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Subscribe to RSSWatch the original 1966 NBC News documentary, "Mississippi: A Self-Portrait" in its entirety.
By Tim Beacham
Dateline NBC
WARNING: Some of the language in this story could be considered shocking to some.
The Mississippi Delta is thousands of miles and a lifetime away from Southern California where Raymond De Felitta and Yvette Johnson grew up.
Raymond is white and pushing 50. He was raised in the Hollywood Hills, the son of a successful filmmaker and novelist. Yvette, is black and more than ten years younger than Raymond. She grew up in an affluent community in San Diego, the daughter of former NFL football star.
Until the spring of 2011, the two of them had never met. But in a strange twist of fate, both discovered that they shared a unique bond, rooted in an NBC News documentary that aired only once, on a Sunday evening in May 1966,.
The film, called Mississippi:A Self Portrait, was written, produced and directed by Raymond's father, Frank De Felitta. Yvette's grandfather, Booker Wright, was its star. Although he made only a brief cameo appearance in the film, it was an appearance that would have a lasting impact of the lives of both Booker and Frank. And nearly fifty years later, it would draw Raymond and Yvette together on a project to find the meaning of that single moment captured on a grainy snippet of film.
As a child, Raymond watched the films his father had made when he worked as an award winning producer for NBC News in the 1960s. There were documentaries titled: The Battle of the Bulge, The Stately Ghosts of England, and The Chosen Child, which was about a young couple who were trying to adopt. But Raymond’s favorite by far, wasMississippi: A Self-Portrait.
"And I remember when we used to screen the films at home. They were, by then, 10 years old." Raymond says. "They looked to me much older, you know? 'Cause it was the 1970s and everyone in those movies was wearing thin ties. And it's in black and white and it's like another world. But I remember seeing Mississippi and finding the film striking. Largely because of Booker Wright."
Frank De Felitta had set out for Mississippi to make his film in the Spring of 1965--a perilous time in the Civil Rights Era. It was less than a year after the murders of three Civil Rights workers who'd been helping Mississippi blacks register to vote. Nearly 40 black churches had been burned to the ground in Mississippi the previous summer. And the Delta cotton town of Greenwood-- where Frank ultimately shot much of his film-- had seen plenty of trouble. Ten years earlier, Emmit Till—a 14-year-old visiting from Chicago--had been lynched nearby for whistling at a white woman. And Greenwood was home to Byron de la Beckwith--a man who, at the time, had already been twice tried and acquitted for the murder of Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers. Frank knew it would be a dangerous undertaking.
Former NBC News producer Frank De Felitta recalls a time he and his film crew faced some real danger in 1960s Mississippi. This web exclusive is part of the Dateline report 'Finding Booker's Place' from Sunday, July 15th, at 7pm/6c.
"The FBI scared me," Frank remembers. "They told me, 'We think you're crazy. You're not going to be welcomed. And we can't help you. All we can give you are some phone numbers. All throughout Mississippi we have agents.'"
According to Frank, Booker Wright came close to not even being in the film because Frank never intended to interview blacks.
"The whole idea of the Mississippi picture was not to do the story of black angst. We know that. We were trying to see whether Mississippians, white Mississippians, can reconcile themselves to a better way of treating the blacks."
For weeks Frank De Filetta says he wandered around Greenwood, sampling white opinion. For the most part, whites defended segregation and told Frank that they believed blacks were happy with the status quo.
"I feel that God had a purpose in creating the races separate," said Mary Cain, who was a local newspaper publisher at the time. "I am so proud of negroes who are so proud of being negroes. They are what God made them. And I'm proud of being white because I am what my white race has made me. I am white today because my parents practiced segregation."
When Frank gathered the town's leaders, they told him they thought the races were getting along just fine in Greenwood. "I think our colored people are very happy, extremely happy here in Mississippi," said one of them. "I think they feel the same way about us."
Then one day, a member of Frank's crew suggested that he meet a black waiter who worked at a restaurant in Greenwood.
"He came to me one day and said, 'I got a wonderful black man. His name is Booker Wright. And he's a waiter at Lusco's Restaurant. And what he does, is a minstrel scene. He does a singsong of the menu. And that's the only menu they have. People wanna know the menu, they get, 'Booker, go tell 'em.' And he'll sing them the song of the menu. And it's absolutely delightful.'"
