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Emmett Till and Trent Lott

From Half the Sins of Mankind who correctly guessed that we are a fan (make that big fan) of Bob Dylan:

"Lott's comments are a product of forgetting the past; Pat Buchanan's phenomenally ignorant remark about Lott's being "lynched" also falls into this category. No one has ever made these people think about America's racial history. So they talk wistfully about the 1950s, which to them are all Mom and apple pie, not the unpunished murder of Emmett Till. In their minds, states' rights are about localized decision-making, not keeping people enslaved and disenfranchised. Actual lynchings are no part of their memories; lynching is just a metaphor to them."
I saw the morning papers but I could not bear to see The smiling brothers walkin' down the courthouse stairs.
For the jury found them innocent and the brothers they went free,
While Emmett's body floats the foam of a Jim Crow southern sea.
If you can't speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that's so unjust,
Your eyes are filled with dead men's dirt, your mind is filled with dust.
Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood it must refuse to flow,
For you let this human race fall down so God-awful low!
This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man
That this kind of thing still lives today in that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan.
But if all of us folks that thinks alike, if we gave all we could give,
We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live. -- Bob Dylan, "The Death of Emmett Till," 1963.

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