbered Yankees of the North sought to dilute the political influence of European “ethnics” in the early 1900s. When the 1920 census revealed that largely European urbanites outnumbered mostly old-stock Anglo-American rural voters, Congress failed to reapportion itself for a decade, because of the determination of small-town Anglo-Americans to minimize the power of “white ethnics.”

The startling difference at this historical juncture is that they will not admit what they are doing. They will deny that this has anything to do with their whiteness, although they will proudly cop to evangelical religion as a major motivation (deny Christ at your peril!).

I have to admit, this denial of their xenophobia is what I find so confusing, as someone who lives here and argues with these folks rather frequently. The racists and bigots of yore came right out and told you what they were thinking; they were not ashamed. Modern-day southerners categorically deny that their gerrymandering and various attempts to prevent minority voting (etc) has anything at all to do with race or ethnicity ... and they actually appear to believe their own lies. They tell you it is about IDEOLOGY. They refuse to believe that their ideology or politics is backward or racist, and consider such a statement anti-southern.

This is why I continually remind everyone of the purple swaths on that map: whites are not the only southerners. I refuse to let them forget it.

Lind winds up:

By the 1970s, the social divisions among old-stock Anglo-Americans and the “white ethnics” had faded to the point that most white Americans in the North had ancestors from several Western European nationalities. Similarly, the trans-racial melting pot in the U.S. will probably blur or erase many of today’s racial differences by the middle of the 21st century.

But the old-stock Yankees in the Northeast and Midwest did not accept their diminished status in their own regions without decades of hysteria and aggression and political gerrymandering. The third and final defeat of the white South, its demographic defeat, is likely to be equally prolonged and turbulent. Fasten your seat belts.

Yup.

A few days before the 2012 election, I was shopping at the Fresh Market (a gourmet store) and blundered into the men's restroom. (there is only one toilet per restroom) A well-dressed, mellow old southern white man was drying his hands, leisurely, and looked up at me, bemused. He wasn't bothered.

"Ohhhh--" I burbled, embarassed. "I am so sorry! I wasn't paying attention!" He laughed, and then so did I. "You got me, dead to rights!" I held up my hands, as if under arrest. He laughed heartily.

"Welp, in a coupla days," he drawled in his low-country accent (a speech pattern strongly associated with 'old money' in these parts) "somebody else in Washington, Deee Ceee is gonna be held dead to rights too!" he cackled delightedly. In case I didn't know what he meant, he punctuated his comment with, "Benghazi!" --which he pronounced Benn Gozzeh.

I was stunned, but I smiled and nodded politely. I hardly knew what to say, so I said nothing. Mr Low-Country departed the restroom, chuckling happily at Obama's imminent demise.

I was stunned because: 1) He really did believe with his whole heart that Obama was going to lose, like most of the Fox News fans, and 2) he had no doubt that if he was talking to a white woman over 50, that I must agree with him. I mean, I was a reasonable person who apologized for entering the wrong-gender toilet, wasn't I? OF COURSE I was no hooligan, and I must therefore be a Republican.

It did not seem to occur to him that he might be talking to someone who would not agree with him. I think this is because he had met so few people who did not.

This is the South that is currently perishing. Not fast enough for me, but probably too fast for Mr Low-Country.

I have thought of him many times since the election. And I wonder how he dealt with the shock.






~*~

*I was once self-righteously preached at by a prominent blogger, that she made People of Color her role models about racial matters (I had foolishly remarked that I looked up to my mother as a political role model). When I checked the demographics of the Midwestern town this blogger lived in, I was stunned: It was 98.5% white. Who the hell are these role models she is talking about?

I realized then, that she was talking about, you know, Oprah Winfrey and bell hooks and various bloggers at Racialicious, not people she actually lived next to or associated with in real life.

This was a major wake-up call for me, contrasting the political-correctness of what various hip, so-called 'progressive' white bloggers SAY and how they actually live and what they actually do. When I bring these matters up (of neighborhoods and personal associations), it is understood that I am somehow saying something dirty or uncool--the idea that they should practice what they preach seems foreign to them. Am I suggesting they stop living in all-white neighborhoods?

Why yes, I am.

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African-American daughter of Strom Thurmond passes away

At left: the cover of Essie Mae Washington-Williams' biography, titled Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond. South Carolina Senator and proud Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond was the third-longest serving Senator in US history.







Strom Thurmond's mixed-race daughter, conceived with his family's 16-year-old maid and born in 1925, has passed on at the age of 87.

From the time I first moved to South Carolina in 1987, I heard rumors of Essie Mae's existence, but just found it so hard to believe. I didn't think there was any way the rumors could be true. Thurmond was the last of the old-school segregationists.

But I was repeatedly assured that the story was true. When she finally came forward after Thurmond died in 2003, I was not at all surprised, and I doubt anyone else was either.

From the Greenville News:

COLUMBIA — Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the mixed-race daughter of one-time segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond who kept her parentage secret for more than 70 years to avoid damaging his political career, died Monday. She was 87.

