The Jim Crow film that just won’t die, “Song of the South”
Racially segregated movie theaters and whites-only water fountains disappeared decades ago after court rulings struck down the legal framework of Jim Crow America, but another element of the era just won’t die: Walt Disney’s 1946 movie “Song of the South.” With racist stereotypes and Old South tropes, the film isn’t available to the millions of subscribers of the company’s new Disney Plus streaming service, and it hasn’t been released in theaters in decades. Yet the movie, still beloved by many, lives on. “Song of the South” is easily viewed on the internet either in whole or in pieces, and numerous websites offer versions of the movie or memorabilia for sale. Animatronic characters and music from the movie are even featured in a ride at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, minus the racist context. The movie — a mix of live action, cartoons and music featuring an old black plantation laborer named Uncle Remus who enchants a white city boy with fables of talking animals — is like a zombie that keeps popping up seven decades after it was first released. While many find it racist and offensive, others see it as endearing. “Yay! Have been looking for a good copy for years, kids really enjoyed it! Thank you,” a reviewer wrote recently on the online marketplace Etsy, where multiple versions of the movie are for sale. Groups including the NAACP protested the film’s initial release, and arts professor Sheril Antonio said the continuing problem with “Song of the South” is that some just don’t see anything wrong with it. “Most of the harm of all of this is not acknowledging our shared history, all the good and bad of it. The harm comes from ignoring it and not talking about it truthfully and fully,” Antonio, a senior associate dean of arts at New York University, said in an interview conducted by email. Released the year after World War II ended, “Song of the South” premiered in Atlanta, where the Civil War epic “Gone With the Wind” made its debut a few years earlier. Set in post-Civil War Georgia, the Disney film featured stories that white newspaper writer Joel Chandler Harris heard from one-time slaves and published starting in 1876, according to The Wren’s Nest, Harris’ one-time home and now a museum in Atlanta. Actor James Baskett was presented an honorary Academy Award for his portrayal of Uncle Remus, but the movie was perhaps best known for its Oscar-winning song “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.” The tune is part of the soundtrack at Disney World’s Splash Mountain ride, which also features Remus characters including Br’er Rabbit. Yet while Disney Plus added a disclaimer to “Peter Pan,” “Dumbo”” and other vintage movies because they depict racist stereotypes, the company kept “Song of the South” locked away in its vault. Disney last screened the movie in 1986, its 40th anniversary, despite years of complaints that it showed blacks as subservient to whites, and it never released “Song of the South” for home video sales in the United States. Foreign versions of the movie are among the editions available for sale on the internet. “To be honest, I’ve lost track of how many people sell DVD bootlegs now,” said Christian Willis, who has run a website dedicated to the movie for about two decades. Jason Sperb, who wrote a book about the movie and its legacy, said “Song of the South” received a lukewarm reception when it first opened but was a “huge hit” financially when it was released in the 1970s and ’80s. “Disney had become more of a cultural institution by then. All the old films, whether successful or not upon its original release, were now being rebranded as ‘classics,”’ said Sperb, author of “Disney’s Most Notorious Film: Race, Convergence, and the Hidden Histories of Song of the South.” The continuing fascination that some have with the movie is likely more about the fact that Disney made it than its actual contents, he said in an email interview. “I think if anyone else in Hollywood had made that movie it would have been almost completely forgotten about by today except for only the most hardcore animation history buffs who would note in passing its role in helping to shape the possibilities of hybrid animation,” said Sperb. Willis, who runs the “Song of the South” website, said he was enamored with the movie after seeing it as a child in 1986 at age 6. He hopes the movie is released to the public again someday, and in the meantime he plans to keep adding to his online repository about the film. “I think burying history is the wrong approach,” he said. Some have reinterpreted old, racist films in a new way rather than simply screening them in their original format. Antonio, the NYU professor, cited DJ Spooky’s remix of the 1915 movie “Birth of a Nation,” which glorified the early Ku Klux Klan. In “Rebirth of a Nation,” DJ Spooky (whose birth name is Paul D. Miller) trimmed the original film and applied new graphics and music he composed. In a live performance during the 2016 presidential campaign, he spliced together the original film with scenes from the civil rights movement and post-9/11 wars. Antonio said she was “forever changed” by watching “Rebirth.” “As you can see I am an educator, and in these cultural artifacts there is always value,” she said. Republished with the Permission of the Associated Press.
