The state of MLK Day 2019

On this MLK Day, perhaps it's time we took a step back and re-examine some issues. First, to all the Republicans and other conservatives that love taking phrases from King's speeches and writings out of context to promote their own political philosophy -- stop it! When Mike Pence gets up and quotes MLK and then goes into a tirade as to why a wall on the southern border is needed, he is being more than intellectually dishonest.

For those of y'all too young to remember, conservatives (regardless of their party affiliation) were strongly opposed to Dr. King's message. They were opposed to the black students who sat down at lunch counters across the South. That was rabble rousing, they would say. They disapproved of marches and protests. They blamed it on those damn radicals. They fought school desegregation and found new ways to perpetuate it in the suburbs thanks to white flight. Mainstream liberals went off the rails when Dr. King came out against the Vietnam War.

To have someone as reprehensible as Mike Pence whitewashing the words of Dr. King makes me sick. To use the words as a justification for a program that would promote further discrimination against Latinos angers me.

But all the white conservatives will pipe up about non-violence - even though the police continue to shoot unarmed black men and women across this country. They will talk about our colorblind society - even though we have a criminal (in)justice system that discriminates against the poor and people of color.

And, at the same time, they will continue to support the NFL's blackballing of Colin Kaepernick for the outrageous "sin" of protesting against police violence against black folk. His protest was peaceful. Yet somehow he can't find a spot as a quarterback even while teams are signing players who can't hold a candle to his achievements or potential.

The entire discussion around Colin Kaepernick distills the issues Martin Luther King, Jr., brought to the nation's forefront. Kaepernick did exactly what conservatives want - he protested peacefully. But that wasn't enough. You see, it's not the type of protest that conservatives care about -- it's who's protesting. Colin Kaepernick's biggest "sin" was being black and taking a stand.

Thanks to the climate of hatred whipped up by political leaders in the 50's and 60's, Dr. King was struck down by an assassin's bullet at the age of 39. He was silenced because he spoke out.

And sadly, because we live in a country that worships capitalism and consumerism like religions, his memory has been largely commodified and used as a reason for yet another sale.

A word from the readership

Every once in a while I get a comment from a reader that really makes me sit back and scratch my head. This week I got a comment from a reader known as Rowland who took exception to my characterization of Mississippi in my post Mississippi's Still Burning.

Here is the text of Rowland's comment:

When you find something to satisfy your personal bias, it becomes your reality. I moved to Mississippi from North Carolina within my company more than 10 years ago and find your opinion to be the exception in Mississippi. To stereotype Mississippians based on your cited examples makes you no better than the racists you denounce. Should we now assume all Texans are bigots because of your opinions of Mississippians? 

I guess he took exception to my posting of the voter wearing the shirt adorned with the Confederate flag and a noose and the state's senator who said she wouldn't mind attending a lynching if a certain big money donor invited her.

I didn't even bring up the fact that the state uses the Confederate battle flag in its state flag. Now just what is that all about?

I would assume he thinks these are anomalies.

I think he assumes wrong. Just chew on this for a minute or two. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith was first in the election earlier this month with 42% of the vote. A white nationalist (otherwise known as a racist) received 17% of the vote. A run-off will be held next week to decide the race. Mike Espy, an African-American who served in Washington as a representative and Secretary of Agriculture, will seek to become the first Democratic Senator from Mississippi since the 1980's.

So nearly 60% of the votes cast went to a fringe racist candidate or to a senator who's just fine with lynching and voter suppression. That's not just a couple of people as our writer would like for you to think. That, instead, is three out of every five voters in the state.

And then we have these stats from US News and World Report (hardly a bastion of liberal journalism). Mississippi ranks dead last in the US for health care, which includes access to health care, infant mortality rates and health care enrollment. The state ranks 46th in education, 48th in economic development, 49th in opportunity for citizens to improve themselves, and 49th in infrastructure.

The state's incarceration rate is the 4th highest in the nation. There are three times as many blacks in prison in Mississippi as whites, even though blacks make up just a little more than one-third of the state's population.

I will say, I find his use of the word bigot to be quite funny. It's the kind of thing you would expect to hear out of the mouth of a child of white privilege who's upset that the system he grew up under is fading away.

Blaming the victim, Texas style

This is a video that Texas now requires all high school students to view. Its purpose is to "teach" students how to interact with the police.

But, in reality, it serves to give the police any number of excuses when they make the decision to pull their weapon and shoot someone.

And I don't want to hear that constant refrain that being a cop is a hard job. No one was forced to enter law enforcement. Everyone who attended the academy made the decision that's what they wanted to do.

