Philly Inquirer: Why the blood of a 1955 Mississippi murder drenches today’s U.S. Senate race

[No Excuses]

http://www2.philly.com/philly/columnists/will_bunch/cindy-hyde-smith-mississippi-senate-race-mike-espy-lamar-smith-1955-murder-20181118.html

 

 

Quote

 

The cold-blooded killing of Lamar Smith — which occurred in broad daylight before a crowd of people outside the Lincoln County Courthouse in Brookhaven, Miss., on Aug. 13, 1955 — is still considered an unsolved murder, but only in the most technical sense of the term.

 

The truth is there wasn't much mystery about it, then or now. The 63-year-old local farmer and veteran of World War I, known as a fearless activist for his black community and for a seminal civil rights group called the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, crumpled from a gunshot in front of dozens of people, including the county sheriff, who saw a white farmer named Noah Smith leaving the scene splattered with the activist's bright-red blood.

 

Nor is there any debate over why Lamar Smith paid with his life that day. At the instant he was gunned down, the community leader was carrying a bundle of absentee ballots for an upcoming county election, the fruit of his idea for how African Americans in the Brookhaven area could cast votes without the white violence they'd likely encounter at a polling place on Election Day.

 

The murder of Lamar Smith may have happened 63 years ago — but don't dare call it a cold case. It is one of the most powerful pieces of evidence in a cruel, sometimes violent and still ongoing conspiracy to suppress black votes in the American South, a chain of custody that stretches from the Ku Klux Klan night riders of the 1860s to Selma's "Bloody Sunday" in 1965 to the computer-aided web of purges, restrictive ID laws and shuttered polling places of the 2010s.

 

 

[Renegade7]

Thanks for sharing, but before I respond, why did you post this and what are you looking for out of this conversation?

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

7 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

Thanks for sharing, but before I respond, why did you post this and what are you looking for out of this conversation?

There’s more to the story. Cindy Hyde-Smith is related (through marriage) to the murderer. This is the woman who said she’d be front row at a public hanging and was caught on mic saying it’d be a good idea to make it harder for liberals to vote.

 

She’s in a run-off for senate rather than withdrawing in shame because GOP... Mississippi... racism... hate... ‘Murica!

[No Excuses]

9 hours ago, Renegade7 said:

Thanks for sharing, but before I respond, why did you post this and what are you looking for out of this conversation?

 

The story is a good reminder of how minorities have been terrorized across the South and how the white majority escapes accountability time and time again when it comes to doing the right thing. 

 

Issues of voter suppression and intimidation turn into these pseudo-academic discussions, devoid of the historical significance of how law enforcement and terrorists have worked hand-in-hand to suppress the political voice of black Americans.

 

After what Brian Kemp did in Georgia, how the courts have ruled on GOP voter suppression tactics in NC and Cindy Hyde-Smith openly talking about suppressing votes and glorifying lynching, I think we ought to have a conservation on what the South is doing in response to John Roberts gutting the VRA and declaring America as a post-racist society. 

 

I think there is a serious lack of accountability in this country when it comes to racism and whites supremacist terrorism. We just kind of accept that racism wins elections in the South, that it’s normal for people to glorify slaveholders and traitors. There are many examples in the Western world of countries who owned up to the darkest moments of their history and raise generations with the consciousness to never repeat those mistakes. We seem to be doing the opposite in large swaths of the American South.

[skinsmarydu]

9 hours ago, Renegade7 said:

Thanks for sharing, but before I respond, why did you post this and what are you looking for out of this conversation?

What Sacks & No Excuses said. 

And until we white folk acknowledge our privilege and embrace the ability we have to help others, nothing changes. 

So, go do something. Anything. I gave a lady a dollar the other day so she wouldn't have to drag her 3 little ones outside and then back in for whatever pennies she was short. 

C'mon, let's act like humans. 

Edit to add: our primate ancestors have done it. 

[LD0506]

What she said ^

 

All the facebook postings and internet memes and Beto shirts in the world don't really accomplish anything. If you care, genuinely sincerely care- and you cannot know this for sure until you look deeply at yourself in a bright light- you act. You do something meaningful, something significant, something that costs, because otherwise you're just posing to show how woke you are.

 

And unfortunately, most people are just flatout lazy and not about to actually DO, they'd much rather go through the motions and claim a participation trophy.

[skinsmarydu]

And that's the thing, @LD0506...it may have cost me a dollar, but that dollar will come back sometime. I know it. 

[Spaceman Spiff]

At least @skinsmarydu and @LD0506 are positive messages.  Didn't need another SJW thread to be browbeaten into believing that whites and republicans are evil.

[LadySkinsFan]

This, for me, is the Number One issue for Congress and the states. The new House should put forward a new VRA addressing the various tactics used by Republicans to supress voters. 

 

This document which Republicans are against voters getting their rights. It won't even get through committee in the Senate but it's what Democrats should run on in 2020. We need to make a lot of noise about this. 

