The Worst Overt Act of Racism in the 21st Century?

[donsu]

http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=1&aid=54608


An Occurrence at Gretna Bridge


CNN.com reports that as the heart of a hurricane-ravaged New Orleans filled with sewage-tainted floodwaters and corpses, Mayor Ray Nagin urged people to cross a bridge leading to the dry lands of the city's suburban west bank.

-snip-

It is reported that during the 1980s, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee ordered special scrutiny for any black people traveling in white sections of the parish. He is quoted by the New Orleans Gambit as having said, "It's obvious that two young blacks driving a rinky-dink car in a predominantly white neighborhood . . . They'll be stopped."

In 1994, the Gambit reports Sheriff Lee withdrew his officers from a predominantly black neighborhood after protests erupted when two black men died while in his care. He is reported to have said, "To hell with them, I haven't heard one word of support from one black person."

In April of this year, blacks complained that Jefferson Parish officers were using a caricature of a black man for target practice.
Sheriff Lee laughed when presented the charges and is reported to have commented, "I've looked at it, I don't find it offensive, and I have no interest in correcting it."

-snip-

City of Gretna police chief Arthur Lawson is equally impressive. His justification for trapping Katrina survivors in New Orleans is, he is reported to have said, "If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged."
-snip-
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damn, wish I could post more

the article ends with:

And thanks to their and their officers' actions, the Gretna City Bridge incident will live on in civil rights history just as does Bloody Sunday at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

and Gretna smirked.

[goclark]

1. Unreal

[patrice]

2. Have you ever heard of Greenwood near Tulsa, Oklahoma?

and there were other towns and cities where Blacks were killed. There were also many Black uprisings during the years before and during "our" Constitutional Congress. Blacks were only 3/5th of a Person, and that for ECONOMIC reasons ONLY, not Personhood, i.e. non-Persons, like so many others in U.S. History.

[myrna minx]

3. Oh god.

:cry: This just makes me sick.

[rkc3]

4. Makes me proud to be a white male.

Not.