The State of Texas has made the decision to side with the police when it comes to the shooting of unarmed black men. Texas has decided that the blame falls squarely on the victim of police violence because they didn't act in a certain manner. This mindset lets the police off the hook when they turn a situation confrontational. It lets them off the hook when they decide to draw their weapon.

It's the classic game of blame the victim.

Part of the problem is that law enforcement loves to play soldier. Local departments are dressing their officers in uniforms that look like fatigues. They are carrying military-style weapons. Departments are handed surplus military gear like it's candy.

And in this effort to have a War on Drugs - or whatever other evil is the flavor of the month - police officers adopt an "us v. them" attitude. The police are on patrol. The news media refers to ordinary citizens as civilians - so as to differentiate them from the police.

Now don't get me wrong. The police have always been used to enforce the social order. They were the front line defenders of Jim Crow in the South. The images of Bull Connor turning the police dogs on civil rights protesters can never be erased from the mind. The police have been used to bust strikes. They have been used to deny people their right to assemble peaceably and petition the government over their grievances.

I don't think we should be surprised that such a video becomes must-watch propaganda in Texas. There are more than enough wing nuts in the state legislature and Board of Education who love the idea of a police state (while telling their supporters how evil government is). Not surprisingly, the video left out the most important instruction in how to deal with the police -- not being black. Until we can sit down and discuss the racism at the core of policing, nothing will ever change.

Perhaps police officers should have to watch a video to teach them how to interact with people of color.

Washington Supreme Court strikes down the death penalty

Allen Eugene Gregory was not a very good person. In 1996 he robbed, raped and murdered a woman. Two years later he was investigated for another rape. During that investigation police discovered evidence that tied Mr. Gregory to the robbery, rape and murder.

Mr. Gregory was convicted of aggravated first degree murder in the 1996 case. The jury sentenced him to death.

He was also convicted of the 1998 rape. The Washington Supreme Court later reversed the rape conviction.

On appeal to the Washington Supreme Court, the death sentence was overturned and the case remanded because the state relied upon the (reversed) rape conviction in the penalty phase of the trial.

In a new punishment hearing, a second jury then sentenced Mr. Gregory to death.

In the meantime, prosecutors learned that their complaining witness in the rape case lied at the first trial. Prosecutors, realizing they couldn't rely on their witness to tell the truth, then dismissed the rape cases.

***

In 1972 in Furman v. Georgia, the US Supreme Court declared the death penalty to be unconstitutional in its application. The Court held that states had imposed the death penalty in "arbitrary and capricious manner."

Three years later a ballot initiative in Washington passed making the death penalty mandatory for specified offenses. The following year, in Woodson v. North Carolina, the US Supreme Court held that mandatory death sentences were also unconstitutional.

Washington then passed a statute that called for a sentencing hearing where evidence of aggravating factors, as well as mitigating factors, would be presented to a jury. If the jury found an aggravating circumstance and deemed the mitigating factor insufficient to warrant mercy, a death sentence could be imposed.

The Washington Supreme Court struck down that statute because it allowed the state to impose the death penalty on a defendant who demanded his constitutional right to a trial, but it did not impose it on defendants who pleaded guilty.

The death penalty statute was then rewritten to require automatic review (a proportionality review) of death sentences by the state Supreme Court to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to uphold the death sentence, whether the death sentence was disproportionate to the penalty assessed in similar cases, whether passion or prejudice contributed to the death sentence and whether the defendant had an intellectual disability.

***

Mr. Gregory appealed his death sentence, arguing that it was disproportionate to other sentences meted out for similar crimes and that is was applied in an arbitrary manner in his case because he was black.

In 2014, Katherine Beckett co-authored a report that found there was a wide disparity among counties when it came to imposing the death penalty and that a portion of that disparity had to do with the black population in the county. She also pointed out that a black defendant was four-and-a-half times more likely to receive a death sentence than a white defendant.

Like many states, Washington's state constitution has a provision outlawing cruel and unusual punishment. And, like in many states, the protections granted under that clause are stronger than the protections afforded under the 8th Amendment to the US Constitution.

And it was that clause that the Washington Supreme Court relied upon in striking down the Washington death penalty statute for the fourth time.

***

In 2000 about 50.3% of the population in Texas was white. Latinos made up about 34.2% and Blacks made up 12%.

Since 1976, 34.5% of the inmates murdered at the hands of the state were Black while 55.6% where white and 8.2% were Latino. Over the years, 75.6% of the victims in death penalty cases were white while only 15.3% were Black  and 6.9% were Latino.

For a long time Harris County was known as the death penalty capital of the United States - sending more people to death row each year than many countries. In the 2000 census, whites made up 56.5% of the county's population while Blacks made up 18.9% and Latinos 32.9%.

