Communists In America

Joseph McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and J Edgar Hoover all tried to prove that Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist but failed.  They couldn't openly destroy the man just for being black, so they found a way to disguise it.  Everybody hated communists, so they were determined to pin that label on him.

King knew people were coming for his neck from a fairly young age, so he made sure nobody could pin that tag on him.  In all honesty, while he did everything he could to improve the fate of the working man, I don't think he was a communist.  I think he was just a liberal, but he believed in private ownership and other capitalistic principles. 

There were communists in the movement, and everybody knew it.  I don't mean left-leaning socialists that the GOP now calls communists; I mean acolytes of Trotsky bent on an overthrow of the government.  I can't say that I blame them.  Communism offered to overthrow their oppressors and guarantee equality with their former masters.  For an African living in America in the twentieth century, I can see how that would be appealing.  

At the time, nobody really knew that Communism couldn't deliver on its promises.   George Orwell had an idea things might go bad for the communists in 1945 when he had the pigs say that some animals were more equal than others.  In China and the Soviet Union, that certainly proved to be true.  It might also have been a clue in 1940 when a fellow revolutionary put a pick into Trotsky's skull.  

Even with all these warning signs, I don't know that I could blame anyone living on the underside of Jim Crow America for clinging to that as some sort of last hope for a better life.  With a big faction of white America calling them communists just for demanding equal rights, I imagine quite a few thought to themselves, "Why not?"

In 1977 when a house painter planted a bomb in Beth Israel Synagog, the reason given was that Rabbi Nussbaum and his followers were communists.   Having known several members of Beth Israel in 1977, I can tell you they absolutely were not communists.  Some were more capitalist than I am.

I'm not sure how communism became the big bad in America.  Rosevelt had broken up the trusts ten years before the Russian Revolution, but I guess there were enough mega bankers left to turn the public tide against it.  A lot of what Huey Long proposed was technically communism, but nobody dared say it because he was so powerful.  

Communism didn't work for the Russians, so I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have worked here.  There weren't ever any real efforts to make America Communist, though, so I don't really get the fear.  Maybe people had called things communist that wasn't for so long that people began to see it as a threat everywhere.  

In the end, all the efforts to destroy King politically were pointless because somebody decided to destroy him mortally.  For a while, calling somebody a communist became something of a joke.  There weren't many real communists floating around America, and nobody cared about the ones that were.  Everything old is new again.  All of our ancient prejudices are bubbling to the surface again, and accusing somebody of being a communist is a serious threat again.  There are fifty-five years between 1968 when Martin Luther King was killed, and 2023.  Fifty-five is a good, round number.  I'd like to say we've made significant advances since then, but that wouldn't be true.

Evil and Computers

There was a time when I thought we had this xenophobia that strangled America from the beginning on the ropes.  There are evolutionary reasons why we're afraid of people who don't look like us, but for a while, I really thought we'd made progress on it and were learning to transcend our evolutionary prejudices.  I was wrong.  They came back with a vengeance.

Terry Gilliam's treatise on good, evil, time, space, and everything is the 1981 film "Time Bandits."  Because it has a child star and several little people castmates, a lot of people assumed it was a children's film.  It's ever so much deeper than that.  Completely stymied getting his script for "Brazil" produced, Gilliam showed the treatment for "Time Bandits" to George Harrison, who agreed to finance it.

In "Time Bandits," the ultimate evil is played by the brilliant David Warner.  Trapped in hell by the supreme being, Evil sends his minions after the map to time and the universe held by our heroes.  Evil is ready to escape hell, and he believes he knows how to take over the universe: computers.  

In 1981, I was a bit computer mad.  Tom Stemshorn arranged for St. Andrews to have a small computer lab.  A single terminal, connected by modem to the computer at Millsaps, I began a life-long journey of discovery with these machines.  

Early on, I had great hope for the new world computers communicating with modems would bring us.  Slowly at first, but gathering speed now, I learned that, while communicating computers bring great good, they are equally capable of bringing great evil.  In 2023, the greatest medium for the unprecedented growth in xenophobia and outright hate groups has been the internet.  I'm worried it's growing because it allows people to let loose the internal prejudices we all have and lets them find like-minded people.