Vann Dozier of Leevy's Funeral Home in Columbia said Washington-Williams died Monday. A cause of death was not given.

Washington-Williams was the daughter of Thurmond and his family's black maid. The identity of her famous father was rumored for decades in political circles and the black community.

But not until after Thurmond's death in 2003 at age 100 did Washington-Williams come forward and say her father was the white man who ran for president on a segregationist platform and served in the U.S. Senate for more than 47 years.

"I am Essie Mae Washington-Williams, and at last I am completely free," Washington-Williams said at a news conference revealing her secret.

She was born in 1925 after Thurmond, then 22, had an affair with a 16-year-old black maid who worked in his family's Edgefield, S.C., home. She spent years as a school teacher in Los Angeles, keeping in touch with her famous father.

While Thurmond never publicly acknowledged his daughter, his family acknowledged her claim after she came forward. She later said Thurmond's widow, Nancy, was "a very wonderful person," and called Strom Thurmond Jr. "very caring, and interested in what's going on with me."

Several members of Thurmond's family didn't respond to messages seeking comment Monday.

Washington-Williams was raised by Mary and John Washington in Coatesville, Pa. Her world changed when she was 13 when Mary Washington's sister, Carrie Butler, told Essie Mae that she was her mother.

Washington-Williams met Thurmond for the first time a few years later in a law office in Thurmond's hometown of Edgefield.

"He never called my mother by her name. He didn't verbally acknowledge that I was his child," Washington-Williams wrote in her autobiography, "Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond."

"He didn't ask when I was leaving and didn't invite me to come back. It was like an audience with an important man, a job interview, but not a reunion with a father," she said in the book released January 2005.

It was the first of many visits between Washington-Williams and her father.

He supported her, paying for her to attend then-South Carolina State College at the same time Thurmond was governor. He also helped her later after she was widowed in the 1960s.

"It's not that Strom Thurmond ever swore me to secrecy. He never swore me to anything," she wrote. "He trusted me, and I respected him, and we loved each other in our deeply repressed ways, and that was our social contract."

Washington-Williams watched from afar as Thurmond ran for president as a segregationist for the Dixiecrat Party in 1948, saying "all the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the army cannot force the Negro race into our theaters, our swimming pools, our schools, our churches, our homes."

Washington-Williams recalled once asking her father about race.

Thurmond defended his beliefs as part of the "culture and custom of the South," she wrote.

"I certainly never did like the idea that he was a segregationist, but there was nothing I could do about it," Washington-Williams said in 2003. "That was his life."

Thurmond later softened his political stance and renounced racism. But he never publicly acknowledged his oldest daughter or the active role he played in her life. Thurmond and his first wife, Jean, were married in 1947; she died in 1960. They had no children. He had four children with his second wife, the former Nancy Moore, whom he married in 1968.

Washington-Williams was left unsettled by her father's death. At her daughter's encouragement she decided to make her story public.

"In a way, my life began at 78, at least my life as who I really was," Washington-Williams wrote. "I may have called it 'closure,' but it was much more like an opening, a very grand opening."

A statue of Thurmond on the Statehouse lawn was originally cast saying he had four children. Thurmond's family agreed to have Washington-Williams' name added.

We mentioned Essie Mae's passing today on our radio show, Occupy the Microphone.

May her soul rest in peace... and may the south one day recover from Jim Crow.

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Tim Scott replacing Jim DeMint in Senate

At left: The man of the hour.









I am off to WOLT-FM to plug our new venture on (yow) live radio. While I'm busy, Vogue model and sometime SC governor Nikki Haley will be appointing our next Senator, filling the empty (but still annoying) shoes of nightmarish Teabagger Jim DeMint.

The Associated Press has confirmed that Congressman Tim Scott is the man, which I already figured. Haley blathered at length about bringing minorities into the GOP at the Republican National Convention this past summer, and if she appointed another white man, she would look like the hypocritical opportunist she really is... and we can't have that. Scott will be the first black Senator in South Carolina's history and Haley will get lots of favorable press as a result, which is crucial for her modeling career.

From USA Today:

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will tap Rep. Tim Scott to replace outgoing GOP Sen. Jim DeMint, making Scott the first African-American senator from the South since Reconstruction.

The Associated Press has confirmed the Scott appointment, which will be formally announced by Haley at a news conference Monday at the statehouse in South Carolina.

DeMint, an influential conservative and Tea Party favorite, will resign in January to become president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank. His replacement will serve until a special election is held in 2014.

"This is historic for all of the South," said David Woodard, a political scientist at Clemson University. Tim Scott is "conservative and he's Republican. ... What African Americans need are capitalism and conservative values, and Tim Scott is a great vehicle for that. He represents a generation that is interested in entrepreneurship, conservative principles and volunteerism."

