Thursday morning, as over two thousand NAACP convention delegates marched outside the Justice Department, a postcard, postmarked Sunday, was delivered to the Goodman's apartment in New York: "I have arrived safely in Meridian, Mississippi. This is a wonderful town and the weather is fine."
Why has this event seemingly been been placed into the dust bin of American civil rights history by today's so-called Black leaders?
ReplyDeleteI would wager a tidy sum that even our own Congresswoman Julia Carson does not know who these men were or why they died. Perhaps that may be excusable given the Indianapolis Black community's politics of Polite Protest exhibited during that time and the fact that the Urban League didn't even open up shop in Indianapolis until 1966, three years after these men's death.
In retrospect one has to wonder how these three men would feel about today's cultural changes in the Black community had they lived to see it.
Civil rights are one thing but social and economic empowerment are another. Was the battle won but the war lost?
Anonymous,
ReplyDeletethe battle was won, and the struggle is ongoing. And not just here in the US. Native cultures that have had their lifeways destroyed (just like the Africans brought here against their wills) are suffering from exactly the same problems. Lack of economic opportunities and concomitant alcoholism, family violence, suicide, etc. This is true from the Inuits of Greenland to the Australian Aborigines.
Super sad part is that we know how this all works and how to fix it. Instead of ponying up the money, however, we blame the victims thus victimizing them a second (third, fourth, take your pick) time.
C
Doghouse, I posted on my blog yesterday a silly frivolous thing about the summer solstice and you have shamed me. We should all be so relentless in our reminders. Thank you.
ReplyDelete