In the film, the Time Bandits use weapons of war from every age to defeat the ultimate evil.  We don't have that at our disposal.  The only way to counter the hate growing on the internet is with the truth and relentlessly confronting evil with it.  

I don't think this conflict will ever really be over.  I don't think we have that option.  The struggle continues, even on this new battleground.  

Lauren Stennis Statement of Belief And Intention

 A random Google search returned an unexpected memory today. Lauren Stennis went to Millsaps. Her grandfather was John Stennis. Lauren had a great passion for Mississippi and especially desired for us to break with our Confederate past and change the flag. She had her own design, which I liked very much.

Eventually, there was a referendum to change the flag, which a lot of us had a lot of hopes for that were dashed when the results came in. Fearing reprisals from the NCAA, who were threatening to boycott Mississippi, the Speaker brokered a deal where the legislature would pass a new flag, but as Stennis was far too liberal for their stomach, her design was outright rejected, even though she'd spent ten years fighting for change.

This is a link to Lauren's GofundMe from seven years ago. She raised the money, and ultimately, she got what she wanted, but she never got credit for it, not officially. In my world, Lauren fought for the chance that Mississippi might rise above its past, and in my eyes, she won.

In response to an egregious bill in the Mississippi House, Lauren was raising money for a new Statement of Belief and Intention. The original statement was published in 1968, affirming the position that Jackson should no longer be segregated and signed by some of the most prominent business, educational and legal leaders in Jackson at the time. If you can't read this version, Please follow the link to my Blog, where you can see it in higher detail.

Lauren's GoFundMe page

Newspapers.com Clipping of the Jackson Daily News 1968

Here is the text version of what appeared in the paper:

These days constitute the swiftest time of change in our memory. Events hurriedly pile themselves upon events. In our business, our professions and everywhere fast-breaking changes require quick answers and quick actions.

We are threatened with a widening chasm between our people in this State and in our City. Yet, here in this State and in this City there is a vast reservoir of good will, compassion and kindness that is genuinely a very part of our being. This vital reservoir of true neighborly feeling, true friendship must be brought to the fore now and without delay.

We cannot sit back and become prisoners of events. We must cope with them firmly and decisively and manage our own destiny. Accordingly, in the set conviction that the great majority of our people, white and black, desire harmony, good order, a decent honorable family life and a chance to better themselves economically, we, the undersigned Jackson business and professional men and women declare we believe in the following principles, and we pledge ourselves to do everything within our power to see that they are carried out:

1: We believe in the essential worth and dignity of every human being and all that such implies.

2: Fair and impartial treatment must be accorded to all citizens in the enforcement and administration of the law.

3: Every citizen of this City regardless of race, creed or color is entitled to equal access to employment as he is qualified by training and experience to perform, and to earn the con-

tinuation of such employment by his own hard efforts.

4: In order that all of our citizens may be qualified for equal employment opportunities, educational opportunities must be available to them on an equal basis.

5: Adequate and properly staffed recreational facilities should be made available for all of with the coming of the summer season, all City swimming pools should be opened. All parks should be open, and should be staffed by competent personnel, and properly equipped to the end that all our people may obtain the maximum benefits from them.

6. Communications between the races should be encouraged en every level of our City. This should include all of us whether we be public officials, civic, business, religious, or professional leaders.

7. There is no place in our city for hate, discord or violence.  No man, whatever his course or whatever his convictions, is above the law. All of our citizens should work untiringly and unceasingly to bring out to the fullest the best in us in the way of kindness, compassion,

friendliness and understanding that we may all progress through cooperation. We owe this to ourselves, our families, the oncoming generations, and the development of all of our talents.