Once Frank saw Booker Wright perform the menu recitation, he arranged to film the routine the next day. So Booker Wright recited the menu for Frank's camera. Then, without warning, he shifted gears and launched into a monologue that had been 40 years in the making:
"Now that's what my customers, I say my customers are expecting from me," he began. "Some people nice. Some is not. Some call me Booker. Some call me John. Some call me Jim. Some call me @!$%#! All of that hurts but you have to smile. The meaner the man be the more you have to smile, even though you're crying on the inside.
"You're wondering what else can I do. Sometimes he'll tip you, sometimes he'll say, ‘I'm not gonna tip that @!$%#, he don't look for no tip.’ I say, 'Yes sir, thank you.' I'm trying to make a living."
For nearly two minutes, Booker Wright, spoke straight to the camera, and straight from the heart.
"Night after night I lay down and I dream about what I had to go through with. I don't want my children to have to go through with that. I want them to get the job they feel qualified. That's what I'm struggling for," Booker concluded.
"I went there to photograph a minstrel show," Frank says, "And I stayed there to hear a man talking about his life and what his dreams are. And it was so moving."
But now, Frank De Felitta says he was confronted with a classic documentarian's conundrum. On the one hand, he knew he had great material for his film. On the other hand, he knew including Booker Wright's comments in his film could place Booker in grave danger since Mississippi was such a hot spot for racial violence and intimidation at that time.
"I said to him, 'Well, look, this is brave of you to say that, but this movie will go all over the country. They'll see it and they could come and kill you.' He said, 'Well, so be it. I want to be heard.' I said, 'If you change your mind, you can call me and say, “Don't show it.”’”
Booker Wright never changed his mind, and just as Frank had feared, the reaction in Greenwood swift and harsh. Because of complaints from white customers, Booker chose to leave the restaurant where he had worked for 25 years. Later , he was also badly beaten.
"He found himself in the hospital the next morning," Frank remembers. "They beat him something terrible. He was wounded all over his body. They didn't kill him. That, to me, was amazing that they didn't kill him.
"I called him and got him in the hospital," Frank says. "I said, 'I'm coming down to see you.' He goes, 'No, no. I've done enough for you. I don't ever want to see you ever again.' I said, 'What's wrong? I'm a friend.' He said, 'It's okay, you're not really allowed to come see me.' He said that would just add too much fire to the whole thing."
And that was the last time Frank ever spoke to Booker.
And that’s where Yvette Johnson’s part of the story comes in. Booker Wright was Yvette’s grandfather, but she never knew him. He died a year before she was born, and she grew up in California, far from her extended family in Mississippi. As an adult, Yvette found herself longing to know more about her family's history. In 2007, after the birth of her second son, Yvette decided to take the initiative.
"I have a fantastic Aunt Vera who loves to tell stories," Yvette says. "I called her one afternoon and just asked her 1,000 questions. And she shared her whole life with me, which was fantastic, and through that I could see sort of the story of the South. But she also shared with me the story of her father, the sort of person he was like. There was a definite shift in her tone when she talked about Booker Wright. And it was like a seed was planted. And I just wanted to know more about him."
But try as she might, there was little Yvette could learn about her grandfather. He'd been born on a plantation and taken from his mother at a young age to be raised by another family. Though illiterate, Booker had managed by sheer force of personality to get a job at Lusco's Restaurant in Greenwood, Mississippi at the age of 14. He rose through the ranks to become a waiter at the restaurant, and was beloved by his white customers for the way he recited the menu. Yvette was told that through thrift and hard work, Booker saved enough money to open his own cafe on the black side of town. He called it “Booker's Place.”
Yvette says, "He was a well-respected businessman who had found sort of a balance between being successful as a waiter in the white community where he was known, enjoyed, cared about --he had what many whites at the time would have called friends. But he also was very well-respected in the black community because he had his own restaurant. "
Yvette might have stopped her family search there, satisfied that her grandfather had persevered and succeeded against the odds, except for one thing. Her grandfather, she was told, had once appeared on television during the height of the Civil Rights turmoil in Mississippi and said something rather inflammatory. Yvette didn't know what he said, or when or where the film might have aired.
"I thought it was like the 5pm news", Yvette says. "Just, like, you know, between the weather and someone's house burning down, that they'd stopped this black guy on the street."
Years of searching for the missing snippet of her grandfather speaking on camera had yielded nothing. But in March of 2011, the film found Yvette.