It is clear from the numbers alone that the death penalty is applied disproportionately based on race. I don't have the knowledge of statistics to run regression analysis to determine how much weight is placed on race in death penalty decisions, but when Black inmates are executed at a rate three times higher than their proportion of the general population, something is wrong.

Capital punishment is little more than modern day lynching with the imprimatur of the court. The fact that those on the right favor it with such fervor tells you that whites are overwhelmingly in favor of killing inmates (the fact that preachers and so-called religious conservatives support it tells you that they are nothing more than fucking hypocrites). The death penalty is a tool of oppression and social control.

The death penalty is applied in an arbitrary and capricious manner and nothing can change that. It is high time we moved beyond barbarism.

Sid Miller steps right in it (and doesn't even know it)

Sid Miller is the Texas Agriculture Commissioner. The job appears to be primarily about promoting Texas agricultural products as well as slapping stickers adorned with his visage on gas pumps and scales in grocery stores.

Apparently one of the unwritten duties of Ag Commissioner is to promote white nationalist causes on state time.

But before we criticize the man, we should get to know him and his accomplishments in office.

Mr. Miller appointed a man who had his medical license suspended after being convicted of perjury in a case dealing with his marriage to his 15-year-old stepdaughter. His license was later revoked when he failed to report a malpractice claim. In addition, Rick Ray Redalen was not only in charge of a task force on telemedicine --  he was the founder of a company that marketed telemedicine services.

The self-proclaimed fiscal conservative then used taxpayer money to get a shot from John Michael Lonergan, also known as "Dr. Mike," who took up shop in Oklahoma after losing his Ohio medical license. This shot was a so-called "Jesus shot" for chronic pain.

Mr. Miller also billed the taxpayers for a trip to Mississippi so he could compete in a rodeo. And these were in addition to handing out big bonuses for employees who hadn't even had a job evaluation and raising regulatory fees on farmers, ranchers and grocery stores.

This latest incident, though, threatens to overshadow every other idiotic thing this man has done in office. You see, Sid Miller is sponsoring a specialty licence plate to honor Confederate soldiers. The plate would raise money for the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

What the hell are the Sons of Confederate Veterans, you may ask. I was certainly curious. Here's a link to their website and here's what they raise money for:

The SCV Texas Division's continuing mission is to preserve the history and protect the honor and memory of our Confederate Soldier ancestors. But, we need your help.Please consider donating to our Heritage Defense Fund today. Time is of the essence as we see our flags, our monuments, and our historical sights attacked on a daily basis by those that have much more funding and undue influence with local government. 

That's right. Their sole purpose is to maintain the symbols of the Confederacy and to protect the legacy of those who fought to preserve slavery.

Then there is this:

The Texas heroes pictured above like thousands of other citizen-soldiers who fought for the Confederacy personified the best qualities of America. The preservation of liberty and freedom was the motivating factor in the South's decision to fight the Second American Revolution. The tenacity with which Confederate soldiers fought underscored their belief in the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. These attributes are the underpinning of our democratic society and represent the foundation on which this nation was built.

Let's be honest here, the only people whose liberty and freedom mattered where white men. While the group's website states in multiple places that they are not racists and that they oppose bigotry, those statements are completely at odds with the political philosophy of the Confederacy.

Organizations such as this were created and founded during the dying days of Jim Crow when southern states did anything and everything in their power to maintain white supremacy. This group does everything it can to paper over the issue of slavery - which is quite the act of gymnastics considering that the expansion of slavery was at the center of the Civil War.

Sid Miller is yet another example of what happens when folks vote for a candidate simply because he has an R after his name.

His pimping for a license plate to honor the Confederacy reveals just what kind of a person Sid Miller is. No longer are folks hiding their support for white supremacists and racism. The Trump presidency has made it safe for people to be open about their true beliefs. Let's see if any of those college-educated whites who vote Republican in Texas give a fuck.

Let's have some smoke with that whitewash

Oh, and you just thought the drama surrounding the killing of Botha Shem Jean by an off-duty Dallas police officer was over. How wrong you were.

In an ongoing attempt to justify the unjustifiable, the Dallas police obtained a search warrant to look for evidence of drugs -- in Mr. Jean's apartment. That's right. Instead of treating Amber Guyger as any other defendant charged with killing someone, the police went to a judge and obtained a search warrant -- signed by a judge -- giving them permission to search Mr. Jean's apartment for drugs. A judge had to read the affidavit and agree that there was probable cause to believe evidence of a crime would be found in Mr. Jean's apartment -- and that said evidence was relevant to the investigation of his murder.

And, of course, once the cops found some marijuana in the apartment, the media were alerted and the stories began popping up around the state that weed had been found in Mr. Jean's apartment.