 

Voting is one of our civic responsibilities along with jury duty. 

 

 

5 minutes ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

At least @skinsmarydu and @LD0506 are positive messages.  Didn't need another SJW thread to be browbeaten into believing that whites and republicans are evil.

 

Democrats aren't supressing the vote. So exactly who is supressing the vote other than Whites and Republicans? If you aren't willing to recognize and call out the supressors, you can't address the problem.

[Larry]

4 minutes ago, LadySkinsFan said:

This, for me, is the Number One issue for Congress and the states. The new House should put forward a new VRA addressing the various tactics used by Republicans to supress voters. 

 

I've been thinking that a Dem House really can't do a whole lot, right now.  About the only things they can do are investigations (which the voters are already sick of, anyway.)  

 

And they can have "show votes".  Pass pieces of legislation that they know won;t pass, and therefore they're just for show.  In fact, things that they probably wouldn't vote for, if they thought it might pass.  (Remember Paul Ryan's "balance the federal budget" bills?)  

 

I've been thinking that one of the things they could pass, would be a bill to restore the parts of the VRA that got thrown out because it only applied to parts of the country, and make it apply to the whole country.  

 

1)  Expose all the folks who claim that they opposed it because it's not fair to apply to only part of the country, when they really oppose it because they just don;t like voting rights.  

 

2)  And let's face it - Republican voter suppression isn't just for the South any more, anyway.  They do it in every place they manage to have the votes to pass it.  

 

[LadySkinsFan]

^^^Exactly.

[Renegade7]

@No Excuses think were passed the awareness part in the convo and now back to what to do about it.

 

American Civil War is one of the few in human history where the losers got to write the history books, that's a start.  I do believe some people this country wont change their views on race and we need to be reaching out to the people that haven't gotten that far yet or flat out don't feel that way.  The south is creating the excuse holders for the future as we speak, but they are losing ground, that's only thing encouraging out of this.

 

I also am disgusted by idea we don't need to be making sure these elections are fair to everyone that wants to participate.  Georgia deserves a second election, but even if they don't get one, there is time between now and their next election to attack the individual pieces that lead to those election results.  GOP thru the kitchen sink and barely got out of that election alive, that doesn't not look like a winning formula there going forward as demographics continue to change.  Presidential election level turnout and abrahms probably wins.

 

Dems have lost so much ground in regards to power to do a thing about it that winning elections may be only way to address it.  We can talk about this until we are blue in the face, but until those states are run by blue governors, GOP will make rules to favor only them and not democracy.  Mid-terms were a helluva start.

 

Worried this has the feelings like another us vs them thread like @Spaceman Spiff said.  In a country this diverse, we are always going to find things we disagree on.  If we don't focus on what we do agree in, American experiment will fail.

[mcsluggo]

1 hour ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

At least @skinsmarydu and @LD0506 are positive messages.  Didn't need another SJW thread to be browbeaten into believing that whites and republicans are evil.

 

 

if you put the much maligned and dreaded SJWs on one side of the scale, and Republicans on the other....          well that math isn't very hard.

[Dan T.]

Can't we figure out a way to make voting both secure,convenient, and universal for anyone eligible?  

 

One step I would like to see is to make Election Day a holiday.  Don't add a day. Move election day to Veteran's Day.  What more powerful symbol would there be than to wed those two days? Honor the core of democracy... the right to vote in free elections, while honoring those veterans who serve, fight, and die to maintain that freedom.

 

That would help millions to get to the polls more easily.  But hey, making it easier to vote doesn't seems to be on the agenda of some political officeholders.  They need to be held accountable.

 

Hell, I'd like to see the low cost and decidedly low tech way to deter the (largely phantom) problem of people voting twice in person, an idea stolen from the other side of the Globe.  Purple thumbs when you vote. Check in to the polling station with a clean thumb, check out with your thumb dipped in purple ink. Instead of an "I Voted" sticker, wave your purple thumb.

 

 

[Dan T.]

I would like to see Brian Kemp's entire term as governor treated as illegitimate.  He should have absolutely recused himself from overseeing an election that he himself ran in.  He can argue until he is blue in the face that all of his efforts to cull the voting rolls were legitimate (even though there is strong evidence they weren't).  The fact is that the conflict of interest was so egregious that not recusing showed either a disqualifying lack of judgement or a condescending disdain toward those he was supposed to serve.

[Kilmer17]

The problem with election day as a Holiday (and fwiw I support the idea) is that private businesses can still remain open.  I think that the people that are most often referred to when discussing the inability to leave work to vote wouldnt get any relief from making it a holiday.

 

Keep it on the tuesday, make it a holiday, and expand the voting hours to midnight to midnight.

[Spaceman Spiff]

43 minutes ago, mcsluggo said:

 

 

if you put the much maligned and dreaded SJWs on one side of the scale, and Republicans on the other....          well that math isn't very hard.