Alabama newspaper editor calls for the Ku Klux Klan to ‘night ride again’
The editor of an Alabama newspaper has come under fire for penning an editorial calling for the mass lynchings of Washington Democrats by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Editor and Publisher of the Democrat-Reporter, Goodloe Sutton on Monday confirmed he wrote the editorial titled “Klan needs to ride again,” in a Feb. 14 print edition of the weekly newspaper that covers Marengo County. In the editorial, Sutton wrote, “Democrats in the Republican Party and Democrats are plotting to raise taxes in Alabama. They do not understand how to eliminate expenses when money is needed in other areas. This socialist-communist ideology sounds good to the ignorant, the uneducated, and the simple-minded people.” “If we could get the Klan to go up there and clean out D.C., we’d all been better off,” he told the Montgomery Advertiser. When asked to clarify what he meant about “cleaning up” D.C., Sutton said, “We’ll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb and hang all of them.” Alabama’s D.C. Democrats react Sutton’s editorial has caught the attention of both Democrats in the Alabama delegation in Washington. U.S. Senator Doug Jones took to twitter to express his disgust and called on Sutton to resign from his post. “OMG! What rock did this guy crawl out from under? This editorial is absolutely disgusting & he should resign -NOW,” tweeted Jones. “I have seen what happens when we stand by while people-especially those with influence- publish racist, hateful views. Words matter. Actions matter. Resign now!” OMG! What rock did this guy crawl out from under? This editorial is absolutely disgusting & he should resign -NOW! I have seen what happens when we stand by while people-especially those with influence- publish racist, hateful views. Words matter. Actions matter. Resign now! https://t.co/V1V1vxDBKH — Doug Jones (@DougJones) February 19, 2019 7th District U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell did as well. “For the millions of people of color who have been terrorized by white supremacy, this kind of ‘editorializing’ about lynching is not a joke — it is a threat,” Sewell tweeted. “These comments are deeply offensive and inappropriate, especially in 2019.” For the millions of people of color who have been terrorized by white supremacy, this kind of “editorializing” about lynching is not a joke – it is a threat. These comments are deeply offensive and inappropriate, especially in 2019. Mr. Sutton should apologize and resign. https://t.co/AOYYGINEdh — Rep. Terri A. Sewell (@RepTerriSewell) February 19, 2019
Lynching memorial will show that women were victims too
A memorial to victims of lynching in the U.S. opens in Alabama on April 26, 2018. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice is a six-acre site that overlooks Montgomery, the state capital. It uses sculpture, art and design to give visitors a sense of the terror of lynching as they walk through a memorial square with 800 six-foot steel columns that symbolize the victims. The names of thousands of victims are engraved on columns – one for each county in the United States where a lynching took place. In Alabama alone, a reported total of 275 lynchings took place between 1871 and 1920. U.S. history books and documentaries that tell the story of lynching in the U.S. have focused on black male victims, to the exclusion of women. But women, too, were lynched – and many raped beforehand. In my book “Gender and Lynching,” I sought to tell the stories of these women and why they have been left out. Between 1880 and 1930, close to 200 women were murdered by lynch mobs in the American South, according to historian Crystal Feimster. Will this new memorial give these murdered women their due in how the U.S. remembers and feels about our troubling history? Enforcing white supremacy through terror In a recent report, Lynching in America, researchers documented 4,075 lynchings of African-Americans that were committed by southern whites in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia between 1877 and 1950. Lynching differed from ordinary murder or assault. It was celebrated by members of the Ku Klux Klan as a spectacular event and drew large crowds of people who tortured victims, burned them alive and dismembered them. Lynching was a form of domestic terrorism that inflicted harm onto individuals and upon an entire race of people, with the purpose of instilling fear. It served to give dramatic warning that the ironclad system of white supremacy was not to be challenged by word, deed or even thought. The conventional approach to teaching the history of Jim Crow and lynching has focused almost exclusively on the black male victim. However, such an approach often simplifies and distorts a much more complex history. Not all victims were African-American