“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” —William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun (1950) * On the night of the Mississippi GOP primary runoff between U.S. senator Thad Cochran and state senator Chris McDaniel, PBS aired Freedom Summer, a powerful American Experience...
GOP=Confederacy
The (GOP-Driven) Decline of Black Power in the South . . .
“He who controls redistricting can control Congress.” —Karl Rove, “The GOP Targets State Legislatures,” The Wall Street Journal, March 4, 2010 “I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president [1948] we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if...
A Return to Literacy Tests? Take This.
How Many White Folks Does It Take to Pass a Jim Crow ‘Brain-Teaser’? With the Supreme Court’s June 25 decision in Shelby County v. Holder overturning Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and with Republican Jim Crow re-enactors “free at last” to get their electoral racism on, will the United States see a return […]
Supreme Conservatives Drag U.S. Ceaselessly into the (Jim Crow) Past
* “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” —Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dissenting opinion, Shelby County v. Holder Re-Legalizing Electoral Racism; Red State Republicans ‘Free at Last’ June 25, 2013, will […]
In Honor of Medgar Evers and Res Publica
Conservatives’ rejection of all things “public” as “white flight” “The gifts of God . . . should be enjoyed by all citizens in Mississippi.” —Medgar Evers (1925–1963) * Fifty years ago today, Medgar Wylie Evers was killed in his driveway in Jackson, Mississippi, after returning from an NAACP meeting at a nearby church. Evers, a graduate […]