Meme Dump

Bobservations

First off, thanks everyone for the birthday wishes. Tuesday was the day of my birth, but the celebration is a weeklong event. Carlos gifted me a day to myself on Tuesday as he had a conference to attend in Columbia and we will celebrate with a meal at one of our favorite restaurants in Asheville this weekend IF it doesn’t snow as predicted; in that case we’ll dine closer to home … 

So this past weekend we waited for The Storm. They said snow on Saturday with sub-freezing temperatures and then an ice storm on Sunday taking out trees and knocking out power.

Yeah; not so much. We got about an inch of snow that was gone before noon and then ice storm apparently melted before it arrived but …

On Sunday it was quite cold and Carlos decided to practice his trumpet in the sunroom with two of the four sliders open to the 20-degree air.

This from the man who drops an F-bomb every morning that the temperature is 35-degrees or less.

This from the man who sleeps under five blankets while wearing three pairs of socks, long underwear, sweatpants and a sweater.

But standing in a 20-degree sunroom? Now it was my turn for the F-bombs!

This Tuxedo Says is from August 2021 ...

Tuxedo watches a lot of CNN—like his daddy he has a wee crush on Anderson Cooper, whom he calls his Owner-In-My-Head … where does he come up with these things—and is amazed at the way Republicans think …or don’t actually think.

While we must remember Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, ICE agents have also been responsible for the deaths of seven people of color since the first on the year.

Top Row, left to right:

Keith Porter Jr. was fatally shot by an off-duty ICE agent on New Year’s Eve outside his apartment complex. An LAPD spokesperson said Porter had fired gunshots into the air and a DHS spokesperson said the off-duty ICEstapo officer was “forced to defensively use his weapon” but offers no evidence to support that.

Parady La, Cambodian refugee, died while being held in ICEstapo custody at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia. He passed away after suffering severe drug withdrawal, with his family alleging medical neglect. 

Heber Sanchez Domínguez, a Mexican citizen, died while in ICEstapo custody at the Robert A. Deyton Detention Center in Georgia. The cause of death is currently under investigation. 

Victor Manuel Diaz, from Nicaragua, died in ICEstapo custody at Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas. DHS says Diaz died of a presumed suicide but  the official cause of his death remains under investigation.

Bottom Row, left to right:

Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz, from Honduras, died while under the custody of the ICEstapo after suffering a heart-related medical issue; his death is also under investigation.

Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres, a Honduran citizen, died in ICEstapo custody in Texas of “complications related to congenital heart failure.”

Geraldo Lunas Campos, from Cuba,  died in custody at the ICEstapo detention center in Camp East Montana; the cause of death was "asphyxia due to neck and torso compression."

Last year, 32 people died in ICE custody, the most in a single year since the agency was created. 

Add their names to your rage.

Ticket sales for Amazon’s $40,000,000 documentary about the Slovenian Hooker’s return to the White have been, well, much like her husband’s penis, little and soft. According to one of Britain’s biggest cinema operators, Tim Richards, chief executive of Vue, just two tickets have been booked for the 6pm showing at Vue Islington on its opening evening.

Perhaps if Melanie had included her soft-core porn film as part of the documentary she might have sold three tickets.

The “No Kings” protests against the regime are returning March 28, this time with a flagship event in the Minneapolis on the heels of the ICEstapo murders on Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.

Other demonstrations are expected again across the country.

Stand up; speak up; resist!

Thanks to Doc Heroin Addict the measles epidemic in South Carolina has spread to at least 789 people, surpassing the 2025 West Texas outbreak that sickened 762 people and killed two young girls. The majority of cases remain centered in Spartanburg County, mostly among people who were either unvaccinated or didn’t know their status.

South Carolina has long strived to be the best at something but who would have guessed it would be measles?

Good, fun news, because it has MAGAts in a giant snit, a rumor has it that Bad Bunny will wear a dress during his upcoming Super Bowl performance. And MAGAts are already ranting and raging all over X even though the story has not been substantiated.

Either way, I like the white, but the pink looks more fun, don’t you think?

Jhona Burjack is a model represented by agencies in New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, Hamburg, and São Paulo. It’s like he’s everywhere so … Would You Hit It?

Once More: This Ain't America!