men, and although allegations of African-American men raping white women were common, such allegations were not the leading motive for the lynchings. We know from the pioneering work of anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells-Barnett that African-American men, women and children were lynched for a range of alleged crimes and social infractions. The book “Trouble in Mind,” by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Leon Litwack, provides a detailed account of the many accusations of petty theft, labor disputes, arson and murder that led to these lynchings. This fact requires a richer, more nuanced understanding of discrimination that is critical of racism and sexism at the same time. Martyrs such as Laura Nelson and Mary Turner experienced racial and sexual violence at the hands of vigilante lynch mobs because of their race and gender. Laura Nelson and Mary Turner In May 1911, Laura Nelson was lynched in Okemah, Oklahoma. Nelson allegedly shot a sheriff to protect her son. The officer had been searching her cabin for stolen goods as part of a meat-pilfering investigation. A mob seized Nelson along with her son, who was only 14 years old, and lynched them both. However, Nelson was first raped by several men. The bodies of Laura and her son were hung from a bridge for hundreds of people to see. The title of Mayhorn’s installation, “A Woman Was Lynched the Other Day,” refers to a banner the New York NAACP would unfurl from their Fifth Avenue office when news of another lynching surfaced. With white letters inscribed on a black background, it declared “A MAN WAS LYNCHED YESTERDAY” and became a rallying cry for justice. The violent murder of African-Americans was so accepted at the time that a postcard was made of Nelson’s lynching by George Henry Farnum, a photographer. Brooklyn-based artist Kim Mayhorn created in 1998 a multimedia installation that memorialized Nelson’s death. There’s an empty dress in Mayhorn’s installation that resembles the postcard of her lynching. The disembodied dress represents the void in the historical record and Mayhorn’s effort to redress the absence of Nelson. Seven years later, in May 1918, Mary Turner was eight months pregnant when a mob of several hundred men and women murdered her in Valdosta, Georgia. The Associated Press reported that she had made “unwise remarks” and “flew into a rage” about the lynching of her husband, insisting that she would press charges against the men responsible. Her death has since been recognized by local residents, students and faculty at Valdosta State University, first with a public ceremony that placed a cross at the lynching site and second with a historical marker in 2010. Nelson and Turner have often been depicted as tragic characters or “collateral victims” who supported and defended the males in their lives. Such deaths, however, were not incidental. They were essential to maintain white supremacy, as a form of punishment for defying the social order. Though women represent a minority of lynching victims, their stories challenge previous attempts to justify lynching as necessary to protect white women from black male rapists. Understanding lynching and the motives behind it requires including the stories of African-American women who were robbed of dignity, respect and bodily integrity by a weapon of terror. The violence against them was used to maintain a caste system that assigned inferior roles to African-American women and men alike. Redefining the ‘civil rights movement’ By including women in the historical narrative of lynching, the new memorial in Alabama reveals a more complete understanding of this devastating social practice. This memorial brings African-American women like Nelson and Turner to the fore as victims, and the weight of visual evidence on display at the memorial challenges the silence surrounding their deaths. The Equal Justice Initiative assists scholars, teachers and ordinary people in recognizing the roots of the civil rights movement that began long before the years 1954-68. The monument sheds light in an
Southern anger: Nazis, KKK ‘hijacking’ Confederate debate
White Southerners who equate Old South symbols with regional pride rather than hate are even more on the defensive since neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen and other extremists became the face of the fight over Confederate monuments. With more than two dozen relatives who fought for the Confederacy, Robert Castello literally wears his Southern pride. The visor, suspenders and ring he donned Thursday were all emblazoned with the familiar design of the rebel battle flag. But Castello, whose Dixie General Store sells Confederate-themed hats, shirts, stickers and signs in rural eastern Alabama, said he doesn’t have any use for overtly racist groups like the Klan. “When I was growing up it was like a badge of