Scott, 47, was elected in 2010 to represent a U.S. House district in the Charleston area. A former member of the South Carolina state Legislature, Scott quickly became a favorite of House Speaker John Boehner and GOP officials in Washington and served in a leadership position for the 2010 freshman class.

He has a compelling life story, according to his biography in the Almanac of American Politics. Scott and his siblings were raised by a single mother who worked as a nurse's assistant. By his own account, Scott was on the brink of flunking out of high school when the owner of a Chick-fil-A franchise took him under his wing. He later earned a partial football scholarship to college, and ran an insurance company and owned part of a real-estate agency before entering politics.

State law gives Haley sole authority to appoint a replacement for DeMint, who was first elected in 2004 and is leaving before his second term ends in 2016. The appointment holds major political weight for Haley, who has low approval ratings and is up for re-election in 2014.

Haley reportedly had been considering five candidates: Congressmen Scott and Trey Gowdy, both elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010; former state first lady Jenny Sanford; former attorney general Henry McMaster; and Catherine Templeton, head of the state Department of Health Environmental Control.

The appointment sets in motion a series of events, which will make 2014 a busy year for Palmetto State politics. Both Haley and Graham, the state's senior U.S. senator, are on the ballot in 2014.

Woodard noted that Scott is popular and well-liked and has the support of his fellow members of Congress from South Carolina, which would give him an edge if he runs statewide for the Senate seat, as expected. The five GOP House members from South Carolina are very close, and they stuck together during a high-profile vote last year against Boehner's bill to reduce the deficit.

There have only been six blacks who have served in the U.S. Senate, according to the Senate website. They are Hiram Revels of Mississippi, who served in 1870, Blanche Bruce of Mississippi from 1875 to 1881, Edward Brooke of Massachusetts from 1967 to 1979, Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois from 1993 to 1999, Barack Obama of Illinois from 2005 until he resigned in 2008 after his presidential election, and Roland Burris, who was appointed to replace Obama and served until November 2010.

At least it wasn't Trey Gowdy! (I try to think positively about these things, you know?)

Stay tuned, sports fans.

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Sam Cooke: Having a Party

I am currently watching the wonderful American Masters documentary titled Sam Cooke: Crossing Over (2010).

So much history is still unrecorded about pioneering black artists who "crossed over" into mainstream, radio pop-hit stardom. Cooke was one of the very first, achieving his first hit on the pop charts in 1957, still a very racially-incendiary time. Black artists on the mainstream charts then sounded like Johnny Mathis and Nat King Cole, not like Cooke's bluesy "You Send Me."

When Cooke performed at the Georgia State Fair, police were called in to maintain order because large integrated gatherings routinely attracted attention from racist groups like the kkk. The film clips of enthusiastic, racially-mixed southern audiences, standing up to scream and greet him, suddenly take on new significance when you keep in mind, they likely had to argue with their families for the right to be there.

The party was an act of affirmation.

Cooke's experiences made an emotional impact on him. In 1963, he joined Aretha Franklin in refusing to play for segregated audiences. When he played the Copacabana, the slicked-up patrons had never heard actual R & B before, and hardly knew what to think; they expected Sammy Davis Jr. Variety magazine wrote that Cooke "wasn't ready" for the Copa, when it's obvious it was the Copa audience that wasn't ready for him.

In late 1964, a woman named Bertha Franklin shot Sam Cooke, and nobody has ever been sure why. There is a great deal of controversy over the 'official' account of his death, which changed several times.

He had just become strongly politicized and was playing a greater role in the Civil Rights movement. Singer Etta James and others, wrote that the circumstances of his death were highly suspicious. An understatement.

When I heard "Having a Party"--I almost started to cry, it's just so beautiful.

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Got funk?

Great Ohio Players documentary, if you have 40 minutes to spare.

If not, just skip on down to the song.

~*~

UNSUNG (documentary)- The Ohio Players



~*~

My January 2nd post (about the infamous Ohio Players album covers) featured the fabulously-sensuous studio version of this song, which runs closer to 8 minutes... unfortunately it has since been yanked by awful capitalists.

Trying again.

Skin Tight (TV 1974) - Ohio Players



This video, introduced by Wolfman Jack, appears to be from the Midnight Special broadcast, which means it may also get yanked eventually, so LISTEN NOW! I am somewhat shocked to discover that my post of the New York Dolls on the Midnight Special is still intact. Of five songs on that post, only one has been removed since (Carole King), and that is much better odds than most of them.

Unfortunately, YouTube is constantly yanking videos, rendering many of my old posts DEAD as a DOORNAIL... and for those interested in which corporations/individuals are behind this nefarious scheme to deny us our online fun, check out the invaluable YouTomb for details.

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Color Fear

I watched an old interview of Jimmy Breslin on C-Span over the weekend, originally aired in 1991.

I just loved what he said, and decided to quote the last segment of the interview in its entirety.

It's as true now, as it was in 1991... as it was in the time he is describing, the 50s.

[C-Span CEO Brian] LAMB: You said earlier that you can't go a day without writing about and thinking about race in New York City.

