Another Day, Another Racially Insensitive Republican Remark

TransGriot Note: If there's any doubt that racism in this country is alive and well and that the GOP is the home of the Dixiecrats and closeted (and not so closted) racists, this election campaign will give you all the evidence you need to begin spelling Republican with 'KKK' in the middle of it.

This latest incident garnered my attention because it happened in Greenwood, MS. As many of my longtime TransGriot readers are aware of I'm a Texan and Houstonian by birth, but on my mother's side of the family I've got deep roots in Mississippi. The portions of my extended family that don't live in Jackson or Yazoo City live in and around Greenwood and the nearby town of Itta Bena, home of Mississippi Valley State University.

I spent more than a few summer vacations as a child travelling there with mom, my uncle and my maternal grandparents. So I wasn't a happy camper when I saw this BlackAmericaweb.com story about the insulting e-mail comments directed at Senator David Jordan, who's the rep in the Mississippi State Senate for my family members and the peeps in Leflore, Holmes and Tallahatchie counties. He also sits on the Greenwood City Council.

Greenwood Blacks Outraged at White Councilman Referring to Black Senator as ‘Ole Nigger’
Friday, May 16, 2008
by F. Finley McRae, BlackAmericaWeb.com

Blacks in the small, Mississippi Delta city of Greenwood are seething over a white city councilman's e-mail that referred to a black political leader, who is highly respected statewide, as an "ole nigger."

For many blacks, the e-mail, containing an illogical message about council president David Jordan, 74, who also holds a state senate seat, is a reminder that the vaunted "New South," romanticized by pundits nationwide, may well be a distant dream and perhaps even a myth.

Since Sunday, when the e-mail -- exposed by one of the 15 whites who received it -- and its subsequent furor began attracting statewide national media attention, Greenwood and Leflore County, where it sits, has been bombarded by reactions in the city's newspapers and its talk radio stations.

The e-mail, which Jordan said "is shocking," was sent early last week by John Lee, one of the city's two white Republican councilmen. Since then, Lee has increasingly been scorned and heaped with disdain and contempt by the vast majority of Greenwood's African-American population, according to several residents who asked for anonymity before speaking with BlackAmericaWeb.com. Many blacks are also believed to hold an equal amount of contempt for the other white councilman, John Jennings, who continues to defend the embattled Lee.

In his e-mail, Lee alleged that he "had a long talk after the city council meeting ... with David Jordan. The ole nigger can't understand why the black's (sic) continue to shoot one another. I told him he needed to spend less time with the old people at the Voters League and more time with the young people about getting an education."

Lee's e-mail erroneously claims that Jordan missed an opportunity to help a "big black" who asked him for employment. In fact, according to an outraged Jordan, he had previously employed the young man during several election cycles.

The young man, Lee claimed, told Jordan that he is a rapper. "I told David he missed his chance. He should have told that black boy he should be in school getting his education in order to have a future." Jordan said the "black boy" is a 28-year-old man."

An outraged Jordan, who is also president of the Greenwood Voters League, the political engine which has propelled blacks to growing representation and power since the 1960s, told BlackAmericaWeb.com that "Lee's lying and fabricated a story" which has no factual foundation.

Blacks throughout the city have vowed to demand a public apology from Lee at next Tuesday's council meeting, according to Lee Hall, who hosts the city's only local talk radio show, "Greenwood Morning." He is also the general manager of WGRM, the station that carries "Greenwood Morning" live from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m.

Lee's words, Hall told BlackAmericaWeb.com, have generated a daily discussion via the airwaves. "These words have dominated my show since Sunday because the majority of Greenwood's African-Americans are angry and upset" over his use of them and his refusal to issue a public apology. Hall said blacks expect Lee to openly apologize to Jordan and the other four black council members.

A substantial number of whites, mostly the city's liberals, are also angry with Lee and have called and sent e-mails to the city's newspapers to express their disgust over his choice of words.

Many Greenwood blacks and whites alike are also angry over what they perceive as the disparate punishment meted out to Solomon Osborn, a black juvenile court judge. Osborn was sanctioned early this year by the state's Judicial Performance Commission and will suffer a $48,000 loss in salary and six-month suspension for having said, in a public meeting, that "any black person who believes what white men say in the United States of America is a damned fool."

Jordan has repeatedly called for Lee's resignation. The council's four other blacks have not been as vocal, however. Ronnie Stevenson, the council's vice president, is also reportedly in favor of Lee's resignation. BlackAmericaWeb.com reached two of the five, Tennil Cannon and Taylor Dillard, for comment yesterday.