It’s been a little more than a week since the ICEstapo, terrorizing the citizens of Minneapolis, murdered Renee Nicole Good, and then lied about it.

Border Barbie, Kristi Noem, claimed the ICEstapo officer, Jonathan Ross, felt his life was in danger because she was coming at him with her car and yet the shots that wounded Good—yes, she was still alive after the shooting but died before medical attention could be given to her—all came from the driver’s side window meaning Ross was next to the car and not in front of it.

Simply put, Renee Nicole Good was shot by ICEstapo agent Jonathan Ross and then left to die on the street; she was murdered.

And, of course, then came Liam Ramos, a 5-year-old preschooler, who was taken out of his father’s car upon arriving home from school and then told by the ICEstapo to knock on the door of his home asking to be let in, “in order to see if anyone else was home; the ICEstapo used an innocent child as bait.

Marc Prokosch, an attorney representing the family, said the family had an active asylum case and shared paperwork showing the father and son had arrived in the US at a port of entry, meaning an official crossing point. They did everything right … except for the color of their skin and the language they speak.

Liam and his father are now be held in a concentration camp in Texas.

And now here we are again, another citizen in Minneapolis has been murdered by the ICEstapo, shot between five and ten times, after a scuffle.

The Cankles Regime, with Fascist Kristi Noem painting  Alex Pretti as a dangerous man hellbent on violence. Sure, Alex was a gun-owning outdoorsman, but he had a right to carry a weapon; he was also a hiker, scientist, and a Veteran’s Affairs ICU nurse who helped critically ill military patients.

Noem claims Alex Pretti —according to an official DHS statement lie—approached  fully armed ICEstapo murderers with a  9mm semi- automatic weapon when actually, all he had in his hands was a camera And he was trying to help a woman that the ICEstapo had shoved to the ground. The murderers then took on Pretti, trying to force him to the ground; onlookers say Pretti told the ICEstapo he had a gun, and a permit to carry.

As many as eight agents were attempting to detain Alex Pretti, and one is seen on video emerging from the scuffle holding Pretti’s gun. That agent had bent down, reached toward Alex Pretti and lifted a gun from his back near his waistband; the agent turns and begins to walk away while holding the weapon, pointing it toward the ground.

Another agent, standing beside the agent who had Pretti’s gun, unholsters his gun at virtually the same moment and points it at Pretti’s back at close range. At least two agents are attempting to hold him down. A split second later comes the crack of the first gunshot, though the videos do not show which agent fired. Pretti gets up on one knee and falls over as the agent who had unholstered his weapon fires in rapid succession while other agents back up and also discharge their weapons.

It appears that 10 shots were fired at Alex Pretti while he was unarmed, already shot once, and laying on the ground and while a woman is heard screaming:

“What did you just do?”

According to court filings, a witness, whose name was redacted, is a physician who lives near where the shooting occurred. The witness went to treat Pretti’s wounds and said ICEstapo agents were not administering first aid:

“I was confused as to why the victim was on his side because that is not standard practice. Checking for a pulse and administering CPR is standard practice. Instead of doing either of those things, the ICE agents appeared to be counting his bullet wounds.”

Kristi Noem, Kash Patel, Leavitt, Cankles and Tiny Man Greg Bovino, playing dress up as a Nazi all say that that Pretti was the aggressor; he was “threatening” the ICEstapo; they say he came at them with a gun and they were just defending themselves; he’s a Leftist extremist; and he got what he deserved when he attacked these so-called officers.

Last week the House, with the help of these Democrats—Representatives Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Tom Suozzi and Laura Gillen of New York, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Jared Golden of Maine, and Don Davis of North Carolina—voted to increase ICEstapo funding by billions of dollars. This week the Senate is expected to vote.

In the names of Renee and Alex, call your Senators, write your Senators, Tweet at them, scream at them over social media. Demand action before other citizens are murdered in the streets.

Oh, and if you want proof that this regime doesn’t give a fuck about murdered Americans but instead blames the dead for what happened, take note that Fascist Attorney General—and just about the most hate-filled vile human alive—Pam Bondi, mere hours after the ICEstapo murdered Alex Pretti in the street, demanded access to Minnesota’s voter rolls, directly tying the Regime’s quest for voters’ unredacted personal data to its aggressive immigration raids across the state.