[Jimmy] BRESLIN: Well, it hits you in the face in New York City. It's all there is.

LAMB: OK. Is the problem -- and I don't know whether you call it a problem or not -- but will the problem be solved?

BRESLIN: It's a very new problem, and we've got a long way to go with it.

LAMB: Why is it new?

BRESLIN: Well, it didn't start until -- when did it start in New York City? I told you a movie was made in 1950 that only had two blacks in it -- shoeshine people -- and now we're in 1991 and we're beginning to see how many are there. I found in doing the research for this book, the John Deere Company in Iowa gave me their company newspaper and a lot of old press releases from the largest train ever to carry farm equipment in the United States in whatever the year was then. It left Des Moines with 141 flatcars filled with the John Deere 99 cotton picker, and it went to the South, to Atlanta, where there was a huge civic celebration there, and it went all across the South depositing these 99 -- the first shipment, largest in the history of the nation. Each machine did the work of 90 field hands, and they went all across the South. Now, and here it came, into New York they came, these sad-faced women with their arms leaden from carrying babies and a long ride.

Day coaches from Jacksonville, buses from Spartanburg; they came from Durham, in the tidewater area of Virginia. Into New York they came and they changed the city. We were unprepared for them, the city was unprepared. The city didn't even know what was happening. Congressional people on agriculture committees didn't know what was happening. Nobody knew what was happening. It was a huge movement, and it happened without any public notice. Into New York they came.

Where else would you go if you were chased off a farm? Where else would you go -- to Knoxville or to Atlanta or to Boise, Idaho, or Casper, Wyoming? You'd go to New York! Where else would you come? And they came.

This was a city that had a reputation of feeding and clothing anybody who couldn't make his own way, but it never was prepared for this. Then at the same time you had into New York from San Juan, they came on the so-called chicory lights. It came in late night flights from San Juan, loaded to the gunwales. They landed -- the airport then was called Idlewild, not even Kennedy. The cold wind would blow across the tarmac from the Atlantic Ocean across Jamaica Bay, whip across them as they came out of these planes dressed in short-sleeved sport shirts and flowered summer dresses, the women. Somebody from the Bronx would run up and throw a coat around them. I remember there was the fellow mentioned here -- Jimmy Cannon, wrote that they were 'summer people in winter clothes,' coming into New York.

These two from San Juan and from the South together formed the greatest number of people to enter the city of New York that we ever had at one time -- greater than anything from Ireland or Eastern Europe or Southern Italy, much greater. All here, and we didn't know what to do with them because they weren't white. You could take a whole load of Jewish people from Eastern Europe who couldn't speak the language and dressed strangely with their beards and hats, and you could take them and put a statue and have songs and poems and pictures -- dramatic things. Extol them forever. You could take the Italians from Calabria and from Naples -- great. Couldn't speak English -- who cared? They were great. Any Polish that came in, great.

Here came Americans but they weren't white -- wow, here we go.

Now, that isn't that long ago that the real numbers started coming in. They were coming up in the late '40s and into the '50s, but when those trains with this farm equipment really started to come, now it was a crush and we got hit with it. Now we're in something that nobody has ever done before. We're trying to somehow survive and have economic and share economic and political power. We're not asking people to love each other. I don't think you're ever going to get anyone to love anybody anyway. Forget that. Let's just live together and see what happens. That's 100 years. When you say that's 50, 75 years easy, nothing can be done. It's going to be a long, long, long thing.

LAMB: Why do the whites and the blacks, when they don't get along, why don't they get along? What is the reason?

BRESLIN: Color fear on the part of the whites.

LAMB: Color fear?

BRESLIN: That's where it starts. Also stubborn refusal on that word "color fear" to realize it's one other thing to admit it and to do something about it.

You can tell a guy if he has a job just by looking at him. The guy walking up the street, if he's working, forget it. You can tell by a look. A glance tells you a working man, and a working man doesn't do anything but go home from his job. There's no crime if people are working. Unheard of. Nobody working at a job with any chance in life goes out and does anything wrong. They don't do it. It just doesn't happen. If they would have this color fear, if they would begin to put it in their minds that hey, you don't have to be afraid if the guy is working. The whole word is jobs. You know that. What am I telling you? You sit here every night and know it. What, am I telling you something new? That's the only political word worth discussing is jobs.

LAMB: We've only got a minute or so. If Damon Runyon were living today, would he have trouble writing?

BRESLIN: No, not at all. How could you have trouble with what's going on today? And also his style of writing going right down to the street, you'd come up with the same one word.

If the guy ain't got a job, he's not going to behave. If the guy doesn't have bread, he's going to steal it. Now, let's face it. He was writing about people who came in from Texas. Miss Temple Texas gets off a bus on a Friday, meets a guy and comes around on Monday morning with a brand-new mink coat and says, "Look what I found in the subway." Well, they were coming in from out of town and making it. Now, all you need is somebody coming in from the south end of Brooklyn, or his family that followed him, who gets ahead -- gets some bread and gets ahead in the world. There's no trouble. Jobs. He would understand that. If the guy is working, everything's all right.