honor to be proud of your Southern heritage. It was taught and it was part of who you were,” said Castello, 58. “To see it denigrated down to the point of Nazis is disgusting.” A leading Southern heritage organization, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, had no official involvement in the bloody protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, and its leader condemned the white supremacists who rallied for preserving a statute of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. “It’s painful to watch, for lack of better words,” said Thomas V. Strain Jr., the group’s commander. “It was our family that fought, and it was our families that died, and now we have these knuckleheads hijacking the flag for their own purposes.” Social media feeds dominated by Southern whites contain similar criticism of extremist organizations, which watchdog groups have said were out in force in Charlottesville in the largest white supremacist gathering in years. The driver of the car, James Alex Fields Jr., 20, has been described as an admirer of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. Photographed with white nationalist demonstrators before the deadly crash, Fields is charged with murder and other offenses. The Confederate battle flag has long been used as a symbol by the Ku Klux Klan, which has displayed the banner during rallies for decades. But many white Southerners see the flag and rebel monuments as nothing more than part of a regional identity that includes Lynyrd Skynyrd music, college football, sweet tea and the Bible. The idea that any of those things have become caught up with Nazism is baffling to people like Castello. “I’ve always loved Southern heritage, even when I was in high school,” he said. “It was passed down that it was an honorable thing and I believe it was, although not all of it was good.” Even the children of Southern music icon Johnny Cash are distancing themselves from extremists after a neo-Nazi was shown wearing a shirt with an image of the late singer in Charlottesville. A Facebook post by the Cash family requested that his name “be kept far away from destructive and hateful ideology.” Jeff Schoep, who leads a white nationalist group that demonstrated in Charlottesville, said Confederate symbols and monuments have become a rallying cause for white extremists not because of any Southern identity but because they see their removal as an “assault on American freedoms.” To be sure, neither Castello nor Strain advocates the removal of Confederate monuments. Both see them as important historical touchstones that have an important place in modern life. “These statues were erected over 100 year ago to honor the history of the United States,” said Strain. “They’re just as important to the entire history of the U.S. as the monuments erected to our forefathers.” Similarly, President Donald Trump on Thursday blasted the movement to remove Confederate monuments, tweeting that the nation is seeing “the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart.” Castello supports Trump and sees the president as the unlikely New York real estate magnate who has become a defender of Southern symbols. Trump seems to get that not all Southerners are Nazis or Klansmen, Castello said, and others should, too. “To me all the talk about the Klan and the Nazis is a smoke screen for an attack on Southern heritage,” he said. “They want to link everyone who flies the (Confederate) flag with the Klan and Nazis, which I don’t want any part of.” Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
Why won’t Donald Trump condemn white nationalism?
Why doesn’t President Donald Trump just unequivocally condemn white supremacists? It’s a jarring question to ask about an American president. But it’s also one made unavoidable by Trump’s delayed, blame-both-sides response to the violence that erupted Saturday when neo-Nazis, skinheads and members of the Ku Klux Klan protested in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump has faced such a moment before — one that would have certainly drawn swift, almost predictable condemnations from his recent predecessors, regardless of party. As a candidate and now as president, when racial tensions flared or fringe groups rallied around his message, Trump has shown uncharacteristic caution and a reluctance to distance himself from the hate. At times, his approach has seemingly inflamed racial tensions in a deeply divided country while emboldening groups long in the shadows. On Saturday, as Trump read slowly through a statement about the clashes that left dozens injured and one woman dead, he condemned hatred, bigotry and violence “on many sides.” The president was silent when journalists asked whether he rejected the support of nationalists’ groups. That silence was cheered by the white supremacist website Daily Stormer: “When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room. Really, really good. God bless him.” Trump denies that he’s racist or sympathetic to such groups. Son-in-law Jared Kushner, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, and daughter Ivanka, who converted to Judaism, are among those who have defended the president against those charges. Still, he has a history of engaging in high-profile, racially fraught battles. Early in his career as a developer, Trump fought charges of bias against blacks seeking to rent at his family-owned apartment complexes. He long promoted the lie that the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama, was not born in the United States. As a candidate, he proposed temporarily banning Muslims from the United States. He retweeted a post from accounts that appeared to have ties to white nationalist groups. And he was slow to reject the endorsement of former KKK leader David Duke. Some of the president’s friends and advisers have argued that Trump is simply refusing to bend to liberals’ desire for political correctness. A boastful, proudly disruptive politician, Trump often has been rewarded for saying impolite and impolitic things. Some supporters cheered him for being someone who said what they could not. Democrats frequently assert that Trump sees a political advantage in courting the support of the far right. Indeed, he has benefited politically from the backing of media outlets such as Breitbart or InfoWars. They have consistently promoted Trump and torn down his opponents, sometimes with biased or inaccurate reports. Charlottesville’s mayor, Democrat Mike Signer, said Sunday that Trump made a choice during his campaign to “go right to the gutter, to play on our worst prejudices.” “I think you are seeing a direct line from what happened here this weekend to those choices,” Singer said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” White House senior adviser Steve Bannon ran Breitbart before joining Trump’s campaign, and several of the president’s other aides believe Bannon continues to have influence over the website. In “Devil’s Bargain,” a new book about his role in the Trump campaign, Bannon is quoted as saying that attempts by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to tie Trump to the alt-right and nationalists did not move voters. “We polled the race stuff and it doesn’t matter,” Bannon said, according to the book. But there here’s no reliable public polling on the scope of Trump’s support among those with white nationalist leanings or the percentage of the electorate they comprise. The reaction from Republicans following Trump’s statement Saturday suggests there may be greater political risks for the president in aligning himself with bigoted groups. “The president needs to step up today and say what it is,” said Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., who was one of several GOP lawmakers urging Trump to be more strident in calling out the nationalists and neo-Nazis that gathered in Charlottesville. Gardner said plainly: “It’s evil. It’s white nationalism.” By Sunday, the White House was scrambling to try to clean up the president’s statement. The White House issued a statement saying the president does condemn “white supremacists, KKK, neo-Nazi and all extremist groups.” The spokeswoman who issued the statement refused to be named. And the president himself remained silent. Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
Protesters wearing KKK outfits disrupt hearing for Jeff Sessions
Minutes before Sen. Jeff Sessions‘ confirmation hearing began Tuesday morning, protests took the attention of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Two demonstrators dressed as Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members erupted with shouts of “white power” against Donald Trump‘s pick for attorney general. “You can’t arrest me! I’m white!” one of the protesters said as Capitol Police removed both men from the hearing room. As Sessions walked in… pic.twitter.com/4cmgzRL2q2 — Lisa Desjardins (@LisaDNews) January 10, 2017 HAPPENING NOW: Protestor thrown out of Sessions confirmation hearing. Dressed as klansman. pic.twitter.com/2DPJhg7M8M — Sam Sweeney (@SweeneyABC) January 10, 2017 Sessions gave no visible reaction to the outbursts, and proceeded to enter the room acknowledging friends and colleagues. The protests come, as the conservative Alabama senator faces concerns over how committed he would be to civil rights. “I deeply understand the history of civil rights and the horrendous impact that relentless and systemic discrimination and the denial of voting rights has had on our African-American brothers and sisters,’’ Sessions told the Senate Judiciary Committee once the hearing began. “I have witnessed it … While humans must recognize the the limits of their abilities — and I do — I am ready for this job. We will do it right.”