They’re killing Americans in the hopes of rigging elections.

Meme Dump

That Ain't America: Renee Nicole Good is Dead

Renee Nicole Good, the 37-year-old mother of three who had just moved to Minneapolis, was a prize-winning poet and a hobby guitarist, who city leaders have said was there as a legal observer of ICE activities.

But the Fascist Regime called her a "domestic terrorist” and cosplaying, inept Homeland Security Secretary Kristi “DogKiller” Noem calls the shooting justified because the officer who killed Rennee, Jonathan Ross, was in fear for his life. Add to the mix both Vice President Couchfucker and White House Minister of Propaganda, KKKarolying Leavitt, who each posted the video of the killing to their social media, and claimed Ross was justified in killing Good.

What actually happened …

Her wife, Rebecca Good, with whom she moved to Minneapolis just last year, said:

"On Wednesday, January 7th, we stopped to support our neighbors. We had whistles. They had guns."

They had guns; this band of mostly untrained, uneducated, formerly unemployed, wannabe police officers who were paid handsomely to join Ice, had guns.

Several state leaders have said that Good was at the scene of an ICE raid in the south of Minneapolis as a legal observer to monitor police and security forces at protests and operations. Renne’s mother says her daughter was "not part of anything" that involved challenging ICE agents. Still, Regime officials, including the racist, rapist, fascist president, claim Renee was interfering in the officers' work by "blocking them in" with her car and "shouting at them".

Who to believe; the people who knew Renee, or the man in the Oval office who literally lies every time his mouth moves and his hand puppet, a dog killing, now citizen killing, Neo-Nazi?

I choose Renee, and here’s why …

The Regime says Renee "weaponized her vehicle" and then tried to run over one of the officers "in an attempt to kill or cause bodily harm to agents, an act of domestic terrorism" but cellphone video, one of which came from Jonathan Ross, the shooter,  and eyewitness accounts tells a different story.

Ross’ video begins with him getting out of his car and approaching Good’s SUV from the passenger side; there’s a black dog in the rear seat looking at Ross through an open window as the ICE officer walks around the front of the car to face Good who says to him:

“That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you.”

At the same time, Ross is approached by a woman who later identified herself as Good’s wife, Rebecca. Ross walks around to film the SUV’s rear license plate, then to Rebecca, filming Ross now. who says:

“That’s OK, we don’t change our plates every morning. Just so you know, it’ll be the same plate when you come talk to us later … You want to come at us? You want to come at us? I say go get yourself some lunch, Big Boy. Go ahead.”

At this point, Ross has moved to face the passenger side of the SUV again and is making his way around to the front. It seems like the situation was under control, until another couple of ICE agents, untrained and armed, approach the vehicle and shout:

“Get out of the car. Get out of the f-----g car. Get out of the car.”

Rebecca gets into the front seat and apparently tells her wife “drive.” Ross is now facing the front of the vehicle  and Renee reverses slightly, then accelerates forward. Ross, holding his phone and filming, then fires multiple shots into Renee’s as it passed him.

He was holding both a phone and a gun, standing to the side of the vehicle as Renee Nicole Good tried to drive past him when he killed her. There are those who say Renee’s car may have struck Ross, run over his foot, but video after the murder shows him walking completely fine.

There was no threat, there was no imminent danger, there was no threat … except from Jonathan Ross who shot Renee three times in the face as she drove by him.

This Ain’t America. At least not the America I know; we aren’t perfect, goddess knows we do all kinds of terrible things, but when you fire up hatred against brown people who speak differently, when you send marauding, untrained, unfit, masked men with guns into the streets to round up anyone they assume to be undocumented, the worst will happen.

And it did last week … to Renee Nicole Good.

Say her name; do not let her murder be in vain. Demand an investigation; demand accountability from Noem who advertised for ICE agents, paid them bonuses to join, did no background checks, no educational checks; she handed them weapons and masks and sent them into our streets.

Say her name; cast a vote; end this regime of terror and murder.

Matthew Shepard Died Today*

*originally posted October 12, 2009 ... Shepard died in 1998

He was just a kid. A slight kid, a sweet kid. A gay. But it wasn't the kid who got noticed on this day eleven years ago, it was his murder that caught us all, gay and straight, off-guard.