I'm confident in that.

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Occupy Easter (and similar sentiments)

Gregg Jocoy, intrepid producer of the fabulous Daisy Deadhead Show, expresses himself. (Photo from last week's Occupation.)





It has been 22 years since I missed any part of the Paschal Triduum. I did not want to write about this fact, until I was certain I could do it. And I wasn't at all sure; I don't mind telling you it is exactly like breaking an addiction. I have tried before and failed.

This year, success. In fact, roaring success, and I have been rewarded with more insights than I readily know what to do with. I will try to record some of these here. Wisdom means nothing if it isn't shared.

~*~

This year is the first year I did not attend Maundy Thursday Mass, Tenebrae (and/or Veneration of the Cross) or the Easter Vigil. It's a very strange sensation, a lot like losing your watch.

I wore a watch for years, and then quit after I got my wrist tattoo. It was jarring at first, then I realized I could estimate the time very well without it, at least within 5-10 minutes.

Going without my annual springtime ritual was daunting. It is so deeply ingrained in my psyche that I thought I might forget who I am. Again, jarring at first, and then I realized (emotionally, not just intellectually) I have entered a faith tradition that maintains the 'unchanging self' is an illusion. There is no reason to chastise myself for impermanence (anicca), and in fact, it is a natural phenomenon we should carefully observe, expect and welcome, as we welcome the seasons.

I have passed through the season of Catholicism.

And when you say it like that, it isn't nearly as scary.

~*~

We had a General Assembly today, Easter Sunday, which made it Occupy Easter. Writing that on a local Facebook page ("Occupy Easter!") got two local dudes all fired up and fuming at me, for reasons I am not sure I understand. Either they believe you should not demonstrate on a Christian holiday, or they believe you should... not quite sure what they were getting at. Apparently putting the two words together, Occupy and Easter, is what upset them so much. I couldn't figure out if they were religious or not, and maybe they couldn't either.

Yes, folks, things are getting mighty weird out there.

As I said on my radio show last week, it appears open racist war has been declared on African-Americans, specifically. The George Zimmerman apologists have streamed out of the woodwork, eagerly congratulating Zimmerman for shooting an unarmed black boy. They are serious too. A 68-year-old black veteran in New York, Kenneth Chamberlain, was shot in his home, apparently because they believed it wasn't really his home. A well-known and respected conservative columnist, John Derbyshire, was fired from the National Review because of a ravingly-racist column he wrote, filled with "talking points" that he shares with his children about how you shouldn't associate with too many blacks, go to heavily-black events, and "before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white." (Yes, I'm afraid it's all like that.)

In addition, the comments on this column were one long, horrific, endless litany of compliments for Derbyshire; the racists safely hidden behind their cute, made-up, untraceable, anonymous screen names like "Paul Ryan" and "HamletsGhost" (I couldn't hold back and added my two cents, of course).

What's going on?

As I believed during the ascent of the misguided Tea Party, I think the fact of a black president has caused them to become thoroughly discombobulated. I can't think of any other reason they have completely flipped their cookies.

I remember my husband replaying one Tea Party clip over and over on YouTube, a woman at a Town Meeting angrily proclaiming she "wanted her country back"--which made us wonder what she was talking about. Does she think she owns the whole country, all by herself? And where did she get an idea like that? Did somebody sell it? (Actually yes, Goldman Sachs did, but that doesn't seem to be what she was referring to.) She was a birther, and announced Obama was born in Kenya, her voice shaking with emotion.

Similarly, one of the angry (white male conservative) commenters who loved the column by racist Derbyshire, features a photo of Detroit in the 50s on the masthead of his blog. He captions the photo: I WANT THAT DETROIT BACK.

And this is the crux of it, isn't it? He wants to go back to the days when blacks were in their place, and they weren't rubbing elbows with the likes of him. One wonders if Mr Rightwing Blogger actually lives in modern-day Detroit? I'll bet he doesn't. He left Detroit willingly, waves of white flight at his back, and then shows tremendous fury that the city no longer belongs to him. And whose fault is that? Why did you leave, in that case?

Derbyshire counsels his children to avoid the multicultural and multiracial public square, to avoid the places and events that have "too many" blacks. And if they do, won't this make his kids even angrier... as Mr Rightwing Blogger is? As the birther-lady was? They have been taught that the blacks are TAKING OVER; the psychology of white flight is that whites and blacks cannot possibly co-exist in the same place. It's very territorial at base--the concept is that the place belongs to THEM or to US, and at some point, critical mass means it's theirs, and the whites run away in droves.

And they nurse the illusion that they have been banished, when in actuality, they have banished themselves.