With friends like these: Richard Shelby ran 1986 ad suggesting Jeff Sessions called KKK ‘good ole boys’
Thirty years ago, a campaign ad suggested Jeff Sessions saw the Ku Klux Klan as a bunch of “good ole boys.” But, as John Sharp of AL.com notes, the attacks against the then-U.S. Attorney seeking a spot on the federal bench, wasn’t from Democrats like Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy who was fighting his nomination. The 1986 ad came from Congressman Richard Shelby – who would later become one of Sessions’ colleagues and a longtime friend in the Senate. William Stewart, professor emeritus of political sciences at the University of Alabama, says the relationship between Shelby and Sessions “definitely changed.” Shelby, who narrowly won that 1986 election for his first term in the U.S. Senate, will likely support Sessions as he faces the Senate Judiciary Committee for a confirmation hearing on his nomination as Donald Trump‘s Attorney General – the same committee that denied Sessions’ appointment as a federal judge 30 years ago. In a statement, Shelby called Sessions “a dear friend” of more than 20 years and “a man of great integrity.” “I was an enthusiastic supporter of Jeff in his bid to join me in the U.S. Senate,” Shelby said. “We have been rock-solid partners in Congress ever since.” Much has changed over the past three decades. Sharp writes: “The linkage of Sessions to the Klan by Shelby occurred days before the Nov. 3, 1986, election. Shelby, then a Democrat, won his first Senate term that year by defeating Republican Sen. Jeremiah Denton by a razor-thin margin of 50.3 percent to 49.7 percent. “Denton, at the time, had backed Sessions’ nomination to the federal judiciary. The Judiciary Committee hearings proved to be a disaster at the time that battered Sessions’ reputation after his nomination was rejected amid allegations that he once called a black staffer “a boy,” that he considered the NAACP as ‘un-American’ and used criminal prosecutions to thwart voting rights for blacks. “In addition, a colleague testified that Sessions once joked that he felt the Ku Klux Klan was okay until he learned they smoked marijuana.” A Tuscaloosa Democrat at the time, Shelby used the comments to blast Denton in a campaign ad, angering Sessions, who told the Mobile Register the claims were “slanderous” and “absolutely false.” “I expect the false ad to be withdrawn at once,” Sessions said in a Nov. 3, 1986, article. He demanded an apology from Shelby. Shelby – a Republican since 1994 – now takes a decidedly different view of his one-time opponent: “Jeff Sessions’ record of standing up for all Americans and his high moral character indisputably prove that the 30-year-old claims of the past are nothing more than baseless political accusations.”
Email insights: Civil, Human Rights Coalition strongly opposes Jeff Sessions for AG
The Conference on Civil and Human Rights sounded off on the appointment of Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions as attorney general in a Friday email. “This nomination is deeply troubling to Americans who care about equal protection under the law,” group president Wade Henderson said in the email. “Throughout his tenure in the Senate, Sen. Sessions has been one of the chamber’s leading antagonists of immigrants and the LGBT community, continuing his long record of obstructing civil rights that began in his tenure as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama.” Sessions was long thought to be Donald Trump’s top pick for secretary of defense, but the incoming president announced Friday that the third-term Alabama senator would be nominated as attorney general. Trump also announced Friday that Kansas Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo would be nominated as CIA director. Henderson said Sessions’ “record of hostility to voting rights as U.S. Attorney is particularly egregious.” “He called a white voting rights litigator a ‘disgrace to his race,’ retaliated against voting rights advocates by wrongly charging them with crimes, and proclaimed the Voting Rights Act ‘intrusive,’” Henderson said. “He also once declared that the Ku Klux Klan was ‘OK’ but that the National Council of Churches, the NAACP, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference were ‘un-American.’” Henderson closed the email by saying Trump should pick someone else to serve as attorney general or the U.S. Senate should shoot down Sessions’ nomination.