Matthew Wayne Shepard was a twenty-one-year-old college student at the University of Wyoming. And he was gay. And, for being gay, he was tortured and left to die near Laramie, Wyoming. His attack occurred on October 6, but Mathew didn't die until almost a week later.

Matthew was born in Wyoming and grew up there. He spent his last high school year at The American School in Switzerland. After high school, he attended Catawba College and Casper College before he relocated to Denver and becoming a first-year political science major at the University of Wyoming.

Political science. Matthew might have been a politician, or a community organizer, or a gay rights activist. Or a teacher or a bartender or any number of other things which we'll never know because he never got the chance to be anything else.

He was described by his parents, Judy and Dennis, as "an optimistic and accepting young man [who] had a special gift of relating to almost everyone. He was the type of person who was very approachable and always looked to new challenges. Matthew had a great passion for equality and always stood up for the acceptance of people's differences."

He might have done so much.

But Matthew knew he was gay, and so did many other people. And like so many in the LGBT community, he faced physical and verbal abuse all throughout his life, and death. In 1995, during a high school trip to Morocco, he was beaten and raped, leaving him withdrawn from friends and family and battling depression and panic attacks. But he soldiered on, went back to school and seemed to be coming out of his depression.

Then, just after midnight on October 7, 1998, Matthew met Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson in a bar. McKinney and Henderson offered Shepard a ride in their car. They took him to a remote area, tied him to a fence, robbed, pistol whipped, tortured him, and left him to die. They also found his address and decided to rob his home as well.

Matthew Shepard was discovered 18 hours later by Aaron Kreifels, who mistook the beaten, dying young man for a scarecrow. Matthew was barely alive. And suffering.

There was a fracture from the back of his head to the front of his right ear. He had severe brain stem damage, which affected his body's ability to regulate heart rate, body temperature and other vital functions. There were also a dozen or more lacerations around his head, face and neck. His injuries were deemed too severe for doctors to operate.

Matthew Shepard never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead on October 12, 1998.

Police arrested McKinney and Henderson shortly thereafter, finding the bloody gun as well as the victim's shoes and wallet in their truck. The two men had attempted to persuade their girlfriends to provide alibis. They used the gay panic defense, arguing that they beat, tortured and killed Matthew Shepard because he came on to them. They even tried to say they only wanted to rob him, not hurt him.

But they hurt an entire community.

Russell Henderson pleaded guilty in April 1999, and agreed to testify against Aaron McKinney to avoid the death penalty; he was given two consecutive life sentences. The jury found Aaron McKinney guilty of felony murder, and as they began to deliberate on the death penalty, Matthew Shepard's parents brokered a deal, resulting in McKinney receiving two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.

In a statement read to the court, Dennis Shepard told McKinney what the sentence means to him:

“You won’t be a symbol.

No years of publicity, no chance of commutation, no nothing—just a miserable future and a miserable end.

It works for me ….

Mr. McKinney, I give you life in the memory of one who no longer lives.

May you have a long life, and may you thank Matthew every day for it.”

He was just a kid. A slight kid, a sweet kid. A gay kid. And he could have been any one of us, but in death, Matthew did what hadn't really been done before. He shone a light on hate crimes against the LGBT community. He gave us a face and a smile that needn't have been snuffed out so readily.

He could have been any one of us. He is every one of us.

Repost: Black History Month: Emmett Till

This one breaks my heart and feeds my anger.

1955. Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was excited about his trip from his home in Chicago's south side to the Mississippi Delta to visit relatives. He had been 'educated in the ways of the south' by his mother, Mamie Till Bradley, who told him how to behave around Southern white people. Mamie Till knew that life in Mississippi was a lot different than in Chicago. In Mississippi, over 500 Black people had been lynched since 1882 and racially motivated murders were not unfamiliar, especially in the Delta where Till was going.

On August 20, 1955, with his mother's warning ringing in his ears, and his deceased father's ring on his finger, Emmett Till set off with his cousin Curtis Jones on the train to Mississippi. When Till and Jones arrived on August 21, they stayed at the home of Till's great-uncle Mose Wright, just on the outskirts of Money, Mississippi.