Both men said they do not know what, if anything, they can do about Lee's comments under laws governing council behavior. Some blacks, however, believe the African-American members could at least draft a statement condemning Lee's use of the n-word and the fabrication Jordan has alleged.

In speaking on WGRM on Sunday, Cannon said, "those words were also meant for me, the other black council members and Greenwood residents." But Dillard, when asked by Hall for a statement, declined to comment, Hall said.

Sheriel Perkins, Greenwood's first black mayor in 140 years, did not respond to repeated calls for comment. Perkins' election in 2005 was challenged by a group of ultra-conservative whites who refused to accept her victory. They claimed to have "found" more than 200 votes allegedly cast for her white opponent. Jordan led a long and exhausting legal campaign that finally resulted in victory for her 18 months later.

When interviewed by BlackAmericaWeb.com, her husband, state Rep. Willie Perkins, said he would support a recall effort against Lee if one were forthcoming. "He should resign," Perkins said. His wife, the mayor, has been mum thus far, according to sources.

Lee, an accountant, when reached by BlackAmericaWeb.com at his office, said he was with a client and thus "could not sit here talking about this in front of" that person.

Willie Perkins, speaking slowly and measuring his words, said, "Lee's statement and presence do not help this community to move forward, which is what we need to do and move past John Lee and the many others here who are like him, but who have not expressed it. We've got to move past that group and continue to work with people of different colors to improve race relations, attract employment and spur economic development," he said.

Regarding Osborn, his disparate treatment and its high cost, Perkins said, "I don't know all the details, so I can't address a judicial complaint against a judge in the same manner, in terms of what should be done in this case." No laws exist, Perkins said, "to force him out of office. I don't know of any laws to prevent people from making remarks of this nature."

Any recall effort would have to be initiated in Lee's district, which is more than 90 percent white and Republican.

That notwithstanding, Jordan said, "he's not going to do the council any good. He's just going to sit in middle of us, the majority of council members, who represent the black community, which is mad as the devil."

Interviewed by BlackAmericaWeb.com at his office, Jennings, the other white Republican councilman and a professional photographer, once again defended Lee.

"You can listen to car stereos at MacDonald's and hear worldwide role-model rappers using the n-word. Am I supposed to laugh? What am I supposed to do? Chris Rock uses it every third word," Lee said. "No matter what we do, everybody defaults to the 'Old South' and says, 'That's Mississippi, what do you expect?'"

Lee, Jennings said, "doesn't have a history of that word. He asked for forgiveness, and Jordan forgave him until he got pressure from Washington," he claimed. Redemption, said Jennings, "is what its all about, not destroying people for making mistakes. If so, we'd never make any progress."

But Jordan, while acknowledging that Lee had asked the other four council members to forgive him and had came to Jordan's home to speak to him, said he told Lee, "I don't want to talk to you. It's best that you leave right now."

Many whites, especially Lee and Jennings, Jordan said, "expect me to forgive and forget, but this is too hurtful." Jordan is now insisting on a public apology from Lee, which he said, his constituents are demanding.

"I forgave him, but black people throughout this city are calling for Lee's head," Jordan said.

Jordan also took strong exception to Jennings' assertion that he was pressured by "Washington" and thus rescinded his apology. "I don't know what he's talking about," Jordan said. "What does he mean, where did he get that?"

Jordan, who was a pupil of the late Mississippi civil rights icon, state NAACP president Dr. Aaron Henry, said that Lee cannot presume "to lecture me over what's best for any of my people. He's got to be out of his mind. I've sued just about everybody and every agency so black people can have a measure of justice and opportunity, led demonstrations, re-organized the Voters League and led it for 43 years."

Jordan's father, Cleveland, a sharecropper, is featured on an album at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. focused on the victories and tribulations suffered by Mississippi's civil rights heroes, along with the beloved Fannie Lou Hammer and Medgar Evers, who was assassinated in Jackson by a Klansman, Byron De La Beckwith, after refusing to abandon his leadership role to gain full equality for African-Americans.

Greenwood is only 10 miles from Money, the little hamlet where 14-year-old Emmet Till, a Chicago teen visiting his grandmother and other relatives, was abducted at 2 a.m. on Aug. 28, 1955, by a group of white men for allegedly looking at and perhaps whistling at a white woman. After beating and hanging Till, the men tossed his disfigured body into the Tallahatchie River. His remains, discovered three days afterward, were viewed by thousands in Chicago.

Within weeks, blacks and whites, full of horror and rage, began to mobilize and propelled the the modern day civil rights movement.