Donald Trump camp calls KKK newspaper ‘repulsive’ after praise
Donald Trump‘s campaign is firmly rejecting the embrace of a Ku Klux Klan-affiliated newspaper. The latest issue of The Crusader used Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan as its headline for an editorial praising the catchphrase and the Republican presidential candidate. The newspaper bills itself as “The Premier Voice of the White Resistance.” The newspaper didn’t specifically call for readers to vote for Trump. In a statement, the Trump campaign calls the newspaper “repulsive.” It said its “views do not represent the tens of millions of Americans who are uniting behind our campaign.” Trump had been criticized earlier in the campaign for failing to immediately denounce the endorsement of David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
KKK member, 1963 Birmingham church bomber denied parole
The Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles has denied parole to an 86-year-old Ku Klux Klansman convicted of killing four African-American girls more than 50 years ago. The decision to keep Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr, imprisoned was met with applause at the hearing in a Montgomery courthouse Wednesday morning. Blanton is the last surviving KKK member convicted in 2001 for the 1963 Ku Klux Klan bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church that killed the girls, who were at Sunday services — Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley — and that injured a fifth girl, Sarah Collins, the sister of Addie Mae Collins. Almost 30 years after the bombing, Blanton was sentenced to life imprisonment for planting a bomb outside the church during the height of the civil rights movement. His two accomplices, Robert Chambliss and Bobby Frank Cherry, were also convicted of murder and have since died behind bars. Across the country, civil rights activists opposed the parole, saying Blanton has served only 15 years of four life sentences. Attorney General Luther Strange was among those in Alabama who joined in the disapproval of the potential parole of Blanton. In a July 29 letter to the parole board, AG Strange stated, “Thomas Blanton was convicted of one of the most heinous crimes in Alabama history — the murder of four young girls who were attending Sunday school. The cold-blooded callousness of his hate crime is not diminished by the passage of time, nor is any punishment sufficient to expunge the evil he unleashed. Because he has never shown any remorse whatsoever for taking the lives of those innocent little girls, justice can only be served if Thomas Blanton spends the rest of his life in prison.” Wednesday’s justice is perhaps only temporary. Blanton can be considered for parole again in five years.
Ku Klux Klan dreams of rising again 150 years after founding
Born in the ashes of the smoldering South after the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan died and was reborn before losing the fight against civil rights in the 1960s. Membership dwindled, a unified group fractured, and one-time members went to prison for a string of murderous attacks against blacks. Many assumed the group was dead, a white-robed ghost of hate and violence. Yet today, the KKK is still alive and dreams of restoring itself to what it once was: an invisible empire spreading its tentacles throughout society. As it marks 150 years of existence, the Klan is trying to reshape itself for a new era. Klan members still gather by the dozens under starry Southern skies to set fire to crosses in the dead of night, and KKK leaflets have shown up in suburban neighborhoods from the Deep South to the Northeast in recent months. Perhaps most unwelcome to opponents, some independent Klan organizations say they are merging with larger groups to build strength. “We will work on a unified Klan and/or alliance this summer,” said Brent Waller, imperial wizard of the United Dixie White Knights in Mississippi. In a series of interviews with The Associated Press, Klan leaders said they feel that U.S. politics are going their way, as a nationalist, us-against-them mentality deepens across the nation. Stopping or limiting immigration — a desire of the Klan dating back to the 1920s — is more of a cause than ever. And leaders say membership has gone up at the twilight of President Barack Obama‘s second term in office, though few would provide numbers. Joining the Klan is as easy as filling out an online form — provided you’re white and Christian. Members can visit an online store to buy one of the Klan’s trademark white cotton robes for $145, though many splurge on the $165 satin version. While the Klan has terrorized minorities during much of the last century, its leaders now present a public front that is more virulent than violent. Leaders from several different Klan groups all said they have rules against violence aside from self-defense, and even opponents agree the KKK has toned itself down after a string of members went to prison years after the fact for deadly arson attacks, beatings, bombings and shootings. “While today’s Klan has still been involved in atrocities, there is no way it is as violent as the Klan of the ’60s,” said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an advocacy group that tracks activity by groups it considers extremist. “That does not mean it is some benign group that does not engage in political violence,” he added. Historian David Cunningham, author of “Klansville, U.S.A.: The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights-Era Ku Klux Klan,” notes that while the Klan generally doesn’t openly advocate violence, “I do think we have the sort of ‘other’ model of violence, which is creating a culture that supports the commission of violence in the name of these ideas.” Klan leaders