Three days later, the two boys drove Wright's car into the small town of Money and stopped at Bryant's Grocery store to buy some candy. Prior to going inside, Till pulled out some pictures of his white friends in Chicago and showed them to the local boys outside the store. Those boys dared Till to talk to Carolyn Bryant, the store clerk. Till went into the store, purchased some candy, and what happened as he was leaving is unclear. Till either said, "Bye, baby" or he whistled at Carolyn Bryant.

Neither Emmett Till nor Curtis Jones understood the magnitude of Till's act, so they didn't tell Mose Wright what happened. They continued to think nothing of the event as three days passed without incident; three days of the cousins enjoying their summer vacation. However, on the fourth day, early Sunday morning, Carolyn Bryant's husband, Roy, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, knocked on the door of Wright's home.

With a pistol and flashlight in hand, they asked Mose Wright whether three boys from Chicago were staying with him. And , because when white people with guns knocked at your door in Mississippi in 1955, and you're a Black man, you let them in, Mose Wright took the two men to a room where Emmett Till was sleeping.

Bryant and Milam told Till to get dressed. Wright unsuccessfully pleaded with them to just whip Till, but the two men ignored his pleas, and threatened to kill Wright if he told anyone. Several hours later, Mamie Till was notified of her son's kidnapping. A search of the area was conducted, and Mamie Till notified Chicago newspapers of her son's disappearance.

Wright told Money's sheriff who had taken Till, and he arrested Bryant and Milam for kidnapping. Little more than a week after Emmett Till arrived in Money, Mississippi, his body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River. It was weighted down by a seventy-five-pound cotton gin fan, which was tied around Till's neck with barbed wire. His face was so mutilated that when Wright identified the body, he could only do so based on the ring that Till has been wearing—his dead father's ring.

Mamie Till made the decision, when Emmett's body was returned to Chicago, to have an open casket funeral. She wanted the world to know what had happened to her son. His right eye was missing, his nose was broken, and there was a hole in the side of his head. Fifty-thousand people attended the funeral. Jet magazine ran photos of Till's body; soon Till's murder became an international story.

Down in Money, Mississippi, Milam and Bryant garnered support; whites in their community claimed they were innocent and supported their defense by donating to 'the cause.'

The trial began on September 19, 1955, in Sumner, Mississippi. The entire jury was composed of white men from the defendants' home county. At trial, the defense attorney asserted that the body recovered from the river was not Till's body, and instead, claimed Milam and Bryant had taken Till but had let him go. Milam and Bryant alleged that the NAACP and Mamie Till had dug up a body and claimed that it was Till and that Emmett Till was hiding out in Chicago.

For the prosecution, finding witnesses was difficult for the prosecution. In the South, it was dangerous for Black people to testify against any white person, so those who knew anything were reluctant to come forward. However, white and Black reporters and the NAACP were able to find witnesses against the defendants.

Barely whispering, out of fear of reprisal, Willie Reed testified on the stand that he had seen Roy Bryant, J.W. Milam, and another man with Till. Further, he testified that he heard screaming coming from the Milam barn. When Milam came out of the barn with a .45 on his hip, Milam asked Reed if he had seen anything, and Reed said no. Mose Wright had decided from the beginning that he was going to testify. When Wright took the stand, he testified that Milam and Bryant had taken Till at gunpoint from his home.

After Reed and Wright testified, they were quickly escorted out of Mississippi by the NAACP.

Mamie Till was forced to testify that the body she buried was her son, Emmett Till.

Neither J.W. Milam nor Roy Bryant testified.

The trial lasted five days. In the defense's closing argument, Milam and Bryant's attorney forewarned the jury about convicting the defendants:

"Your ancestors will turn over in their grave, and I'm sure every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to free these men."

The jury deliberated for only 67 minutes; a long time because, as one jury said, they'd taken a break to cool off with some soda pop. The jury found Milam and Bryant not guilty. They concluded that the prosecution had failed to prove that the body recovered from the river was Emmett Till.