They blame the blacks for the results of their own racism, as Mr Rightwing Blogger fusses that he wants his "old Detroit" back. Well, where did it go? Answer: white people like him left Detroit for whoever remained, for whoever came after. And then, they can blame the people who stayed, rather than themselves, for their own cowardice. (As I have written before, I have seen this over and over again.) As I read the comments on the Derbyshire piece, filled with taunts to the white liberals, that they should "go for a walk in a multiracial neighborhood"--I was flabbergasted. Do they consider blacks to be WILD ANIMALS, is that it? Because it sure does sound that way.

I comforted myself after reading this racist insanity, by going for a walk in my heavily-black, multiracial neighborhood. I was not accosted a single time.

~*~

My radio show Saturday featured my usual Tea Party-caller and sometime-commenter, who was also the subject of a discussion today, as we Occupied Easter. He is stuck on birth control (uppity women wanting to control their own lives, is a very sore subject with these people) and told me if I wanted government to buy birth control, then I can't complain when government ____ (fill in the blank). I asked him what was the difference between the dreaded Obamacare and Social Security or Medicare? Or government funds paying for Emergency Room treatment in public hospitals?

He replied, finally and truthfully, that he wanted to end all Social Security. Yes, finally, after months of goading, I got him to admit it.

Ending Social Security is basically advocating the mass deaths of sick, old and disabled people. Teabaggers who think this way intend to put disabled people down like dogs, since of course, that will be the actual result of this dogma put into practice. (After all, it was before.)

But we have a modest proposal.

If these conservatives want to renounce Social Security, they should be allowed to do so. (No, they don't get any refunds, just as us anti-war people don't get refunds on our war taxes and us vegetarians don't get refunds on meat-inspection taxes and so forth... sorry about that!) If they publicly announce that Social Security should be ended, we need to present them with an affidavit or some other legal waiver, and get them to sign on the dotted line. (I guess this would necessitate a new law or something, but hey, I am all for it.) This handy-dandy affidavit, which every liberal and card-carrying member of MoveOn shall have on their person at all times (needless to say), will immediately allow the gum-flapping teabagger in question to waive their rights to all future government aid: police, EMS, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, libraries, public schools, water fountains, parks, national monuments, The Smithsonian, etc.

And to enforce this new law, they would have a chip implanted and wear something like a Medic-Alert bracelet, which says: Do Not Resuscitate. If found on road half-dead, leave behind, do not call 911. (We should be able to easily devise a chip that helpfully BEEPS LOUDLY every time they enter public establishments, just like the library books that beep when they haven't been properly checked out.) Think of the huge amounts of money this would save, as the conservatives actually practice what they preach and stop being hypocritical liars! As of course, they will eagerly sign these documents IN DROVES.

I think this is a great idea. Who's with me?

Now, at first, the rise of deaths (leading to far less Republican voters, a pleasant short-term side effect) will alarm everyone, and finally, somebody will cry and squeal as they lay dying (quickly going viral on YouTube) that they are SORRREEEE SORRREEEE SORRREEEEEEEEEEEEE they signed the waiver and tearfully beg, whilst bleeding to death, to be taken to an Emergency Room after an accident. It will probably be some attractive white sorority girl, and it will make the news on all the cable channels for weeks on end. Fox News will plead that this innocent girl could not possibly have known the implications of what she was signing, and didn't intend to waive her ER privileges. She only meant the black people! She didn't know she would ever need an ER! (((sobs))) What a terrible misunderstanding!

And the law will be repealed, and that will be that.

But until then? Sounds like a lot of fun, and I say, introduce the waiver for them to sign IMMEDIATELY! The chip may take a little longer, but if you can implant nervous poodles with a chip to guarantee their way back to their frantic owners, we can certainly implant Tea Partiers with a chip to keep them out of OUR public hospitals and parks. Won't that be GREAT?

After a few dozen of them drop dead, they will get a clue and shut up. Or maybe not!

This means there will be a lot more STUFF for the rest of us.

I admit, I do feel sorry for the disabled children of the Tea Partiers, brainwashed to refuse life-saving medical care. But like they say, in every omelet you break a few eggs, etc. I am sure my Tea Party-caller will understand. And I am sure he will heartily agree about the signing the waiver!

Unless he is another Tea Party hypocrite, of course... and you don't think THAT could be true, do you?

(giggles)

~*~

Hope you all had a happy Easter. Here is DEAD AIR's official Easter song, which of course, I still love. The idea of rebirth and transformation is a recurring theme in all faith traditions.

It always makes me happy.

After the Goldrush - Prelude

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Rally photos: "I am Trayvon Martin"

Today in Greenville, Occupiers attended the Justice for Trayvon Martin rally in Cleveland Park. Photos below. (you can click to enlarge)



The choice of the Cleveland Park venue was especially pertinent. Black teenagers have been harassed out of the park repeatedly by local law enforcement. None of the speakers mentioned these past events; the curfews invoked, the constant police surveillance of the park, etc. But for those of us who have lived here long enough, the park's racist history hovered over the entire afternoon, as various speakers talked about their fear for their own sons.

