Reprint October 17-23, 2003

Ill fares the land To hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates And men decay! Oliver Goldsmith’s epic words describe perfectly the dilemma that confronts blacks in Mississippi who love freedom! The white man’s money and other emoluments have stolen whatever sense of honor black leaders possessed in the past: the Aaron Henrys, Medgar Evers, Susie Ruffins, the Fannie Lou Hamers! Instead, the Jackson City Council’s super black majority of Marshand Crisler, Leslie Burl McLemore, Bo Brown and Bettye Cook flaunt their Uncle Tomism with reckless abandon.

Perhaps that quartet of Remuses hail from such a long line of white folks Negroes that they are powerless to break that chain of command. Duke Ellington said: “If you got it, flaunt it,” but this isn’t what he had in mind. Still, it is overwhelmingly disconcerting to see four college educated Negroes being commanded by Ben Allen, the sole white on the council who signals the four blacks to let them know how he wants them to vote without even opening his mouth! To make sure I had the right picture images in mind from this mélange of cowardice and reverse racism, I took another look. Did you ever notice how Ben Allen leans to one side in his seat as he makes complete fools out of his black counterparts? Besides giving much of this 73% black city’s power and authority to his master Leland Speed and overtaxing poor black citizens, what has he done to benefit those who elected him?

Reprint September 23-29, 2004

There is a peculiar ambiance to downtown Jackson that defies explanation; it is that this city, which is over 73% black, has no reflection of its black majority in its wealth control or power. Looking from the outside one might easily believe that they were in Rome or Athens, Greece or some other all white city. Although the vast majority of its downtown dwellings house African Americans they seem to have no power! The black inhabitants are nearly invisible persons in economic terms! For example, last week a young African American woman was attacked from behind by a white co-worker without warning at a local Comfort Inn. The white co-worker was not arrested or reprimanded by police authorities or the employers but the black employee was sentenced to 17 years in jail! Moreover, Judge Yerger’s brother, Wirt Yerger, a metropolitan civic leader and head of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, drove blacks from the RepublicanParty as a Goldwater party leader.

Reprint September 11-17, 2003

Oh east is east and west is west, And never the twain shall meet, Til earth and skies stand Presently At God’s great judgment seat. But there is neither East nor West, Nor race, nor clan, nor birth When two strong men stand Face to face, Though they come from The ends of the earth! –Rudyard Kipling Perhaps it was during the darkest days of the 300 years of slavery and the inbreeding of abject cowardice into African American men that they changed into punks, sissies and hermaphrodites.

Certainly it is peculiar how punks like McLemore, Bo Brown and Marshand Crisler apparently continue to wear pants in their homes when it is abundantly clear that it is not they who really wear the mantle of true authority in their families. It is also clear, that the man in their households is Ben Allen, since his is the only authority that emanates from their manhood residences. While these elected black city council people — men, would certainly be an affront — each claim to be “Democrats”. It’s strange that they vote 99 44/100th percent of the time with white Republican Ben Allen — Hmmm!

Reprint August 21-27, 2003

Man’s inhumanity to man is compounded many times over when the inhumanity is linked to the fact of being both intraracial and interracial as it is here in Mississippi. Here, the black underclass gets a double whammy of prejudice from the black overlord niggeratti and the white racialists who don’t believe that African Americans are quite human and have always treated blacks as though they were missing links: pithecanthropus erecti. That means the whites react to African Americans as though they have not quite yet achieved humanity, except for a chosen few, who look and act like the whites. A few years ago, a white teacher at Jackson State University testified in federal court that some of her students resisted being taught to “act like white people”. The white teacher thought that resistance was offensive to the black middle class niggeratti such as Marshand Crisler, Leslie Burl McLemore, Bettye Dagner Cook and occasionally William Bo Brown. They have, like Louis Quatorze of France, convinced whites with power that it is the niggeratti’s fingers in the dikes that hold back the black tide “Apre moi le deluge” “After me the deluge”, they tell the declining white population in this 73% black populated city of Jackson. However, the whites continue to rule by proxy: the two whites, Margaret Barrett-Simon of Ward 7 and Ben Allen of Ward 1, plus the combined “working majority” of Crisler, McLemore, Brown and Cook. Crisler is the most abjectly contemptible of the group. I was present at several meetings at which Crisler agreed to support efforts to elect Kenneth Stokes president of the city council, while one must surely reserve the right to change one’s mind, Crisler never did. Yet, Sunday’s Clarion Ledger contained one of the most contemptibly “Toming” letters possible directed against Councilman Kenneth Stokes. This, after that newspaper carried several anti-Stokes editorials and at least one full page of drivel against Stokes last week. It is the behind the scenes maneuvering to deprive Jackson blacks of their voting rights that’s most distressing in this situation. Black rights in Jackson are under attack and four of the five council people who look like me are right in the middle of the scheme!