Respectfully Submitted,

(Please refer to the image for the complete list of names.  Many of you will find your parents on it.  Nearly every Millsaps Professor is on it. My own father is not on it.  In 1968 there would have been tremendous pressure on Missco not to appear too radical.  He found ways to express his opinions, though, for one thing, there were no reprisals against any of the Millsaps Professors.  This was also the year that Daddy hired a black woman to be the company receptionist so that the very first face you saw when you entered our building on South Street was a smartly dressed descendant of Mississippi slaves.)  

Justice? Redemption

Every morning, Alexa plays a little tune until I sit up and say, "Alexa, Stop."  Then she says, "Good Morning.  It's six o'clock.  The Temperature is seventy-eight degrees.  Today expect cloudy skies and a high of eighty-four degrees.  "  

Then she plays "Philadelphia Morning" from the Rocky Soundtrack.  That image of Rocky struggling to breathe while he jogs and holding his sides in pain when he reaches the top of the stairs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is what gets me out of bed in the morning.  Rocky suffered and suffered, but he got better.  That thought inspires me.

A guy like me can stay in bed all day, every day.  I have the kind of mind where I can keep myself intellectually stimulated without ever speaking to another person or seeing the world outside of my room.  The problem is, the world actually is outside of my room.  I can stay in my room forever, but I'll never fulfill the contract of my creation.  My job is to do something to the world, something with the world, not sit in the dark imagining it.  There's an imaginary dog that yips at me whenever I think about forgetting that.

I sent the first chapter of my book to a few people for mostly good reviews.  A few people said, "Uh-oh, I can't believe you're talking about that."  The inciting action in my book is a fictionalized version of something that actually happened.  It's fictionalized mainly because I want a very different ending than what really happened.  I'm also not about the business of exposing people's personal suffering to the world.  There will be quite a bit of suffering in the story, but it's imaginary people, not real people.  I don't think I could do it otherwise.

My first several chapters will be chasing my characters up a tree and then throwing rocks at them, a quote attributed to both Nabakov and Hitchcock.  Hitch probably stole it.  Young people cross several really significant Rubicons as they grow.  The first is learning to walk, then going to school, then puberty, and going to high school and college.  Eventually, they emerge as an adult and start a completely different journey.

Young people arrive at college, often with the wounds inflicted on them before still bleeding, but without the support structure they always had, and sometimes they go a bit mad without it.  

Hurt people hurt others.  Every psychologist will tell you that.  Injured people hurting others and getting hurt themselves is the action that drives my narrative.  Characters not recognizing that they don't have to stay on the road where they find themselves is what sustains it.

In the real world, when bad things happen, people cry out for justice, but they never get it.  I've been thinking about this for a long time, and I don't think I've ever seen a case where justice was served.  

Orestes killed his mother and his uncle to seek justice for his murdered father, who was murdered for taking the life of his daughter Iphigenia; then, he spends three more plays struggling with the gods to try and discover justice.   Arguably, he never does it, but through his efforts, he redeems himself.

That's what I want my characters to do.  I want them to go through hell and then redeem themselves.  The question of justice will hang in the air unresolved.  That's intentional.  

Thirty years ago, Bobby DeLaughter and Ed Peters shocked the world by bringing Bryan De La Beckwith to trial.  Whatever would happen to Bobby in the future, that was a monumental moment in Mississippi history.  De La Beckwith was convicted and died in prison, but was justice served?  We could have burned De La Beckwith at the stake along with all his companions, but would that be justice for the death of Medgar Evers?  Could their suffering replace his loss?  My argument is "no."   Justice is a thing we seek but cannot find.

Redemption is possible, though.  If we put our minds to it, we can each achieve some level of redemption every moment of every day.  A daily struggle for redemption is how we pay back the lord for the air we breathe and the water we drink, and redemption begins with forgiveness.  Not the forgiveness from God, although that's vital, but forgiving ourselves and allowing us to redeem ourselves.

These are the ideas I'm going for.  We'll see how well I do.

In the meantime, I'm having one last breakfast in the little cafe out here.  The food's pretty good.  They'll bring the food to you, but if I let people serve me all the time, I'd never get out of here, and getting out of here is happening really soon.