Raymond De Felitta had decided to make a sequel to his father's Mississippi film, and was trying to track down Booker Wright's descendants, to see what had become of the children Booker had spoken of so movingly. When Raymond found Yvette, he sent her the footage she had heard about, but never seen.
"I was amazed that it was the piece that it was", Yvette says of first seeing Booker's speech. "It wasn't sort of an angry moment, not thinking about the consequences. He knew what he was doing.
"My heart broke for him as I watched it and he talked about the daily humiliation. And part of me wanted to sort of reach back and comfort him. I still didn't really understand 1965 Greenwood, I didn't realize how much jeopardy he was putting himself in by saying those things."
Yvette was hooked. Within weeks of meeting Raymond, the two of them were off to Mississippi with a film crew in tow. They set out to see how Greenwood had changed since Booker's time, and to find out what legacy, if any, Booker--and Frank De Felitta--had left behind.
"You know, it was great," says Ray. "To actually envision my dad in 1965 there, and I'm actually sitting in the same restaurant. I'm wandering around with a film crew in the same town. That's the part of the magic ride of filmmaking."
Ray De Felitta and David Zellerford discuss the significance of the Tallahatchie Flats – old sharecropper's cabins given new life as tourist lodgings. This web exclusive is part of the Dateline report 'Finding Booker's Place' from Sunday, July 15th, at 7pm/6c.
And being in Greenwood brought Yvette new understanding of Booker's legacy in that town. "The impact of what he said was really felt in the white community because so many whites knew him, so many whites felt they had friendship with him," she says. "And to hear him say, 'No this isn't friendship. This is humiliation for me...' It was a wake-up call."
Raymond's film about the experience--"Booker's Place"--premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival this spring. It's now also available on-line.
Coincidentally, a Dateline NBC producer had also found that old documentary about Mississippi deep in the NBC News vaults. Drawn to the power of Booker's words, he, too, decided to set out for Greenwood, Mississippi last, to discover what the town had become and what had become of Booker's descendants. Along the way he found Frank, and Raymond, and Yvette, and told their story too--which is now also the story of NBC's reporting on race relations in America, then, and now.
The result is Sunday night's episode of Dateline--"Finding Booker's Place"--a powerful look back at a troubled time in America's past, and a look at race relations in present day Greenwood, Mississippi. Booker Wright's words come alive again, too, in the broadcast, as all the people who Booker touched remember an ordinary man who had a remarkable moment.
"I think sometimes in life there are these magical moments and you don't know when one is coming," says Yvette. "But I just think you know when you're in it. And it's time to stand up for what you believe and to express what matters to you. And if you don't seize the opportunity, you feel like you've compromised yourself. And so to me that's the biggest takeaway: if we just keep our eyes open and if we're willing to take a chance, to take a risk, then we can all make a difference.”
...
Watch the full episode online:
Questions about their family histories lead Yvette Johnson and Raymond De Fellita to a remarkable 1966 NBC documentary about Mississippi's racial tensions. Dateline NBC's Lester Holt reports.
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Not even sure where to begin here. And for a bit wasn't sure I wanted to. But I am however sure I'm NOT getting into the political thing: WHOLE different story there. So, here goes anyway. After reading through the entire first page of comments here, one thing stands out glaringly for me. No one who posted has actually L i v e d in Greenwood. Perhaps by the time this posts that will have changed - but that is beside the point. I did live in Greenwood, from 07 to 09. It's a beautiful, homey, down to earth place with an abundance of natural beauty - including that River and its several branches which feed the rich soil and fosters Nature's reclaiming of any area of land left untended for more than a month. The people, black and white, are about the friendliest I've come across in any place I've lived. Folks speak to you, talk to you, help you in whatever way they can. For the better part, Greenwood is also nearly completely integrated. That's the upside. The downside is that Racism DOES most definitely still abound....and, it is NOT one-sided. I saw that one commenter above mentioned the fact that it's been fifty years, yada yada. The problem with that statement is that there are people who were in their 20's and 30's THEN and who are still alive NOW - and STILL think this way. Who also teach their mentality to their children, and sit across from their grandchildren during the Family times, reminding them how much better things were before all 'those people' could or could not do this and that. Unfortunately Class issues are as prevalent as Race issues there (and in some cases more so - within the separate races themselves!!) People - black or white - who live in North Greenwood (that's across the River) still view those living on the 'other side' of the River as lesser citizens - black or white - and this is even though some of their own family live 'over there'. 'Success' is often defined by landing work at one of the Plants, which are somehow 'above' other forms of employment - unless of course you work at the Hospital, even in Maintenance. Or in the School System (which, again, is another tale) The going expectation being that when you move 'up' you WILL take your new success and move 'over there' or in one of the sub-divisions that are continuously being built further into the country-side...because it's 'Better'. It is a matter of MENTALITY. Hundreds of years of 'conditioning' have left many with an ingrained sense of 'Place', but thankfully those bonds are being broken yearly from both sides. My point is that when discussing matters like racial division, and class division, people should stop and think about how much is still being taught by whom...and what it takes to break free of those 'schools' of perspective. Especially when one side is disproportionately served by keeping that division in 'Place'.