One speaker mentioned that her son, training for the track team at school, began running at all hours of the day and night. At one point, police brought him home, because "he was running." The speaker wondered out loud if it was safe for black men to run at night?

Traci Fant, organizer of the event, was especially moving in her speech, as was Rev. David Kennedy, whom I am proud to say I have demonstrated with before on two occasions. There were about 15-20 preachers in attendance, lending ample moral authority to the protest. Several elected officials, including local legend and political powerhouse Lottie Gibson, were also present and addressed the rally.

Chants of "No Justice! No Peace!" (or, you could say, "Know Justice, Know Peace") and "I am Trayvon Martin" rang through the park, amid all the beautiful flowering trees. I was disappointed that more white people did not attend the rally, but there were some of us. (Why not hundreds?)

When conservatives like Newt Gingrich announce that Barack Obama is "disgraceful" for caring about Trayvon and his family, you have to wonder just who he is pandering to. This must be what they want to hear.

It explains a lot.

~*~

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Segregation begins at home

Historic photograph: March 21, 1965, the March from Selma to Montgomery.







The famous US Civil Rights march from Selma to Montgomery is being reenacted this week, and I was watching the Reverend Al Sharpton (organizer) on television, talking about it. At the same time, I was grieving the loss of my old friend Terri, and I was looking up some of our old haunts in Columbus, Ohio. Much has changed; so much, I often barely recognize the place. (Google Street View is an amazing invention.) I couldn't find Crystal Swim Club, where we spent the majority of our summers. When I last visited Columbus (2006), I had vainly tried to find it, circling and re-circling the neighborhood.

How do you hide two enormous pools like that? Was it smaller than I remembered? WHERE'D IT GO?

And then I found the blog of one Rick Minerd, ex-Chief of Police in Columbus. He wrote an entry on Crystal! (Pause for commercial: THIS is why blogs are so important, folks. We bring you the little-known history of real people and their daily lives.)

And yes, there it was. Had I forgotten?

As I watched the Reverend Sharpton, I was jolted back into reality. White reality.

It was a segregated pool. Like, by design, not by accident.

Well, of course it was. Had I forgotten?

Actually, yes. I had.

Perhaps I had believed that black people just didn't want to be with us. Why would they? White people, I had already noticed as a child, were often pretty nasty to black people, and if I was black, I wouldn't want to be around us either. In fact, the integration of our neighborhood and school was happening at that very same time, and we were all learning (in school anyway), to get along. But we lived on one side of the neighborhood and they lived on another. I didn't question this. I was a child, and it seemed the way of the world.

During the summers, we thought, they go their way and we go ours. It never really occurred to us that this was by design, on purpose.

Below, an excerpt from Minerd's entry on the Crystal Swim Club, which by the way, made me swoon with nostalgia. The description is so dead-on (DOGHOUSES!) that I started sobbing all over again, with memories of my old friend, Pleasant Valley Sunday, and daring each other to jump into the deep end.

Minerd accurately describes how we saved our brave little pennies, all year long:

In the early 1960s it was customary for kids like me to save money year-round for the opportunity to purchase a season membership to the Crystal, a pool in South Columbus located on the corner of Champion Avenue and Markison Avenue. I remember saving change in a jar and occasionally dumping it across my bed and counting it and the euphoria I felt knowing that when the tickets went on sale I would have enough to buy one. That was probably the first lesson my parents taught me in working and saving for what was important.

If I remember correctly the season "ticket" cost around ten dollars and a member could take along a pal who was a non-member who would be allowed in for fifty cents provided that pal was a white person.

It was that last sentence that jolted me back to reality. Was that really true? Of course it was. I never saw a single black person there, ever. But this did not seem strange to me.

As one of a minority of white people in the apartment complex I now live in, it suddenly seems so amazing that I didn't notice the whiteness, as I surely would now. But again, I was a child, and I did not question.

And even though the facility has long been gone I can still recall vividly the lay of the land within its fenced off boundaries. Upon arrival following a two mile walk from our home a member would enter on the Champion Avenue side of it and show their ticket to an employee who sat at a window just inside the main entrance. Then proceeding directly to a changing room where street clothing would be placed in metal baskets and handed to a guy at a counter who would give you a coin shaped object with a number on it to track your property for retrieval at the end of the day.

After changing into swimming trunks and exiting that room you saw what we called the big pool with depths ranging from around three feet at the shallow end to nine at the deep end where there were two diving boards. One just a few feet above the water and a second high dive for bolder swimmers.

Next to that was a smaller pool that we called the new pool and was one that was only five feet deep and usually used more by older members. Near the larger pool was a snack bar that sold potato chips, sodas and candy products and beside it was a small basketball court and a slab of concrete with one wall where some played handball. And scattered around the grassy areas were several multi-colored triangular wooden objects we called dog houses.

