Posts Tagged ‘criminal’
Posted on September 2, 2009 - by reallyrotten
Texas Residents Say Racial Equality Does Not Exist
In the same year that we celebrated the historic inauguration of the nation’s first African American president and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) celebrated its 100th anniversary, the dream of racial equality in America seemed to have come true.
However, as many debate the relevance of groups such as the NAACP, instances that prove true racial equality is still a dream deferred are constantly grabbing headlines across the country.
This week, members of the New Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) gathered in the East Texas town of Paris to voice their opinions on a judge’s decision to drop murder charges against two White males, Shannon Finley and Charles Crostley, accused of murdering their Black friend, Brandon McClelland, by running him over in a vehicle and then dragging him to his death. The case has drawn comparisons to the dragging death of James Byrd in Jasper, Texas in 1998.
Paris, Texas and its 26,000 residents are no strangers to the negative spotlight when it comes to a perceived lack of racial equality. The town, which is approximately 73 percent White and 22 percent Black, made national headlines when a Black girl was sentenced to seven years in a juvenile prison in 2007 for pushing a teacher’s aide by Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville, while the same judge sentenced a White girl to probation for burning her parents’ house down.
“Caucasians in Paris must understand that they are the reason for Paris being the center of unsavory attention,” said Jimmy Blackwell, a Black protestor. “We welcome the KKK because we want the world to see how real Americans act.”
However, many White residents of Paris sympathize with their Black counterparts. “I guess I am like most of people in Paris. The majority of people in Paris don’t agree with the way they do things. Most people are not happy about the groups, about the people who are coming,” said Marva Joe, chairperson of a diversity task force to address the perceived lack of racial equality in the town.
The charges against Finley and Crostley were dropped because of a lack of evidence and because a truck driver came forward and said he may have accidentally hit McClelland and caused his death.
Regardless of the circumstances of McClelland’s death, Small Town America has to get with the program and realize that a lack of racial equality will only lead to further conflict and controversy. In the same country where we can have enough racial equality to elect a Black president, should be proof enough that minorities in small towns across the South should receive the same treatment as their White counterparts.
Towns such as Paris, Jasper and Jena, La., will only find themselves as black sheep in a country that should be determined to move forward, not backwards, when it comes to race relations. If a country is intelligent enough to put a man on the moon, then forty years later that same country should have enough common sense to realize the importance of racial equality and the destruction that can occur if we do not come together as one.
Published At: Isnare Free Articles Directory http://www.isnare.com
Submitted By: Todd A. Smith
Posted on September 2, 2009 - by reallyrotten
Rosewood Massacre
The Rosewood massacre was a violent, racially endorsed dissent that took place during the first week of January 1923 in rural Levy County, Florida, United States. Six blacks and couple whites were slaughtered, and the habitation of Rosewood was fled and bargain during what was characterized as a race riot. Racial interferences were regular during the early 20th 100 in the United States, reflecting the nation’s swift social changes. Florida had an especially high diagram of lynchings in the years in the past the massacre, surrounding a well-publicized taking place in December 1922.
Rosewood was a peace, at the start black, self-sufficient whistle final view on the Seaboard Air Line Railway. Spurred by unsupported contentions that a white female in nearby Sumner had been overcame and maybe raped by a black drifter, white men from nearby habitation lynched a Rosewood resident. When black people secure themselves against further criticize, numerous hundred whites combed the scenery hunting for black population, and burned seal to every plan in Rosewood. Survivors obscured for numerous days in nearby consumes and were evacuated by train and car to enlarged towns. Although declare and provincial administrators were aware of the violence, they drafted no arrests for the wins in Rosewood. The habitation was fled by black residents during the attacks. None ever returned.
Although the rioting was widely reported round object the countryside, small proportion official itemising found the event. Survivors, their descendants, and the perpetrators stayed silent come seal Rosewood for decades. Sixty years later the rioting, the story of Rosewood was rebuilt in control media past numerous journalists swathed it in the early 1980s. Survivors and their descendants organized to sue the declare for having went erroneous to shield them. In 1993, the Florida Legislature commissioned a journal on the events. As a result of the findings, Florida became the first U.S. declare to compensate survivors and their descendants for impairs incurred because of racial violence. The massacre was the subject of a 1997 film fled accent on by John Singleton. In 2004, the declare designated the site of Rosewood as a Florida Heritage Landmark.
Rosewood was replied in 1845, nine miles (14 km) east of Cedar Key, near the Gulf of Mexico. Local industry midpoint round object timber; the call Rosewood refers to the reddish color of cut cedar wood. Two pencil mills were nearby in Cedar Key; numerous turpentine mills and a sawmill three miles (4.8 km) away in Sumner helped endorse provincial residents, as did rural of citrus and cotton. The hamlet grew enough to be labelled to the erected plan of a post office and train depot on the Florida Railroad in 1870, but it was never incorporated as a town.
Initially, Rosewood had both black and white settlers. When bulk of the cedar trees in the paddock had been cut by 1890, the pencil mills conserved, and more white residents transferred to Sumner. By 1900, the population in Rosewood had become predominantly black. The township of Sumner was predominantly white, and family members between the couple communities were relatively amicable. Two black families in Rosewood summoned Goins and Carrier were the bulk powerful. The Goins family brought the turpentine industry to the paddock, and in the years quicker the criticizes were the second utmost landowners in Levy County. To leaving lawsuits from white contenders, the Goins brothers transferred to Gainesville, and the population of Rosewood lessened slightly.The Carriers were also a more family, responsible for logging in the region. By the 1920s, seal to all in the close-knit occupants was distantly related to each other.The population of Rosewood peaked in 1915 at 355 people. Although residents of Rosewood perhaps did not vote because voter reservation conditions in Florida had expeditiously disfranchised blacks since the turn of the 100, both Sumner and Rosewood were speck of a single voting precinct was reliant by the U.S. Census. In 1920, the merged population of both habitation was 344 blacks and 294 whites.
As was regular in the late 19th 100 South, Florida had caused lawful racial segregation on the floor heading down Jim Crow laws, labelling for separate black and white public facilities and transportation.Blacks and whites written their have occupants centers: in 1920, the residents of Rosewood were substantially self-sufficient. They had three churches, a educational institution, a more Masonic Hall, a turpentine mill, a sugarcane mill, a baseball team summoned the Rosewood Stars, and couple complete outlets, one of which was white-owned. The township had come seal a dozen two-story wooden plank homes, other small two-room dwellings, and numerous small unoccupied plank farm and storage structures.Some families have pianos, organs, and other symbols of middle-class prosperity. Survivors of Rosewood remember it as a delighted place. In 1995, survivor Robie Mortin recollected at age 79, “Rosewood was a habitation where everyone’s lodging was painted. There were roses everywhere you walked. Lovely.