On January 24, 1956, Look magazine published the confession of Milam and Bryant, who had agreed to tell their story, sell their story for $4,000 since they had already been found not guilty and could not be tried again. According to their confession, they beat Till with a .45 in Milam's barn, and then proceeded to take him to the Tallahatchie River where they had him take off his clothes and then they shot him. A gin fan was tied around his neck with wire in order to weigh the body down in the river. They burned Till's clothes and shoes.

Milam and Bryant were never charged with any other crimes relating to Till’s murder.

After the trial, Black people boycotted the Bryant’s' store, which forced them out of business.

Both Milam and Bryant remained in Mississippi until their deaths. J.W. Milam died of cancer in 1980, twenty-five years after he murdered Emmett Till. Roy Bryant died of cancer in 1994, thirty-nine years after he got away with murder.

Carolyn Bryant Donham, the white woman whose accusation led to the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till died in 2023. Donham testified in 1955 that Emmett grabbed her hand and waist and propositioned her, saying he had been with “White women before” but in 2017, author Timothy Tyson revealed in his book The Blood of Emmett Till that Donham had recanted her testimony. 

Donham's family publicly denied that she had recanted but the fact is, were it not for her words that a young Black man either whistled at her or said “Bye, baby,” Emmett till would have never been murdered.

Carolyn Bryant Donham died in 2023.

Repost: Black History Month: Freedom Summer

Freedom Summer was a highly publicized campaign in the Deep South to register Black people to vote during the summer of 1964. Thousands of civil rights activists, many of them white college students from the North, descended on Mississippi and other Southern states that summer to put an end to the long-time political disenfranchisement of African Americans in the region. Although Black men had won the right to vote in 1870, thanks to the 15th Amendment, for the next 100 years many were unable to exercise that right.

White local and state officials systematically kept Black people from voting through formal methods, such as poll taxes and literacy tests, and through cruder methods of fear and intimidation, which included beatings and lynchings.

The inability to vote was just one of many problems Black people encountered in the racist South, but the civil-rights officials who decided to zero in on voter registration understood its crucial significance; so did the white supremacists. An African American voting bloc would be able to effect social and political change, especially in the South with its large African American population.

Freedom Summer marked the climax of intensive voter-registration activities in the South that had started in 1961. Organizers chose to focus their efforts on Mississippi because of the state's particularly dismal voting-rights record: in 1962 only 6.7% of African Americans in Mississippi were registered to vote, the lowest in the nation.

The Freedom Summer campaign was organized by a coalition called the Mississippi Council of Federated Organizations, which was led by the Congress of Racial Equality--CORE--and included the NAACP, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee--SNCC.

By mobilizing volunteer white college students from the North to join them, the coalition scored a major public relations coup as hundreds of reporters came to Mississippi from around the country to cover the voter-registration campaign.

The organization of the Mississippi Freedom Party--MFDP--was a major focus of the summer program. More than 80,000 Mississippians joined the new party, which elected a slate of sixty-eight delegates to the national Democratic Party convention in Atlantic City. The MFDP delegation challenged the seating of the delegates representing Mississippi's all white Democratic Party.

While the effort failed, it drew national attention, particularly through the dramatic televised appeal of MFDP delegate Fannie Lou Hamer. The MFDP challenge also led to a ban on racially discriminatory delegations at future conventions.

Freedom Summer officials also established 30 "Freedom Schools" in towns throughout Mississippi to address the racial inequalities in that state's educational system. Mississippi's Black schools were invariably poorly funded, and teachers had to use hand-me-down textbooks that offered a racist slant on American history.

Many of the white college students were assigned to teach in these schools, whose curriculum included Black history, the philosophy of the Civil Rights Movement, and leadership development in addition to remedial instruction in reading and arithmetic.

Freedom Schools had hoped to draw at least 1000 students that first summer and ended up with 3000. Schools became a model for future social programs like Head Start, as well as alternative educational institutions.

Freedom Summer activists faced threats and harassment throughout the campaign, not only from white supremacist groups, but from local residents and police. Freedom School buildings and the volunteers' homes were frequent targets; 37 Black churches and 30 Black homes and businesses were firebombed or burned during the summer of 1964; and the cases often went unsolved.

More than 1000 black and white volunteers were arrested, and at least 80 were beaten by white mobs or racist police officers. But the summer's most infamous act of violence was the murder of three young civil rights workers, a black volunteer, James Chaney, and his white coworkers, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.