told the AP that most of today’s groups remain small and operate independently, kept apart by disagreements over such issues as whether to associate with neo-Nazis, hold public rallies or wear the KKK’s trademark robes in colors other than white. So-called “traditional” Klan groups avoid public displays and practice rituals dating back a century; others post web videos dedicated to preaching against racial diversity and warning of a coming “white genocide.” Women are voting members in some groups, but not in others. Some leaders will not speak openly with the media but others do, articulating ambitious plans that include quietly building political strength. Some groups hold annual conventions, just like civic clubs. Members gather in meeting rooms to discuss strategies that include electing Klan members to local political offices and recruiting new blood through the internet. It’s impossible to say how many members the Klan counts today since groups don’t reveal that information, but leaders claim adherents in the thousands among scores of local groups called Klaverns. Waller said his group is growing, as did Chris Barker, imperial wizard of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Eden, North Carolina. “Most Klan groups I talk to could hold a meeting in the bathroom in McDonald’s,” Barker said. As for his Klavern, he said, “Right now, I’m close to 3,800 members in my group alone.” The Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish protection group that monitors Klan activity, describes Barker’s Loyal White Knights as the most active Klan group today, but estimates it has no more than 200 members total. The ADL puts total Klan membership nationwide at around 3,000. The Alabama-based SPLC says there’s no evidence the Klan is returning to the strength of its heyday. It estimates the Klan has about 190 chapters nationally with no more than 6,000 members total, which would be a mere shadow of its estimated 2 million to 5 million members in the 1920s. “The idea of unifying the Klan like it was in the ’20s is a persistent dream of the Klan, but it’s not happening,” Potok said. Formed just months after the end of the Civil War by six former Confederate officers in Pulaski, Tennessee, the Klan originally seemed more like a college fraternity with ceremonial robes and odd titles for its officers. But soon, freed blacks were being terrorized, and the Klan was blamed. Hundreds of people were assaulted or killed within the span of a few years as whites tried to regain control of the defeated Confederacy. Congress effectively outlawed the Klan in 1871, leading to martial law in some places and thousands of arrests, and the group died. The Klan seemed relegated to history until World War I, when it was resurrected. It grew as waves of immigrants arrived aboard ships from Europe and elsewhere, and grew more as the NAACP challenged Jim Crow laws in the South in the 1920s. Millions joined, including community leaders like bankers and lawyers. That momentum declined, and best estimates place
Man arrested for punching anti-Donald Trump protester is an Air Force member
A man captured on video kicking and punching an anti-Donald Trump protester at the presidential candidate’s rally in Tucson on Saturday is a member of the Air Force. Staff Sgt. Tony Pettway, a response force leader, is assigned to the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson and was arrested on Saturday on a misdemeanor charge of assault with injury. He works in security forces. The event in Tucson turned ugly when two protesters displayed offensive imagery in an attempt to make a statement against the divisiveness of the Trump campaign. Pettway was one of several people arrested at two Trump rallies in Arizona this weekend. The anti-Trump protester carried a sign with a Confederate flag over an image of Trump and was being escorted out of the building when Pettway punched and kicked him. The incident was caught on video. People can be heard cheering as Trump denounces another protester who was wearing a KKK-style sheet. “There’s a disgusting guy. Puts a Ku Klux Klan hat on. Thinks he’s cute. He’s a disgusting guy,” Trump said. “I’m going to tell you folks, that’s a disgrace. They are taking away our First Amendment rights.” Davis-Monthan is reviewing the situation and will take appropriate action, said 2nd Lt. Sydney Smith of the 355th Fighter Wing public affairs office. Airmen are allowed to participate in political events on their own time, Smith said. “We believe wholeheartedly in our fellow Americans’ rights to express their views on political issues, and we strongly condemn any attempt to silence those views through force or violence,” Smith said. Pettway was released without being booked into jail. It is unclear if he has an attorney. Pettway, 32, began active duty in the Air Force in August 2002 and completed his basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, Air Force Personnel Center spokesman Mike Dickerson said. He was stationed in South Korea twice and in New Mexico before moving to Davis-Monthan in December 2012. Dickerson said Pettway has received a commendation medal on three occasions but didn’t know what they were for. Tucson police also arrested 67-year-old Linda Rothman on a misdemeanor count of assault without injury. They haven’t said why she was arrested. Authorities in Phoenix, where Trump held a rally earlier in the day, also arrested several protesters. Maricopa County Sheriff’s deputies identified three protesters who were arrested while helping block the only major highway leading to a Trump rally in metropolitan Phoenix. Steffany Laughlin, Jacinta Gonzalez and Michael Cassidy were all booked on one count of obstructing a public thoroughfare, deputies said. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
