America's race relations: haunted by the lynch mobs
The statue of Ben 'Pitchfork' Tillman in Columbia, South Carolina is a memorial to a notorious racist –and a reminder that the issue is central to Saturday's Democratic vote
Leonard Doyle
The Independent (UK)
It's a short walk from the elegant antebellum state house of the Old Confederacy to the overflowing pews of the Zion Baptist Church in Columbia, South Carolina, where the Rev Charles Jackson Jr was thundering out his message yesterday. "Fight the master-slave mentality," he roared at his parishioners, using a vocabulary that would be archaic anywhere else in the US.
A chasm still separates the black people of South Carolina from what Rev Jackson calls their white "brothers and sisters". It is a deep division, as was apparent after a short parade from the porch of Rev Jackson's church to the domed statehouse, where the marchers congregated in the shadow of the South's most defiant symbol of white supremacy, the battle flag of the Confederacy.
Across the street from where the marchers were honouring the assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, a small group of white secessionists jeered. They spoke of keeping alive the memory of the "lost cause", a euphemism for racial domination. Uniformed police and secret service agents mingled with the crowd, watchful for trouble.
(Continued here.)
Leonard Doyle
The Independent (UK)
It's a short walk from the elegant antebellum state house of the Old Confederacy to the overflowing pews of the Zion Baptist Church in Columbia, South Carolina, where the Rev Charles Jackson Jr was thundering out his message yesterday. "Fight the master-slave mentality," he roared at his parishioners, using a vocabulary that would be archaic anywhere else in the US.
A chasm still separates the black people of South Carolina from what Rev Jackson calls their white "brothers and sisters". It is a deep division, as was apparent after a short parade from the porch of Rev Jackson's church to the domed statehouse, where the marchers congregated in the shadow of the South's most defiant symbol of white supremacy, the battle flag of the Confederacy.
Across the street from where the marchers were honouring the assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, a small group of white secessionists jeered. They spoke of keeping alive the memory of the "lost cause", a euphemism for racial domination. Uniformed police and secret service agents mingled with the crowd, watchful for trouble.
(Continued here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home