As a white person who spent a few years in The MS Delta in the early 2000 I was shocked at the level of racism (and comfort with that racism) that still existed in this area. I know the reporter pointed that the railroad tracks separated black from white "in the past" ... well in my town in 2004 the railroad still divided the city in two, and the few exceptions kept segregation the rule. As the commenter above notes those roots are deep and it will take a long time for it to die off "naturally".
No one can argue that what black Americans have suffered for many years is a absolute crime against humanity. We know slavery was evil, Jim Crow was dreadful, etc etc..We get it. Now where can we go from here? this consistent drum beat of white guilt, white privilege, white wrong doing only perpetuates anger from both sides, stirring anger among blacks, and back lash from whites who grow tired of being held responsible for every bad thing that ever happened to any non- white any where in the world, enough. We have come along way since then, a long way. No one country (controlled essentially by whites) has done more to try and uplift African Americans , billions and billions of dollars spent from the great society programs, public housing, AFDC, WIC, Pell Grants, Affirmative Action, integration of school Voting Right Acts Civil Rights act, I could go on. Point being, yes learn from the past, do not get stuck in it- you Liberals love the word progressive right, well let us then do just that
Where do we go from here? Learn to practise some of what the man Jesus told us long ago. Many many blacks have found it in their hearts to do that and have forgiven. Many many whites have repented. Many more of both races are still stuck in the ruts of hatred. When you guys go to your Christian churches, listen to the message. Hopefully it is being taught correctly. I happen to be Buddhist, but I see the truth of the man Jesus' clear message.
I could not agree more
The show on Dateline was extremely well-done and important. I lived through those times but there are many younger people who were unaware of the racism then and now. An amazing story! I would like to see the original film from 1965!
Slamming Mississippi, this article is race-baiting.....the "would-be do gooders" (left liberal anything) are the worse offenders. Put Mississippi any southern state down and not acknowledge or report that this type thing has happened and happens in any part of this country.....I have heard it and seen it.....Our biggest problem is that we have a "worthless leader" and he and his minions (lame stream media) are trying to enrage their base to come out and vote and rile up the whites that wanted a black president (we have him, are you proud?)....he needs them to vote for him again.....I say Shame, Shame, Shame to the would be "Bl ack Mes siah and his followers". Vote Mitt Romney.....
Certainly there is racism all over the country. In the South it is an institution.
TIRED, the response to you is NEVER. I LOVE our president and I LOATHE Republican ANYTHING. So there take that. and I'm white and I would no more think of voting for Romneybot than I would think of voting for the Frosty the Snowman...actually I would vote for him more likely than that empty, fake, flip flopping JERK!
@ Tired, perhaps you should READ the article, then watch the video. While you may think this read is race baiting, I think we can all learn something from it. For one, all people have feelings and are all human. We should also understand that hurt feelings don't go away overnight. We all need to quit being so quick to judge and learn to listen. Just listen.
Sincerely,
A white guy.
I'm happy to be reminded of the crimes of our past..........those who seek to forget seek to repeat.............unlike other "whitefolk" I bare no guilt or shame...........If I had lived then as I live now I would have fought and died to stop the injustice..........instead I fight reverse discrimination as well.........I had the type of father who tried to drill racism into my head...........maybe I am an "old" soul.............I have always recognized hatred for hatred sake................evil is evil in every lifetime and goodness or maybe it's godliness is always in every lifetime as well................I have to constantly and gently remind my neighbors children who are black not to degrade themselves with the n word because it offends me just as much if not more then black people because of the hatred it represented to me as a child. The most striking thing about what Booker states is he has 3 children...............I too have children and take a lot of crap because I do...............for the love of yours/theirs/our children we should all strive to make a better world........this video does not insight terror or inflame me in anyway it just really breaks my heart that if it has that effect on people the point of showing it is lost to yet more hatred and evil...........