Reprint July 10-16, 2003

Speak now or forever …

Census figures in 1990 showed that blacks in Jackson, Mississippi for that year enjoyed an annual income of 1.9 billion dollars, a startling statistic considering the usual poverty stricken image of the average Jackson black resident. In fact, 73% black, Jackson describes itself as “The Capital of the Deep South”. The Mayoral Administration is playing a dangerous game of compromise with virulent white racists here in this city run by Jackson land grabber Leland Speed.

Not only has Speed seized control of 44% of Jackson’s commercial property, but influences the commercial laws in the city while Jackson withers on the vine. Many of them on Hamilton and Farish, for instance, have disappeared completely from the face of the earth! As important as commercial development is, it must remain in the hands of this city’s elected officials, not white Klan-type organizations designed to rob blacks of their citizenship and heritage.

Instead, the Mayor of Jackson has so far vainly sought to enlist the black hoy polloy, the black nigerrali elitists who blend well with Leland Speed type whites. This is the same environment that persisted before the end of slavery and the beginning of Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement in 1957. Large compendiums of blacks sold themselves to the highest bidder, enriching themselves and their families. The black community has not worked out a punishment method for those who sell them out to the highest bidder! We must, if we are to survive and persist. That means the biggest snakes to the smallest!

Reprint July 24-30, 2003

Some for the pleasures Of this world And others sigh for Prophets paradise to come. Oh take the cash, And let the credit go. Nor heed the rumbling Of the distant drums! Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam It seems whenever black people get in position to exercise power, they screw that opportunity up. In Gary, in Jersey City and other cities where overwhelming black majorities have created the opportunity for genuine black power and self-government this has occurred. Now, in Jackson, its “first black mayor”, has permitted the same Dixiecrats that ruled the capital city and waved Confederate flags here in the past to control the city to maintain their old control in the present. In fact, Leland Speed, the son of a former Jackson mayor has instituted various areas of control, both cooperate and private, to maintain the old white control in this 73% black city. First, with Capital Center, a pseudo-eleemosynary cooperation, he intimidated city elected officials to the degree that city government became a farce, a paper tiger. Then using Capital Center as the tool, Leland Speed has acquired more than 44% of Jackson’s commercial real estate. Using his economic clout to shield his skullduggery, Speed has also assumed control of the capital sources at Jackson State University, an ostensibly black university. We must elect men, not boys, to head majority black institutions. It’s getting to the point where crookedness and thievery is coming to the fore here as they have in other parts of the country.

Reprint June 21-27, 2005

I sent my soul through The invisible, Some letter of that after-life To spell. By and by it returned to Me and said, ‘I, myself, am heaven and hell!’ For if the wine you sip, The lips you press Ends in what all ends in — yes, Think that today you are What yesterday you were — Tomorrow you will not be Less! The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam There are many other sayings that arrive at the same conclusion as the above. One of them: “A coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man but once!” That, of course, is the eternal dilemma of black men in America. Who will be the courageous mouse who bells the cat at the sacrifice of his own life so that the other mice will know when the cat approaches, thus saving countless lives? That is a problem that has confronted black people in freedom and slavery. Of course belling the cat in today’s society would mean voting out of office the traitorous Leslie McLemores and Marshand Crislers. Black traitors increase and proliferate in our faces while we hi-five them in public places. We reward them by giving them places of honor at our public institutions like Jackson State. It’s a shame that those in power at Jackson State and at the state’s other public troughs didn’t send these Toming scoundrels on their merry — but less penurious — ways! It’s probably alright to have these individuals corrupt their own kids but not all black children! Those who can’t do, teach!

