Getting Away With Murder In the American South, Again

HAPPY FIFTY SECOND ANNIVERSARY of the murder of three civil rights workers one black, two white in Mississippi, at the hands of an extreme and still extant radical Christian terrorist organization, aka "the Klan", most of whose members got away with murder because the local and regional culture was generally amicable to their racist point of view, which is why the civil rights workers were there in the first place. The bodies were found, but nobody was convicted of murder, until decades later, one poor good ole boy was, belatedly. Trying to change the world, them damned Yankees, trying to make trouble. During freedom summer, 1964, thousands of do good northern liberal Yankees, Harvard types, hippies, radical reformers, and such, swarmed into the American south, thinking, with incredible temerity, that by so doing they could help "improve" American southern culture, by helping to discourage and end racism and discrimination in the land of unchanging shackled tradition. Just the other day, or maybe it was today, officials in the great but not too progressive state of Mississippi announced that they are dropping the investigation; too many years have passed, too many witnesses or potential testifiers have died, too much evidence has been lost or destroyed. Mississippi burning, no more. The guilty white culture finally succeeded in running out the clock. Now we the American people have moved on to more subtle, less detectable forms of racism, as we continue our long tradition of white rage over lost and valuable property at the hands of meddlers. The current strategy seems to be to lock up as many black men as possible on whatever chargers are convenient. A black man is arrested, hand and foot cuffed, and loaded into a van, and at the end of his ride to jail he is dead, while, what, six police officers are present? How much you wanna bet that nobody is found guilty of doing anything wrong? The perp must have found a way to commit suicide while in police custody. Just like the end of the Civil War and slavery, when millions of former slaves failed to take full advantage, over the next century, of the many marvelous opportunities for personal advancement and cultural assimilation offered by the prevailing progressive uber culture. Some things never change.