Ignorance is a terrible burden to bear--If we would, as a nation, teach our children the truth about the perils of alcohol and other drugs , the consequences of irresponsible sex practices, the truth about our treatment (mistreatment) of people of color-all over our country-and the threat to our very existence as a model of true democracy by political forces within to control by legal means the electoral system ( the far-right conspiracy) and have forever a two-class society-the lesser serving the top 5%, etc--Education is the key to the truth which will set us free. By keeping our children ignorant is assurance that we will always have alcoholics, drug addicts, mis-informed voters, and racial friction. Hate serves the devil to our own destruction. Vote for Obama !
Jay,
Two class society? I kinda chuckled on that one. Upset over losing too many blacks to their upward movement away from oppression the big boys just decided, what the hell, we'll just make all of the 99% our "boys".
Racists suck!!!!!
I can't wait to see this Dateline special in about 15 minutes. To all the "Bookers" who suffered on the inside, I can only say, not everyone in these United States felt that way about Negroes and the way they were treated and summarily beaten, torched, and killed in the South as recently as 50 years ago. No one, no human being should ever have to suffer such indignity. I live in the NE, but I spent time in the military in the South. I was in Memphis when MLK was assassinated. You want to talk racial strife, I can tell you first hand how tense and unsettled this time and place was. I've never thought that I lived in a country where racism and segregation was so obvious and wrong, yet blatantly practiced. Right on Booker. Time for Dateline. I hope he and others have finally made a difference in the minds of so many narrow minded, thick headed, racist, bigots living the segregated mind set in the South. The Civil War is over people, time to regroup your thoughts and actions. Amen.
Careful Robert MLK once said that racists in Mississippi could learn from the city of Chicago when he marched through Cicero- so about about stuffing that haughty NE attitude, not all Southerns are bigot's and as a South Carolinian I resent your implying such
This gives me chills!! I've been gone 30 years and still remember this like it was yesterday
This gives me chills even after I've been gone for 30 years.
I grew up in a small MS town, just outside of the state's Capital city, in the 60's. I was born in 1959, a young white man, when "integration" began. I got on the school bus one morning and sat down next to the only African-American girl on the bus. She had just moved to the area and I was so young that I felt a sense of connection to her. As the youngest brother of several siblings I can still recall the harassment this young girl and I experienced as we rode to school that morning...some 45+ years ago. It was unbelievable. The day was filled with people criticizing and ridiculing me for what I had done. I wish I could say what the young girl had experienced, but I have no idea because I couldn't/wouldn't be around her any longer that day. She was several years older than I was.
When my brothers and I got home, that afternoon, my brothers couldn't wait to tell my father about what I had done and how humiliated they (my brothers) felt that I was sitting next to this "little black girl" on the school bus. It was a miserable day for me, but I can't imagine what she must have felt and dealt with as a result of that day.
Even though my father was not a "forward-thinker" he did not come down too hard on me for what I had done. Instead, he almost dismissed the entire incident...out-of-hand...and just put us all to work in the garden. I never got over this experience. I can only imagine how the young girl must have felt and what she must have gone through.
I have never forgotten this "frozen" moment in history and as I have moved back to MS I still pass the house of the girl who I had sat next to and wonder what has happened to her. The house sits vacant and there are no remnants of the family that lived there so many years ago.
I've thought about that experience so many times throughout the years. There were/are other incidents concerning racial relations during my early years in MS and they remain at the forefront of my mind. It hurts my heart as I recall how hateful and vengeful people could be towards another person.
This story brings up so many memories and recollections. It certainly needs to be told and I pray that people will continue healing.
Thank you for sharing that. It seems from so many comments written here - and about other such stories - that many people do not realize that such incidents, even 'little' things that occur in an Atmosphere of hatred and deliberate bias, STAY in the very soul long after one has gone on with their lives. Not only does one remember what was said or done or the manner in which they were treated, but like in all personal experiences ones family, friends, and children hear about it - thereby forming Their own opinions and outlooks. And so it goes. Hopefully someone in that little girl's family is now successful and open-minded and peaceful in their outlook of racial differences. Yet it can also be presumed that there is another relative - alive then or descended from one of them - that has a more narrow view. There are times when an old, festering wound has to be opened, scraped and cleaned out before it will heal properly. Those who are uncomfortable when articles and features such as this are brought forth need to realize that no matter the motive behind it, These Truths Are Still Evident In TODAY'S society. And it's not because of the past - it's because of People with small minds and big fears.
