SPEW

The deeper you dig the more tenacious the lies. How could it be otherwise when you start with slavery as a cornerstone of the Southern and let’s be honest - American economy? Chattel slavery is the ethic of capitalism taken to its ugliest, terminal conclusion. If labor is a commodity to be bought, why not introduce the option to buy and sell and eliminate as much as possible the requirements of remuneration? It’s just business.   Once an economy is built on such a repulsive foundation what good could come from it? And now The Peculiar Institution lives on. Its legacy is mass incarceration, wealth inequality, housing discrimination, and other institutions and mechanisms of white superiority. My father’s family was part of it. I am saddened by my ancestors’ participation in slavery. Tracing my ancestry, I found documents confirming that my great-great-grandfather owned slaves. If the records I’ve found are indicative it appears that he had few, mostly devoted to household ...

I thought I had taken a snap of the Sumner Drug Store. Apparently, I was a sad-ass photo-documentarian. So for graphic relief, please enjoy this photo of the dog who first assailed and then greeted me at Robert Johnson's gravesite on Money Road, a few miles outside of Greenwood, Mississippi.  Tallahatchie County is basically a food desert. Let’s say you’re traveling and you want a can of mixed nuts to nibble on, something halfway healthy. In the small towns and rural areas of the Mississippi Delta you can’t find a can of mixed nuts to save your life. So, I was relegated to buying the little one- or two-ounce pouch numbers they sell in convenience stores. Anyway, I was visiting Sumner, one of the county seats, home to the courthouse where the animals who killed and mutilated Emmett Till were found not guilty by a jury of their all-white peers. My last time in town I had visited the Till Memory Project. I’d gotten a tour, plus a lot of wisdom from a fellow named Benjamin...