“Lynch law was never repealed.” Glen Ford
Black people are still being lynched at a rate of one every day. The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement documented in a 2013 report, “Operation Ghetto Storm”, that a black person is the victim of an extra-judicial killing every 28 hours. We may hear the name of some of those individuals as in the case of Trayvon Martin, but he was joined by 300 other black people in 2012 whose names we didn’t know.
The killings are becoming more numerous and more brazen. Why else would Stand Your Ground laws exist, if not to give white racists permission to kill without fear of prosecution. Modern Day Lynching is the title of my most recent Black Agenda Report column. I wrote about the killings of brothers Carl and Garrick Hopkins in West Virginia and Mckenzie Cochran in Michigan and the brutal assaults on Darrin Manning in Pennsylvania and Charda Gregory in Michigan.
On the same day that my column appeared I learned of another horrific case. Alfred Wright was found dead in Sabine County, Texas. His throat was cut and his ear was cut off. If that is not a lynching I don’t know what is.
These murders are being committed in part because black people have stood down from their legacy of agitation and demands for justice. The crowning of a black prince/president just put the icing on the cake and silenced people who were always at the forefront of fighting for justice.
Where are the black elected officials? Where were they when Kwadir Felton was shot in the head and blinded by a cop in Jersey City, New Jersey and then convicted of assault?
To put it bluntly, they don’t give a damn. Texas congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee made this mealy mouthed statement about Alfred Wright’s murder.
“the Department of Justice will investigate and take appropriate action and will conduct a thorough and independent investigation into all the circumstances surrounding this tragedy and to take appropriate action necessary to vindicate the federal interest, protect the civil rights of all Americans, ensure that all persons receive equal justice under law.
We are all better off when the facts are discovered, the truth is discerned and the family and the community are at peace.”
If Jackson Lee cared at all she would have personally led a protest and an investigation in Sabine. Instead she speaks jibberish about federal civil rights prosecutions which never take place.
Black people are in very grave danger and in part because we won’t even say so. The predators are winning.
Margaret Kimberley