 

Or you could just be in the middle.  Wait, that's not acceptable anymore. 🙄

 

For the record, I'm all for equality everywhere, including voting.  

[Larry]

31 minutes ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

Or you could just be in the middle.  Wait, that's not acceptable anymore. 🙄

 

Where's the middle?  "I don't want justice, but I want to be in the neighborhood"?  

 

Or maybe it's "Yeah, I support justice as a theory. But I don't want to actually do anything, to get there."?

[No Excuses]

35 minutes ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

 

Or you could just be in the middle.  Wait, that's not acceptable anymore. 🙄

 

For the record, I'm all for equality everywhere, including voting.  

 

Middle ground for basic civil rights... ok. 🙄

[Spaceman Spiff]

8 minutes ago, Larry said:

 

Where's the middle?  "I don't want justice, but I want to be in the neighborhood"?  

 

Or maybe it's "Yeah, I support justice as a theory. But I don't want to actually do anything, to get there."?

 

Oh wait, I'm sorry Larry.  I gotta be in the Tailgate grinding it out every day in the echo chamber making sure everyone agrees with me. and posting articles about how the GOP and Republicans are the devil.  Because that's REALLY getting us there.  

 

Show of hands, and be honest, how many here are really "doing something" or have done something to fight voter suppression other than vote for a Democrat?   Or are a lot of people confusing firing off posts in the Tailgate, tweets, facebook posts as "doing something" about "raising awareness" ? 

 

It's why @skinsmarydu's post was the most honest and genuine one here.  

[No Excuses]

3 hours ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

At least @skinsmarydu and @LD0506 are positive messages.  Didn't need another SJW thread to be browbeaten into believing that whites and republicans are evil.

 

You should stay out of these threads if they make you uncomfortable. But I think you consistently shine an important light on how civil rights issues have unfolded in America.

 

There’s a portion of the country that has never been hostile to civil rights on surface, but has derided those who voice displeasure on social issues as “SJWs” and all other kinds of nonsense. A rich history that goes all the way back to the abolitionist movement. 

 

MLK talked about you decades ago:
 

https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

 

Quote

 

First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

 

 

 

 

[mcsluggo]

27 minutes ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

 

Or you could just be in the middle.  Wait, that's not acceptable anymore. 🙄

 

For the record, I'm all for equality everywhere, including voting.  

 

you can be in whatever group you choose.... but when you whine in your post about the fact that republicans have been pigeonholed, and then do so by highlighting "Social Justice Warriors" as a pigeonholed pejorative, I'm just not sure what message you are trying to send....    ?

 

But my point still stands.  i DO know, that given a choice between the maligned Republicans of today, or the maligned SJWs... i will pick the SJWs 7 days a week, and twice on Sundays.    And I live my life pretty conservatively  (with a DEFINITE lack of capital C there).  I voted for Frank Wolf repeatedly (all the way through 2010)... trying to prop up some semblance of a mild-middle.  But the Republican party has so obviously abandoned any semblance of a middle, that its laughable to even discuss it anymore.   In a Democratic primary you can choose between the "SJW" or the moderate (and absent some other candidate-specific trait, i almost always pick the moderate)... but in today's America, once that primary is over... so are my choices......................... until either a viable 3-rd party is established (which does NOT happen around election day), or the atrocious Republican party of today is replaced with something less odious.  

 

There is no chance that i will vote for ANY republican right now  (sorry Larry Hogan, and any other (of the vanishing few) reasonable candidates), i think continued association with that ****-storm of a party is enough of a self-selection flag to completely stain and ruin a candidate today, and frankly I don't know how ANYBODY with any morals OR any intelligence can do otherwise.     

 

and yeah...its pathetic that it has gotten to this point.     

[mcsluggo]

and frankly... if you think that talking harshly about republican voter suppression and making the OBVIOUS connection between Jim Crow suppression and today's practices is just too darned meany-pants-ed .... then if you are NOT an apologist, what the **** ARE you?  

[Larry]

41 minutes ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

 

Oh wait, I'm sorry Larry.  I gotta be in the Tailgate grinding it out every day in the echo chamber making sure everyone agrees with me. and posting articles about how the GOP and Republicans are the devil.  Because that's REALLY getting us there.  

 

Show of hands, and be honest, how many here are really "doing something" or have done something to fight voter suppression other than vote for a Democrat?   Or are a lot of people confusing firing off posts in the Tailgate, tweets, facebook posts as "doing something" about "raising awareness" ? 

 

It's why @skinsmarydu's post was the most honest and genuine one here.  

 

OK

 

1)  Beat up straw man who's supposedly been pressuring him to state his opinions in Tailgate.  

 

2)  Than announces that stating opinions in Tailgate, and voting your convictions, don't really count as doing anything.  

 

3)  Claim people who disagree with you (or was it the straw man?  I'm not sure) are dishonest.  

 

 

[Renegade7]

GD, we are so bad at these type of threads.  It's not like I don't want to have the discussion, but this thread has gone off the deep end and we're still in the first page.