BALLOTS ARE BULLETS!
I was somewhat incredulous, even disappointed, when my maternal uncle, Cyrus Arlander Moreland, told me, recently, that slavery still existed in parts of Mississippi in the 1940s. '50s, even into the '60s, and that he had seen some of the conditions under which they lived, when he had worked as a delivery man for a meat merchant there!
"Impossible?" I had rejected it out of hand. Surely, he is pulling my leg I thought to myself, respectfully; daring not to offend, to dispute, by questioning, this 80+ years man who loved me. He had taught me and shown me so much to prove it.
After all, I had been to college, to law school and worked for the Justice and Labor Departments, before going into my own private, solo law practice . My uncle had not! Still he had said that he had witnessed slavery . I had not!
Turns out that my uncle was right! Also turns out that I had, unknowingly, witnessed some vestiges of it in Money, Mississippi in 1971, while poll watching in a cotton gin with a friend, now an attorney, also, from Howard University. Two armed white men had unloaded a truck loaded with black men and escorted them inside the polling place, where they voted in front of us on a flat table open for viewing.
Naturally, my friend and I were more concerned with our own safety than electoral proprieties in my birth state of Mississippi, in light of those two armed, vicious -looking, white men; who escorted the entire lot of men back to the flatbed truck that they rode in on, when "voting" was done for them, that very dark, Mississippi night!
That they were slaves had never occurred to me, until I write this. Then. I had assumed that they were simply sharecroppers, especially since black prisoners still cannot vote there, here. Nor vote much of anywhere else!
For, if they could vote, their prison conditions, sentences, terms and rehabilitation opportunities, during their imprisonment, would surely all have vastly improved for this large aggregate of respectful, respected citizens-voters! Ballots are bullets!
Then, reading books by Charles E. Cobb, Jr., Robert Moses, who had led, and had fought the civil rights battles in Mississippi in the 1960s in SNCC, and others' books ; including having viewed a Facebook video of an elderly brother who said that he had been a slave, in Mississippi, back in the 1960s, I am more convinced than ever about my sage uncle!s truthfulness. And my brainwashed unknowing ruefulness!
Ballots are bullets, powerful media!
Friday, August 24, 2018
BALLOTS ARE BULLETS
BALLOTS ARE BULLETS!
I was somewhat incredulous, even disappointed, when my maternal uncle, Cyrus Arlander Moreland, told me, recently, that slavery still existed in parts of Mississippi in the 1940s. '50s, even into the '60s, and that he had seen some of the conditions under which they lived, when he had worked as a delivery man for a meat merchant there!
"Impossible?" I had rejected it out of hand. Surely, he is pulling my leg I thought to myself, respectfully; daring not to offend, to dispute, by questioning, this 80+ years man who loved me. He had taught me and shown me so much to prove it.
After all, I had been to college, to law school and worked for the Justice and Labor Departments, before going into my own private, solo law practice . My uncle had not! Still he had said that he had witnessed slavery . I had not!
Turns out that my uncle was right! Also turns out that I had, unknowingly, witnessed some vestiges of it in Money, Mississippi in 1971, while poll watching in a cotton gin with a friend, now an attorney, also, from Howard University. Two armed white men had unloaded a truck loaded with black men and escorted them inside the polling place, where they voted in front of us on a flat table open for viewing.
Naturally, my friend and I were more concerned with our own safety than electoral proprieties in my birth state of Mississippi, in light of those two armed, vicious -looking, white men; who escorted the entire lot of men back to the flatbed truck that they rode in on, when "voting" was done for them, that very dark, Mississippi night!
That they were slaves had never occurred to me, until I write this. Then. I had assumed that they were simply sharecroppers, especially since black prisoners still cannot vote there, here. Nor vote much of anywhere else!
For, if they could vote, their prison conditions, sentences, terms and rehabilitation opportunities, during their imprisonment, would surely all have vastly improved for this large aggregate of respectful, respected citizens-voters! Ballots are bullets!
Then, reading books by Charles E. Cobb, Jr., Robert Moses, who had led, and had fought the civil rights battles in Mississippi in the 1960s in SNCC, and others' books ; including having viewed a Facebook video of an elderly brother who said that he had been a slave, in Mississippi, back in the 1960s, I am more convinced than ever about my sage uncle!s truthfulness. And my brainwashed unknowing ruefulness!
Ballots are bullets, powerful media!