Carol Bryant Donham's Bloodied Hands; Emmitt Till's Accuser Owns Her Lie

I read yesterday about Carol Bryant Donham finally admitting to Timothy Tyson, author and scholar from Duke University, that she lied about Emmitt Till. A lie that got 14 year old Till brutally lynched; beaten, piston whipped and beaten again before finally being shot, tied to an industrial fan and dumped in a river.  Donham's lie that led a broken mother to display her murdered son's mutilated body in an open casket so that the nation could witness the horror visited upon his child's body. 

"“That case went a long way toward ruining her life,” said Tyson, who said the Donham family reminded him of his own.   He said Donham's views on race had changed over the years, along with much of the country's."

Isn't that nice, kids?  I gotta wonder though - how many thousands of black Americans' lives were directly impacted and ruined as a consequence of her lies?  How many other black male children, teens and young men were falsely accused for the same things she accused Till of that led to them being imprisoned or killed over the intervening years?  But now we should have an iota of sympathy for her because as of 2007 when she was working with Tyson on her memoir, she "was glad things had changed [and she] thought the old system of white supremacy was wrong though she had more or less taken it as normal at the time."  Sheer preciousness there.  And I'm not willing to give her a pass on this. 

All these years and she kept silent instead of coming forward and admitting her lie.  All these years when she failed to step up openly, publicly, and vociferously against bigotry and against racial hatred.  All these years living in the shadows and silences while letting her lies against Till keep their legs and give racists an excuse to cite his "wolf whistle" as the insult so grievous as to justify child murder.

Frankly, her life in ruins from her lying means less to me than the lives of black Americans who were compelled, against their wills, to bear the brunt of those lies with their bodies, minds, spirits and lives.  She has his blood on her hands just as surely as the men who murdered him do.  She wrote a cruelly vicious chapter in our nation's history that spoke out against the value of black lives, particularly the lives of black men and black boys. 

"Let The Record Show"

Ran across this today:  http://johnpavlovitz.com/2017/01/19/let-the-record-show/

I did not consent either.  I love my country.  I could never vote to endanger her.

Dylan Roof Sentenced To Death

My last blog post of 2015 was about Dylan Roof's sister complaint over her wedding having been ruined by the attention on her brother, so this is as good a place to pick up as any.

So, Dylan Roof went to trial and was convicted of his hate crime murders.  Then there was another trial for his sentencing.  In between there was a bit of back and forth about whether he was competent, him defending himself or not, etc.  But when all is said and done, he was guilty, was convicted and now he has been sentenced to death in federal court.

I caught a short blurb where he is reported to have said that he had opportunities to NOT kill the black worshippers, who he gulled into a false sense of security, but that he "had to kill them." He's a racist and he believed he had to kill them for the sake of defending the white race and whatever racist ideology backed him up.

His rationalization is bullshit.  He didn't have to kill them.  He defended nothing. He killed because he wanted to. Now, in due time, the nation will kill him.  Frankly, I don't care. I'm not for the death penalty, but my own retributive streak would bury him in a maximum security prison's SHU/CMU which would ban him from most elements of human (and humane) contact, seeing the sky, going outdoors, talking with other people, as well as limiting what he could read and write with the idea of preventing him from putting his thoughts out into the public domain. Who knows?  Maybe he'll get a lot of that before he is killed by the state for his murderous racism.

Where Did 2016 Go?

I wrote not a word in 2016.
It was a year that saw the unraveling of my world and thrust me into becoming a caregiver for one of my best friends and her now late husband, my own husband, the death of my middle sister and the deaths of a bunch of artists and musicians who were part the background of my youth, adolesence and adulthood.
Then there was the brutal political season and election. There was plenty to say about that but, frankly, I didn't have the heart.
What did I do in 2016?  Gardened, went to a local weekend market with my camera and took photos.
And with that, my blog has sat fallow and unattended.
Time to wake up.