gliN 1 Opinion

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Dry Bones

Restoring The Trust

4,11

1

ustice delayed, goes the old saying, is justice
denied. But there also are times when a delay,
even one that lasts for 40 years, has the effect
of stirring up memories that need to be recalled.
When Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of three
counts of manslaughter in a Mississippi courtroom
on June 21,. it served as a national history lesson.
There was a time when blacks and Jews stood shoul-
der to shoulder in the fight for civil rights. And
some paid with their lives.
Killen's trial involved the murder of James
Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner,
near the town of Philadelphia. The three young
men were trying to register African-American voters,
a perilous act in the Mississippi of 1964. It
may seem incredible for those under the
age of 45 that there was a time when
working to secure voting rights for black
people in much of the South could get you killed.
Mississippi was at the vortex of this hate storm.
When James Meredith registered as a student at
the University of Mississippi in 1962, it touched off
days of rioting. Civil rights leader Medgar Evers was
gunned down in his own driveway in 1963. In
1955, a young man from Chicago, Emmett Till,
was lynched for the alleged transgression of
whistling at a white woman. The Mississippi State
basketball team once had to sneak out of the state
to play in the NCAA tournament because state law
forbade black and white athletes from competing
against each other.

This was the place where Goodman and
Schwerner, both in their early 20s, both raised
in New York City, volunteered to go. They
joined Cheney, 21, who was born and raised
in Mississippi, in the registration campaign
conducted by the Congress of Racial Equality
(CORE). The three men were waylaid on a
country road, beaten and shot on orders from
the highest levels of the state's Ku Klux Klan.
The bodies were buried in an earthen dam.
Killen was convicted of directing those mur-
ders.
Federal investigators identified those who
carried out the crime, including some who
wore badges. But they were acquit-
ted long ago in a courtroom filled
with jeering white supporters.
Mississippi has changed since
those days; and, in recent years, it has tried to
put several old ghosts to rest. But the Jewish-
black alliance has changed, too. Suspicion and
resentment often replace the old sense of
mutual support. The strident opposition of
many Jews to affirmative action and the
increase in black anti-Semitism have become
all too familiar phenomena.
The trial in Mississippi reminds us all that
it wasn't always this way, and that there are
those who are working hard to try and patch
up the grievances and restore the old trust.
Last week's celebration of the Fourth of July,
which originated in another place called
Philadelphia, also is a reminder that American free-
doms are secured only by refusing to bow to those

rANO IF YOU414
IF YOU
BELIEVE 13181... BELIEVE SHARON...
THEN-BIN IS
THEN SHARON
WRONG
IS WRONG

AND WHAT
IF YOU OON'T
BELIEVE EITHER
ONE?

EDIT ORIAL

E-mail your opinion in a letter to the editor of no
more than 150 words to: letters@thejewishnews. corn.

Homecoming Dance

n the very day the news media were wring-
ing their hands over the fact that Detroit
has dropped from 10th to 11th place
among the biggest cities in America, the local popu-
lation I care most about increased by two.
My daughter and son-in-law returned from New
York City to the suburban charms of Oakland
County.
Friends keep congratulating me,
telling me how lucky I am. Their
kids are flung all across the map; and,
while they yearn for them to come
home some day, they understand that they probably
will not. That population stat is one reason.
Of course, bare numbers don't tell the whole
story. Many great American cities — Boston,
Washington, San Francisco, Chicago —are smaller
now than they once were.
Besides, it's the metropolitan population that real-
ly counts, and there the Detroit area pretty much
holds its own.

www.drybonesproject.com

who would deny it to any one of us.
Forty years is a long time for justice to be delayed.
But now it has come, and the past can no longer be
denied. ❑

And so she did.
The city shrinks as the `burbs swell.
For the last 10 years, we have said good-
Still, pride in one's city is among the oldest
bye
to her in so many places. Ann Arbor,
emotions in the human heart, all the way
Chicago, Washington, Cambridge and, for
back to Babylon. Think of the poems and
the last three years, New York.
songs devoted to Jerusalem, Rome, Paris,
So many airports, so many cars pulling
Vienna, Rio, London.
away
from the curb. So many tears.
People love these cities. They yearn for
She
met her husband, Michael Ben, when
them when they are away.
they
were
students at Harvard Law; even
"If I forget thee, 0, Jerusalem." "Wien,
GEO RGE
though
they
grew up here, not two minutes
Wien nur du allein. ""I love Paris in the sum-
CAN TOR
away from each other by car. They both have
mer when it sizzles." "London Pride means our Colu mnist
strong ties here. Now they have come home.
own dear town to us." "My Rio,
There is a song Judy Collins sings about
Rio by the sea-o."
how
she
would
dance for her father as a child, and
"I left my heart in San Francisco."
he
promised
that
someday they would go to Paris
"New York, New York, a helluva town."
together.
He
never
made that trip. But now she lives
"Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen." "Chicago is
in
Paris
and
her
daughter
dances for her there.
my kind of town."
I turned down my opportunity to live in New
It's been a long time since Detroit was loved like
York many years ago; a job offer as a baseball writer
that. People flee it, instead, by the tens of thou-
on a good newspaper. I chose to make my life in
sands. The most famous song about the city, in fact,
Detroit, and I never had reason to regret it. Still,
is one of non-love — about some poor guy who
you
always wonder.
makes the cars by day and the bars by night and
I
am
glad my daughter had the chance to dance
wants to go to the cotton fields back home.
her
dream.
But I am even gladder that she has come
The first time we took our daughter to New York
home.
she was 12 years old. Everything she saw amazed
Because now I will watch my grandchildren dance
her.
for me here.
"I'm going to live here someday," she announced.

REALITY CHECK

George Cantor's e-mail address is
gcantor@thejewishnews. corn.

❑

7/14

2005

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