On June 21, Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner set out to investigate a church bombing near Philadelphia, Mississippi, but were arrested that afternoon and held for several hours on alleged traffic violations. Their release from jail was the last time they were seen alive before their badly decomposed bodies were discovered under a nearby dam six weeks later. Goodman and Schwerner had died from single gunshot wounds to the chest, and Chaney, the only African American in the trio, from a savage beating.

The murders made headlines all over the country and provoked an outpouring of national support for the Civil Rights Movement. But many black volunteers realized that because two of the victims were white, these murders were attracting much more attention than previous attacks in which the victims had been black, and this added to the growing resentment they had begun to feel towards the white volunteers.

There was also growing dissension among the ranks over charges of assumed white elitism. Black volunteers complained that whites seemed to think they had a natural claim on leadership roles, and that they treated the rural Black people as though they were ignorant. There was also increasing hostility from both Black and white workers over the interracial romances that developed the summer. Meanwhile, women volunteers of both races were charging both the Black and white men with sexist behavior.

But despite the internal divisions, Freedom Summer left a positive legacy. The well-publicized voter registration drives brought national attention to the subject of black disenfranchisement, and this eventually led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act, federal legislation that, among other things, outlawed the tactics Southern states had used to prevent blacks from voting.

Freedom Summer also instilled among African Americans a new consciousness and a new confidence in political action. As Fannie Lou Hamer later said, "Before the 1964 project there were people that wanted change, but they hadn't dared to come out. After 1964 people began moving. To me it's one of the greatest things that ever happened in Mississippi."

Repost: Black History Month: Medgar Evers

Civil rights activist, Medgar Evers, was born in Decatur, Mississippi, in 1925. At age eighteen he left Mississippi and enlisted in the United States Army, where he fought in both France and Germany during World War II before receiving an honorable discharge in 1946.

In 1948, he entered Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College in Lorman, Mississippi. During his senior year, Evers married a fellow student, Myrlie Beasley; they later had three children: Darrell, Reena, and James. After graduating in 1952, Evers moved his family to Philadelphia, Mississippi, where he worked as an insurance salesman.

In 1954, the year of the momentous Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, which should have ended segregation of schools, Medgar quit the insurance business; he applied for, and was denied, admission to the University of Mississippi Law School. His unsuccessful effort to integrate Mississippi’s oldest public educational institution attracted the attention of the NAACP’s national office.

Medgar Evers moved to Jackson and became the first state field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi. As such, he recruited members throughout Mississippi and organized voter-registration efforts, demonstrations, and economic boycotts of white-owned companies that practiced discrimination; he worked to investigate crimes perpetrated against blacks, most notably the lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy who had allegedly been killed for talking to a white woman.

As early as 1955, Evers’ activism made him the most visible civil rights leader in Mississippi. As a result, he and his family were subjected to numerous threats and violent actions over the years, including a firebombing of their house in May 1963. Then, on June 12, 1963, at 12:40 a.m., Medgar Evers was shot in the back, in the driveway of his home, in Jackson.

He died less than a hour later at a nearby hospital.

A police and FBI investigation of the murder soon had a suspect--Byron De La Beckwith, a white segregationist and founding member of Mississippi's White Citizens Council. Despite substantial evidence against him--a rifle found near the scene was registered to Beckwith, had his fingerprints on the scope, and witnesses placed him in the area—Beckwith denied shooting Evers. He maintained that the gun had been stolen, and produced several witnesses to testify that he was elsewhere on the night of the murder.

Two trials followed; Beckwith received the support of some of Mississippi's most prominent citizens; then-Governor Ross Barnett appeared at Beckwith's first trial to shake hands with him in full view of the jury. In 1964, Beckwith was set free after two all-white juries deadlocked.
After the second trial, Myrlie Evers moved with her children to California, where she earned a degree from Pomona College and was later named to the Los Angeles Commission of Public Works. Convinced that her husband's killer had not been brought to justice, she continued to search for new evidence in the case.

