Portland observer., June 15, 2005, Page 2, Image 2

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lune 15. 2005
Apology Made for Lynching Inaction
■ ■ y im a
Senate finally
acknowledges
horror of past
(AP) - One woman remembered a cousin
who had died at the hands of a mob in
Kentucky. Another recalled a teenager
dragged from a relative's home in Missis­
sippi only to turn up dead in a river.
James Cameron lived to recount his
own brush with mobjustice. In 1930 he and
tw oothers were taken from an Indiana jail
to face a lynch mob. The mob hanged the
two young men accused o f murder and
rape but spared Cameron when someone
in the crowd contended that the 16-year-
old was not involved.
“ I was saved by a m iracle.” said
Cameron, now 9 1. People were "hollering
for my blood,” he recalled, “w hen a voice
said, ‘Take this boy back.” ’
Tothe victims of lynching-4,743 people
killed between 1882 and 1968. three out of
four of them black - the Senate issued an
apology Monday night for not standing
against the violence.
“The apology, while late, is very neces­
sary,” Doria Dee Johnson, an expert on the
subject of lynching and the great-great-
granddaughter of a victim. "People suf-
Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., welcomes Alberta Merriwether to a luncheon on
Capitol Hill Monday for family members o f lynching victims. (AP Photo)
When the United States
government could have done
something about it, it did not.
- Doria Dee Johnson, great-great-granddaughter of a lynching victim
fered. When the United States govern­
ment could have done something about it,
it did not.”
Johnson traveled from Evanston, 111., to
witness, along with more than 100 other
U .S. M ilit a r y
Deaths Reach 1,700
(AP) - The deaths of loved ones and family
members in Iraq keep adding up. As of Sunday,
June 12, at least 1,701 members of the U.S.
military have died since the beginning of the
Iraq war in March 2003. according to an Asso­
ciated Press count. At least 1,293 died as a
result o f hostile action, according to the De­
fense Department. The figures include five
military civilians.
The British military has reported 89 deaths;
Italy, 25; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 17; Spain. 11;
Bulgaria, 10; Slovakia, three; Estonia. Thailand
and the Netherlands, two each; and Denmark,
El Salvador, Hungary, Kazakhstan and Latvia
one death each.
Since May 1, 2003, when President Bush
declared that major combat operations in Iraq
had ended, 1,563 U.S. military members have
died, according to AP’s count
relatives of Anthony P. Crawford, the
voice-vote passage of the Senate resolu­
tion. Crawford was lynched in 1916 in
Abbeville, S.C.
One of the resolution’s chief sponsors.
Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La„ noted
that the public nature of many of
the lynchings was particularly dis­
turbing.
“This was a community spec­
tacle and the Senate of the United
States knew it,” Landrieu said
"There may be no other injustice
in American history for which the
Senate so uniquely bears respon
sibility.”
Seven presidents petitioned
HS? Congress toend lynchings. Nearly
200 anti-lynching bills were intro­
duced in the first half of the 20th
3 century. The House passed three
anti-lynching measures between
1920 and 1940, but the Senate
passed none.
Senators filibustered anti-lynching
measures for a total of six weeks, said the
main Republican sponsor of the resolu­
tion, Sen. George Allen o f Virginia. "It’s
not easy for people to apologize, but I
think it does show the character of the
Senate today,” he said.
Sen. Barack Obama, D-111., the Senate’s
only black member, said, "I do hope that
this chamber also spends some time ...
doing something concrete and tangible to
heal the long shadow of slavery and the
legacy of discrimination so that 100 years
from now we can look back and be proud
and not have to apologize once again.”
Court Finds Error in Murder Conviction
Blacks purposely excluded from Texas jury
(AP)-TheSupremeCourt
M iller-El’s trial, black ju ­
has overturned the convic­
rors
were questioned more
/
tion o f a black death row
aggressively
about the
-'a
inmate who said Texas pros­
death penalty, and the
ecutors unfairly stacked his
pool was “shuffled” at
jury with whites, issuing a
least twice by prosecutors,
harsh rebuke to the state
apparently to increase the
that executes more people
chances whites would be
than any other.
selected.
The 6-3 ruling Monday
“The prosecutors’ cho­
ordered a new trial for Tho­
sen race-neutral reasons
mas Miller-El, who chal­
for the strikes do not hold
Thomas Miller-El
lenged his conviction for the
up,” Souter wrote.
1985 murder of a 25-year-old Dallas
In a dissent. Justice Clarence Tho­
motel clerk.
mas, the court’s only African American
In the opinion. Justice David H. member and a staunch conservative,
Souter noted that in picking a jury for argued that Texas prosecutors had of-
I a
fered enough evidence that exclusions
of black jurors were made for reasons
other than race.
For instance, the state’s explana­
tion that jurors were struck based on
their hostility to the death penalty is
plausible, and the alleged racial moti­
vation behind prosecutors’ decision
to shuffle the jury pool is only specu­
lative, wrote Thomas.
“In view o f the evidence actually
presented to the Texas courts, their
conclusion that the state did not dis­
criminate was eminently reasonable,”
Thomas wrote in an opinion joined by
Chief Justice William Rehnquist and
Justice Antonin Scalia.
Edgar Ray Killen
‘Mississippi Burning’
Trial Begins
Justice sought 42
years after killings
(AP) - A historic civil rights trial is
finally being revisited four decades later.
Jury selection started M onday under
heavy security for the trial of a reputed Ku
Klux Klansman accused in the notorious
killings of three civil rights workers.
The 1964 murders of James Chaney,
Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwemer
shocked the nation and brought attention
to the struggle to register black voters in
the segregated South. Their killings were
depicted in the 1988 movie “Mississippi
Burning.”
Members of the jury pool, expected to
total about 400, were brought to the
N eshoba County courthouse on buses
and ushered in through a side door. The
courtroom doors were closed at the begin­
ning o f the selection process.
Defendant Edgar Ray Killen, who has
been free on bail, looked straight ahead
and said nothing as he was taken into the
two-story, red brick courthouse in a wheel­
chair.
Killen, an 80-year-old part-time preacher,
is the only person ever indicted on state
murder charges in the case.
He was tried in 1967 on federal charges
of violating the victims’ civil rights, but the
case ended in a hung jury. Seven others
were convicted, but none served more
than six years.
Chaney, a black man from Mississippi,
and Schwemer and Goodman, white men
from New York, were together in a car near
Philadelphia on June 21,1964, when they
were stopped by Klansmen, beaten and
shot to death. Their bodies were found 44
days later, buried in an earthen dam.
WELLS
FARGO
The Next Stage"
We fired up that grill like always. But today, something
was different. We all gathered close, quietly watching the
flame.The sound of the blues echoed from somewhere in
the park. I looked around and saw my brother, my wife, our
kids and their families, all together. And that's when it hit
me. Really hit me. Here we are, one hundred forty year;
later, with me holding one more ray of hope in my arms.
Juneteenth is a day to embrace the past and reflect on the future.
Wells Fargo honors this national day of African-American freedom.
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