Editorials: &#039;Tish-tish, Tut-tut&#039;

Title

Editorials: 'Tish-tish, Tut-tut'

Source Type

Newspapers

Publisher

New York Amsterdam News

Publication Place

New York, NY

Publication Date

12/03/1966

Transcript

Editorials 'Tish-tish, Tut-tut' The U. S. of America again has taken with a yawn the brutal murder of a young colored man while in custody of a Southern sheriff. While driving from Montgomery, Ala., state capital, to Wetumpka, Ala., 26 miles removed, James Earl Motley and friends were stopped by Deputy Sheriff Harvey Connor. Motley objected when asked if he had been drink- ing, objected to getting into Connor's car and chal- lenged the deputy's authority to arrest him. For this, Motley was slugged on the head by Connor, fell and was dragged to the deputy's car. Next time Motley was seen was a day later when he was carried feet first out of Wetumpka's jail-dead. - The undertaker said that Motley's body was caked with blood and that his skull had been fractured. Death of a colored man at the hands of so-called law enforcement officers as well as Klu Klux Klans- men in the South is a normal thing. A few tish-tishes and tuts-tuts and it's forgotten. Nothing emphasizes the double racial standard in America more than the indifference, the lack of concern when a colored man is not only denied his legal rights but when he is murdered by Southern law-enforcement officers. On the other hand, when a 25-year-old colored man cries "black power" the whites from Wetumpka to Walla Walla scream the Negroes are coming after us! Congress then refuses to pass a civil rights bill, liberals, such as Senator Jacob Javits, tell colored citizens to "cool it" and almost everybody says the colored folk are trying to get ahead too fast. It all goes to prove that in the U.S., the accepted way of life is to murder helpless colored prisoners, guilty or inocent of a crime, and then forget it, while simultaneously demanding that the colored citizens "stay in their place." Their "place" is one in which they are often brutalized by the whites mentally and physically at will. This is "white power."

Sources for

See all items with this value James Earl Motley