In 1989, the question of Beckwith's guilt was again raised when a Jackson newspaper published accounts of files from the now-defunct Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, an organization that helped the maintenance of segregation. The accounts showed that the commission helped Beckwith's lawyers screen potential jurors, but a review by the Hinds County District Attorney's office found no evidence of jury tampering. The DA's office did locate a number of new witnesses, including several individuals who would testify that Beckwith bragged about the murder.

In December 1990, Beckwith was once again indicted for the murder of Medgar Evers. After a number of appeals, the Mississippi Supreme Court finally ruled in favor of a third trial in April 1993. Ten months later, testimony began before a racially mixed jury of eight blacks and four whites. In February 1994, nearly 31 years after Evers' death, Beckwith was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He died in January 2001 at the age of 80.

It took thirty years for justice to be served. That is unconscionable. 

Matthew Shepard Died Today*

*originally posted October 12, 2009

He was just a kid. A slight kid, a sweet kid. A gay. But it wasn't the kid who got noticed on this day eleven years ago, it was his murder that caught us all, gay and straight, off-guard.

Matthew Wayne Shepard was a twenty-one-year-old college student at the University of Wyoming. And he was gay. And, for being gay, he was tortured and left to die near Laramie, Wyoming. His attack occurred on October 6, but Mathew didn't die until almost a week later.

Matthew was born in Wyoming and grew up there. He spent his last high school year at The American School in Switzerland. After high school, he attended Catawba College and Casper College before he relocated to Denver and becoming a first-year political science major at the University of Wyoming.

Political science. Matthew might have been a politician, or a community organizer, or a gay rights activist. Or a teacher or a bartender or any number of other things which we'll never know because he never got the chance to be anything else.

He was described by his parents, Judy and Dennis, as "an optimistic and accepting young man [who] had a special gift of relating to almost everyone. He was the type of person who was very approachable and always looked to new challenges. Matthew had a great passion for equality and always stood up for the acceptance of people's differences."

He might have done so much.

But Matthew knew he was gay, and so did many other people. And like so many in the LGBT community, he faced physical and verbal abuse all throughout his life, and death. In 1995, during a high school trip to Morocco, he was beaten and raped, leaving him withdrawn from friends and family and battling depression and panic attacks. But he soldiered on, went back to school and seemed to be coming out of his depression.

Then, just after midnight on October 7, 1998, Matthew met Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson in a bar. McKinney and Henderson offered Shepard a ride in their car. They took him to a remote area, tied him to a fence, robbed, pistol whipped, tortured him, and left him to die. They also found his address and decided to rob his home as well.

Matthew Shepard was discovered 18 hours later by Aaron Kreifels, who mistook the beaten, dying young man for a scarecrow. Matthew was barely alive. And suffering.

There was a fracture from the back of his head to the front of his right ear. He had severe brain stem damage, which affected his body's ability to regulate heart rate, body temperature and other vital functions. There were also a dozen or more lacerations around his head, face and neck. His injuries were deemed too severe for doctors to operate.

Matthew Shepard never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead on October 12, 1998.

Police arrested McKinney and Henderson shortly thereafter, finding the bloody gun as well as the victim's shoes and wallet in their truck. The two men had attempted to persuade their girlfriends to provide alibis. They used the gay panic defense, arguing that they beat, tortured and killed Matthew Shepard because he came on to them. They even tried to say they only wanted to rob him, not hurt him.

But they hurt an entire community.

Russell Henderson pleaded guilty in April 1999, and agreed to testify against Aaron McKinney to avoid the death penalty; he was given two consecutive life sentences. The jury found Aaron McKinney guilty of felony murder, and as they began to deliberate on the death penalty, Matthew Shepard's parents brokered a deal, resulting in McKinney receiving two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.

In a statement read to the court, Dennis Shepard told McKinney what the sentence means to him:

“You won’t be a symbol.

No years of publicity, no chance of commutation, no nothing—just a miserable future and a miserable end.

It works for me ….

Mr. McKinney, I give you life in the memory of one who no longer lives.

May you have a long life, and may you thank Matthew every day for it.”

He was just a kid. A slight kid, a sweet kid. A gay kid. And he could have been any one of us, but in death, Matthew did what hadn't really been done before. He shone a light on hate crimes against the LGBT community. He gave us a face and a smile that needn't have been snuffed out so readily.

He could have been any one of us. He is every one of us.