Wondering if what Booker was dreaming of for his children and grandchildren was hip-hop, rap society where women are demeaned... or Chicago where children are killed in their yards every week... this goes TWO ways. Whites have played their part; so do blacks.
This was an EXCELLENT documentary. I simply loved it. I graduated high school in a northeastern suburb in 1966 and being rather sheltered at that time NEVER knew the extent of racism in the south. I was told by my grandmother who took a trip from Florida how bad segregation and whites only places there were. Outside of that as a vague reference the only students of color in my high school numbered about four and never did I think of them as besieged by disgusting prejudice UNTIL I went to college during the turbulent sixties and then became aware of things I never knew existed in this supposedly "exceptional" country.
I was never the same as my left of center political views took shape. I could not believe what my eyes were reading and my ears were hearing. I accepted then the unacceptable and became committed to human rights and humanitarian change.
In answer to the question that was posed why did Booker not want to talk about that time I thought about the survivors of the Holocaust who often will NOT talk about it. It is too painful, too humiliating and too upsetting of which to speak. I imagine Booker probably felt that way as well.
It is especially upsetting in our nation because this nation was founded on something different than was true of Europe's Jews. In a country that begins with We the People, and contains in its sacred documents all men are created equal it is somehow even more difficult to think that as Glenn Greenwald's title of his book says: "Liberty and justice for SOME" but of course not all.
Greenwood the town has surely changed and for that the country deserves a tip of the hat. BUT much blood has been shed, many killed, many lives destroyed to make true the axiom that freedom is surely not free and is a work in progress!
Just, Smile ...!
The fact that you claim all the problems of this nation are caused by folks on the right is enough for me to realize that we are beyond repair. I believe the Godless left is far more dangerous. Just the fact that folks such as yourself don't see the corruption of the voting box as a lynch pin to tyranny is scary. No one is making it difficult for anyone to vote except those who aren't legally allowed to vote. It sickens me that you can't see that.
Whopper, the "Godless left" really? The right only claims god when they are looking for your vote. Look at Newt Gingrich now there is a godly politician, 3 wives, indiscretions abound on both sides of the isle and neither follow god unless you call worshiping gold, wealth and power god. The fact is that politicians on both sides have displayed their lack of following god. The legal restrictions is just another way that one side feels that they have enough power to divide the people and convince some that the agenda they are pushing is for the good of America. The reality is that they are working to gain an edge of winning the election. Politicians have chosen to blanket an economic group which would certainly vote or are often swayed to vote against them during economic trying times. There are more efficient means to weed out those who do not have the legal right to vote.
Whopper 1,
Unfortunately your characterization of the "godless left" is thoroughly alienating to we atheists in the center. I fully agree with you that allowing those not entitled to vote to cast votes is hideously detrimental to our Country, and should be absolutely stopped.
On the other hand, your implication that only those on the Religious Right are worthy Americans is simply insupportable prejudice.
I stand firmly by our Constitution; for me, that, and the Bill or Rights, particularly the Second Amendment, are the highest powers I need.
FYI, Mississippi is one of the most over run states with blacks now than any. Obesity rules and just about every black is on EBT and welfare but drives a nice car. Black on black crime in the capital of Jackson has gone through the roof in the last 25 years. At one point the remaining white thought putting a Medicaid Card or Food Stamp on the flag would be appropriate for a Stars and Bars. Alot of those blacks now in Mississippi come from places further north due to it being so easy to get on welfare, its become somewhat of a beacon to the lazy.
I know, I know, its racist to say that. But the truth hurts and it is what it is.
"He'd been born on a plantation and taken from his mother at a young age to be raised by another family". This was the 1960's not the 1860's. He didn't come from a slave family. WHY was he taken from his mother to be raised by someone else?
assuming Booker was born circa 1930, it is quite palusible that his mother & father lived and worked on a plantation, not as slaves, but as a members of a sharecropper family, which is a hellish existence not far removed from slavery. Booker may have been taken away because there was no one to care for an infant when all functioning adults & children were required to work a long day every day or lose their positions.