Reprint: July 7-13, 2005

In the crescendo of joy over the election of new Jackson mayor Mayor Frank Melton to office, Jackson’s 73% black population forgot about the duplicity of black race politicians such as Ward 2’s Leslie McLemore and Ward 6’s Marshand Crisler. Those two crooks should never be permitted to debate principled issues in a society of decent men. They are bought and paid for! These two are so crooked that they meet themselves coming in the out door daily! Not only did Crisler serve out his first elective term getting paid a quadruple city council salary while “serving” in Iraq, but no one knows what compensation Crisler received as his rightful due. Moreover, Crisler received salaries from two different segments of government, administrative and legislative, at the same time which is against the Mississippi Constitution! He should, of course, be forced from office. He is simply a slave driver for his slave master, Sheriff Malcolm McMillan. Only Negroes in Mississippi would sit idly by and let two whites control the city where blacks are the overwhelming majority! The Justice Department said in 1992 that Wards 2 and 7 should be merged into one ward. This is a compendium of cowardice that’s inexcusable! Crisler and McLemore must go next term. McLemore admits he took $67,000 from Kane Ditto during his first race for city council. I dare him to publicly deny it! Moreover, McLemore’s wife, the former Betty Mallette, a one time assistant city attorney, once defended Socrates Garrett’s illegal bid for the city’s legal notices, because his was a free newspaper prohibited by law from being the city’s legal newspaper. Mallette/McLemore continues to do business with the city of Jackson as a member of a local law firm. She is also the assistant city attorney, who introduced measures to fund Capital Center Inc.

Reprint: June 16-22, 2005

In the dark days of abject segregation, when black folks had absolutely no rights that whites were bound to respect, and, moreover, black people had better act as though they had no rights, even when they knew differently. I’m 78 years old, and I remember those days, quite well! Years ago conservative columnist Westbrook Pegler, himself an old line segregationist, nevertheless recognized the impossible circumstance this fate-worse-than-death imposed on self respecting blacks. Pegler wrote, “If I were a Negro, I would live in a constant state of fury” because of the indignities being heaped upon black Americans by other races in this country. We no longer suffer indignities heaped upon us by other races, but indeed by our own! If there was ever an angry class war being waged, it is the struggle between black haves in Jackson and the black have nots here! The so-called black intellectuals, the preachers and teachers, no longer use their skills and educations to advance the race but to get over on uneducated blacks by selling them out! It’s the way that England’s lords behaved during Shakespeare’s time. Oliver Goldsmith wrote: “Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey. Where wealth accumulates and men decay!” There is, of course, the biblical injunction that we love one another, even as God loves us. However, late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. We ought to be ashamed! Selah!

Reprint: Aug. 7, 2003

Living black in Mississippi

Another Mississippi election day has come. This election chooses party candidates who will vie for victory in the Nov. 3 General Election pitting Democrats against Republicans and Independents. For African Americans voting in this year’s ballotings, they may be enjoying their last voting in the state. This state will certainly be in the forefront of states seeking to revoke the Voting Rights Acts of 1965 when it comes up for reaffirmation in 2007.

The Voting Rights Act was bitterly contested

in 1982 in its first reaffirmation cycle. In Mississippi, the job of the racialist in Mississippi will be made easier by the large number of elitist blacks extant in the state who preach a doctrine of “what’s white is right”.

The elite Negros have run off with all the marbles and left hordes of destitute blacks to struggle through the poverty, despair and racism inherent in living black in Mississippi.

A few years ago, Fannie Lou Hamer, Aaron Henry, Mrs Susie Ruffin, Gilbert Mason and a few others inspired the flames of freedom in the hearts of long sleeping blacks in Mississippi; so asleep that during slavery they did not resist slavery even when they possessed superior numbers! During the recent past, black voters became rejuvenated but made the mistake of electing black elitists to the positions that they control due to their numbers. They thus became literal slaves to the elitists as much as in the past.

Although African Americans have a vested interest in what happens with the Voting Rights Act, the fact that the educated (or miseducated) elite have so misused the emolument flowing from it, that the black masses haven’t benefited from their own struggles, is a problem. Serious reform in the cost benefit ratio is desperately needed.