Self-Organizing Man

Anti-Lynching, Civil Rights and What Must Still be Done

June 22, 2005 – 9:39 am

Of the good senator from Mississippi’s response to Senate Resolution 39, in which the Senate officially apologized for its forceful contribution to supporting lynching as a standard feature of american behavior, Majikthise writes:

Thad "Dead Hand" Cochran (Miss.) Doesn’t feel he should have to apologize for the passage or non-passage any legislation by the U.S. Senate. Ever. Period. It’s the principle of the thing.

Her observations of Mr. Cochran and the twelve other Senators who did not sign the resolution remind me of comments made by Rita Schwerner Bender, the widow of murdered civil rights activist Michael Schwerner, upon meeting reporters after Edgar Ray Killen was found guilty of manslaughter.

"I hope that this conviction helps to shed some light on what happened in this state," the petite, white-haired widow said. "Yet, there is something else that needs to be said.

"The fact that some members of that jury could have sat through that testimony, and could not bring themselves to acknowledge that these were murders, committed with malice, indicates that there are still people, unfortunately, among you who choose to look aside and choose to not see the truth.

"And that means that there’s still a lot more yet to be done."

Of course, we can blame Killen’s acts and those of the thirteen Senators who chose not to sign Senate Resolution 39.  That reaction remains naive and shortsighted, I think.

Lynching existed as part a culture of violence and suppression.  It do not exist as some right wing blight on the good soul of either Mississippi or the U.S.  Again, Rita Schwerner Bender:

"In prosecuting this case, the state has taken one small step for mankind…. Preacher Killen didn’t act in a vacuum. The members of the Klan who were members of the police department, the sheriff’s office, the Highway Patrol didn’t act in a vacuum. The state of Mississippi was complicit in these crimes and all the crimes that occurred."

When she claims that the state of Mississippi was complicit in these, and other, crimes, Ms. Bender refers to the now-defunct Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, which kept tabs on civil rights workers throughout the state.

That relationship is confirmed from the records of the commission, which was created by the Legislature in the state.

In light of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, and the role of elected officials in creating it, Senator Cochran’s belief that the Senate need never apologize for its behavior makes sense.

If he had signed Senate Resolution 39, where does that put current white officials in Mississippi? 

Or those in Chicago, which the Reverand Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., declared the most segragated city outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi, where Ms. Bender’s former husband, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney were kidnapped and murdered.

Or in Detroit, where legislators,along with state and federal officials enacted and maintained segregated housing?  Where Henry Ford created the city of Inkster for his Black employees, far away from the his white ones in Dearborn?

The history of lynching and segregation and its antecedant, slavery represent a driving force in the growth and expansion of the United States.  Through these mechanisms, the U.S. has become one of the top dog nations of the world.

Tolerating racially based violence by white people on behalf of other white people remains business as usual for us here in america.

The conviction of Killen and Landrieu’s Senate Resolution 39 certainly represent small efforts on behalf of white americans to come to terms with our historial birthright of racism and white priviledge. 

Yet within us still exists a bedrock orientation to hate and fear and contributing to others suffering.

Thirteen Senators, people still among us, knowing the Senate’s intimate behavior with regard to anti-lynching legislation, choose to look aside and choose not to see the truth.

"And that means that there’s still a lot more yet to be done."