They were perfect for sun bathers to sit on a towel on the ground with their backs against it and they served as mini retreats, like camp-sites anytime the life guards would blow the whistles to signal rest periods, usually lasting ten minutes when all swimmers were required to get out of the larger pool. Adults were allowed to remain in the smaller pool during rest periods and I remember thinking during those times as I did often that I wished I were older.

I have mentioned the Girls and Boys Swims (in jest) on this blog before. I had forgotten the numbered coins, but I certainly remember the changing-rooms, and how we squealed with excitement as we smelled the chlorine. We changed in a hyperactive blur, shedding street clothes and racing out to the pools, where all of us extremely pale, blonde and redheaded children soaked up deadly levels of UV rays ... and whoever heard of sunscreen in those days?

Those of us who remember swimming at the Crystal also remember that it was a private club that operated before there were laws forbidding discrimination based on a person's race. It was a cooling spot for white people only.

However, following the civil rights movement of the mid 1960s it became illegal for businesses and private clubs to exclude people because of their race and instead of changing with the times and permitting non-whites entry into the Crystal Swim Club the owners elected to shut it down. The pools were filled with ashes and discarded debris trucked in from nearby Buckeye Steel Castings Company... like filling them with the cremated remains of a disappearing era.

For a number of years the location was operated by another organization as a private club but one without any sign of what it had been. The earth where those pools once were showed signs of discoloration from what was beneath it and the outlines of where they were was visible for several years but if one didn't know the history of the spot they probably wouldn't have known what it was.

Minerd mentions the irony that the neighborhood is now predominantly African-American, and the people who now live in the houses on that spot? Are black. (Do they know what was there before?)

Although it is easy to put down those of us from the past for our resounding racial cluelessness, I have to ask: where are all the public city swimming pools now, for working class kids (of whatever race) to go to? There are few-to-none here (mostly YMCA and YWCA), and from all I have been able to discern, public swimming pools are mostly a thing of the past. Middle-class kids go to pools in their friend's backyards. (I never knew anyone who had an outdoor pool when I was growing up; city yards are notoriously small and there wouldn't have been enough room, even if you had wanted one.) Segregation is not over, it has been taken private and local. If you don't have the money for an expensive membership to the Y, if you don't know someone with an outdoor pool or live in a suburban enclave or apartment complex that provides one for its members, you don't swim.

That leaves out a lot of kids. It certainly would have left ME out.

There may be white people reading this who have never been swimming with minorities, and will believe that they are not like me and my backward childhood. Since segregation isn't an actual written "rule" in a club charter someplace--well, then they believe it really isn't real segregation, even if the results are the same.

But it is.

And so, they paved over the pools rather than open them up to blacks.

And it has pretty much stayed that way, hasn't it?

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The Real Daisy

... was my grandmother. I have no idea when or where this photo was taken, but it was probably in Pittsburgh.

Her eyes were so black, you couldn't even see the pupils. Her hair was likewise very black, naturally curly and silky.

My grandmother was Melungeon, which I have always intended to blog about, but there is so little known about them, I don't know exactly what to write. Suffice to say, they were very WEIRD backwoods people with all kinds of BIZARRE traditions you never heard of. (I later understood this is why my family was so odd and never fit in with the other nice, Midwestern families on the block.) Her youngest brother (who never left the backwoods) had an indescribable, hard-to-place accent that was nearly indecipherable, as did both of her parents. It went beyond mere Appalachian accents, and it was nice to finally learn the reason why.

When the Melungeons were asked questions by census takers, they told them all kinds of creative stories, claiming to be Portuguese, Arabs, Jews, and whatever else they thought the census-taker wanted to hear. That's why nobody knew for sure what race/ethnicity they were, and historians are still arguing over it. Much has finally been sorted out through DNA: Melungeons were "tri-racial isolates" -- Native American indigenous people (and refugees from colonial encroachment) and free African-Americans, intermarried with white colonists who decided to go off and live in the wilderness for whatever reasons. This accounts for their deep secrecy and suspicion of strangers (and especially the government).

When white colonists eventually migrated to the Cumberland Gap and the New River (where my grandmother was born), they found these strange folks already living there.

I am interested in learning more, as it becomes known. In studying the Melungeons, it is fascinating to note how some people don't mind being one of the first Americans, but twist themselves in knots to deny the African ancestors. My grandmother told me that as a child, she always knew there were Africans in her family tree... but that is not the rude terminology she used, which I will not repeat here. (What is interesting is that she found this amusing and never denied it. In all honesty, she seemed to find the idea of being related to Cherokee more disturbing.) When people snootily remarked that she looked like Lena Horne, she was obviously too thrilled to get mad about the racial thing.

Second photo is of my grandmother and my mother, Betty, on the right. I estimate their ages to be 37 and 21, respectively. (1955 - Parkersburg, WV)

















Third photo is my mother and me, ages 38 and 15. (1973 - Columbus, OH)
Yes, before you ask, I think that IS real fur. She thought fake fur was low class.

I miss them a lot during this time of year.

And now, your turn. Who do you miss?

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