How very sad for all of us, that we take a story about a man of courage and turn it into a political football. Was there racism then? Yes, and it was blatant and wounding and damaging to all. Is there racism now? Yes, not so blatant, but still wounding and damaging to all. Clearly, Booker was a class act, a man of dignity who was often forced to act in a way that made him feel demeaned and less than he was. It is a tragedy when a human being, any human being, is badly treated simply because of the color of his skin. It is a tragedy when a human being is prevented from achieving his dreams and his full potential because of his race, his color or his religion. But it is not just a tragedy for that one human being, it is a tragedy for all of those who missed the opportunity to know that kind of a human being and to benefit from knowing him , because of the color of his skin. Why do we deprive ourselves of knowing others on such a foolish basis? We might have missed meeting our best friend.
underemployed, actually racism is very blatant today and probably where you would not expect to find it, our elected officials, primarily among Republicans. That is not to say that Democrats are excluded, many have exhibited subtle and some very blatant acts of racism.
As a black person I must admit that I am over the conflict and I use the South African's response to apartheid to help me deal with the past in the United States. I feel somewhat healed, sometimes angry, but always happy to be born in the USA. Please be kind to each other that should be the goal of all of us today, because we need each other... God Bless You All!
Great story, but let's take more care in our fact checking: The name is spelled "Emmett" Till (not Emmit). And sadly, he was shot, not "lynched" as is stated in this story. Otherwise, thanks for highlighting this amazing moment.
This isn't new,there are many stories of the inhuman treatment of blacks oldheads kept quiet because they knew that the this alleged people of God's were no where the near his image.Look at the stupid morons who call theirselves Americans. Now look at the state of this country,it owned by the very enemies that we fought to bring freedom and democrary to their shores LOL how can they believe that they're better than blacks. to this world they bought war and disease that the only legacy that they will be known for. And this BLACK PRESIDENT isn't a whore to the special interests and he is trying to do things that are in facts that could have been done a long time ago.And the morons been putting the wool over the American population for centuries and the population has acted like sheep. Don't blame the president for not having jobs.Look as the so called captains of industries and the greed traitorism that embedded in their DNA. This nation has a good president it just anal retentive population that bad.So black folks get busy and vote, people like BO and countless other blacks and other folks died and endure crap that so your stupid behind can live in the alleged free and democratic USA. SO VOTE DON'T CHOKE
Where is the shocking language?
Been reading the comments here. Some are so thoughtful, you can tell folks struggle with this problem, even today. All I can say to UmGator and the rest like him is this. My hopes are for the newest generation that will be coming behind us. When the generation of UmGator and his likes die off, maybe America can move on ahead with all of its people. This nation was built by Blacks (free), whites (who a lot were themselves persecuted and imprisioned) and other races. Blacks fought in Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea, and even today. Whites have the monopoly on NOTHING. There was a time, when in the South, whites could not even do their own work, they had to enslave a race to do it for them. So maybe the newest generation (being born now), will be able to shake off the shackles of the old thinking, and make America the mighty nation it will be.
I thinks it's quite regrettable that so much of what is being labelled as "racism" today is really "culturalism", which is nothing more than a preference for things familiar.
I never played a car radio so loudly it could be heard two lanes away in a car with the windows rolled up, and I don't like it when others do; that doesn't mean I'm racist.
I don't leave a partially full shopping cart in line at the store while I finish my shopping and don't like it when others do; that doesn't mean I'm racist.
I prefer my songs have melodies, guitar solos, and no profanity; that doesn't mean I'm racist.
I stop for stop signs, and come to complete stops before turning right on red, and don't like it when others don't; that doesn't mean I'm racist.
And I don't like that thugs who aren't supposed to possess firearms have them and law-abiding citizens can't; that doesn't mean I'm racist.
The point is that people of all colors do things I don't like, and not liking it doesn't make me racist; it's the behavior I don't like, not the color of the skin of those doing it.
And until society at large grasps the difference, people will continue to be mislabeled as racist, which only hinders the larger discussion of how to get along in a truly multi-cultural society.
gator said:
Ah, yes. MSNBC...dedicated to making certain that racism never dies in the USA. If there is nothing better to report, why not dredge up another example of racism that happened decades ago just to stir up the pot again? Hello!!! It's 2012!
That's right gator, let's just pretend it didn't happen, ignore it, after all this is 2012 and all of those nasty problems have been resolved. Right?