Now let's step back for just a second here. Any marijuana - or any other illegal items - found in Mr. Jean's apartment are completely irrelevant to the investigation of the killing because Ms. Guyger said the lights were out in the apartment when she entered it and shot and killed Mr. Jean.

She wasn't carrying out a raid. She wasn't executing a search warrant. According to her story she walked into the wrong apartment and shot Mr. Jean thinking he was an intruder in her apartment. Besides, the possession of small amounts of marijuana is a misdemeanor -- it's not a capital offense.

The point in obtaining the warrant was to gather "evidence" that would make Mr. Jean look like a criminal in the public's mind. Suddenly he goes from innocent victim to a black drug user or dealer. Now the cops and prosecutors will point out every time they are asked to comment that illegal drugs were found in Mr. Jean's apartment in an attempt to divert attention away from the facts that an unarmed black man was shot and killed in his own apartment by an off-duty cop.

Such a tactic will also divert the public's attention from the fact that Ms. Guyger was allowed to leave the scene and was free to discard or destroy any evidence of the crime. We will never know if she was under the influence of drugs or alcohol because any evidence of intoxication has already been pissed, sweated and breathed away. I'm sure the cops and the District Attorney would be more than happy if the public would quit paying attention to the ridiculous story Ms. Guyger told investigators and that was subsequently used in the arrest warrant.

No matter what smokescreens the Dallas police erect, never forget that Mr. Jean was in his own apartment minding his own business when a cop entered, barked orders at him and shot him to death.

The only good thing to come from this situation is the public's realization that the police will go to whatever lengths they need in order to cover up for one of their own.

And people still don't understand why Colin Kaepernick knelt.

Internal investigation? What internal investigation?

In 2015, the family of Darryl Mount, Jr., filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Saratoga Springs, NY, then Public Safety commissioner Christian Mathiesen and seven police officers, including the police chief, Gregory Veitch.

In August 2013 Mr. Mount was running from the police in downtown Saratoga Springs when police approached him after seeing him assault his girlfriend outside of a bar. He ended up at the bottom of a 19 foot scaffold with injuries that would prove to be fatal. He was taken to the hospital in a coma from which he never awoke.

Chief Veitch and Mr. Mathiesen denied there was any validity to the family's claims that the injuries had been inflicted by the police. In fact, Chief Veitch told the public that the department's own internal investigation concluded that there had been no police misconduct.

So far the tale is unremarkable. A black man dies in an encounter with the police. The police conduct an internal investigation. No one crosses the thin blue line and the officers in question are cleared. The DA's office is put on notice that the ball's in their court now.

The only problem is, there was never an internal police investigation conducted to determine whether there were any acts of police misconduct that night. There was a police investigation conducted - to determine whether Mr. Mount should be charged with attempted assault, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

We know there was no internal investigation conducted into the incident because Chief Veitch admitted that he lied to the press in a sworn deposition taken pursuant to the wrongful death suit. The lawsuit also turned up an e-mail in which Chief Veitch said it was important to give he public the impression that the police department was concerned with the allegations - even though they weren't.

When asked why he didn't conduct an investigation, Chief Veitch claimed it was because no one had alleged any incident of police misconduct. That is, except for family members at the hospital who made the allegations to Det. Tim Sicko. Det. Sicko, in turn, relayed the allegations to Chief Veitch.

Chief Veitch, despite his department's own General Order Section 25, failed to conduct an internal affairs review within 45 days of the allegations. Famed forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht reviewed the medical records, X-rays and photographs and came to the conclusion that Mr. Mount's injuries were more consistent with being beaten than falling from a scaffold. The forensic medical examiner used by local police, Dr. Michael Sikirica, issued a report supporting the police department's claims of no misconduct after reviewing statements from various witnesses and medical records - he never reviewed the photographs of Mr. Mount's injuries nor the actual X-rays or CAT scans.

This case illustrates why some type of external review board is necessary for investigating allegations of police misconduct. Any such board must have subpoena power to compel the production of witnesses and documents. The system in Saratoga Springs didn't fail. It did exactly what it was supposed to do - provide cover for the police. Only this time we got a peak behind the curtain.

h/t Scott Greenfield

Death, prayers and hypocrisy

After every school shooting the Republicans, the wingnuts and gun freaks yell from the tops of the tallest buildings that now is not the time for politics. They tell us that we should wait until the grieving parents have buried their children before we begin any policy discussions. They will argue about the definition of an assault rifle. They will ask what specific new law do you propose. They will argue that we don't need new laws, we just need to enforce the laws that are already on the books.

Then the politicians offer their worthless thoughts and prayers before cashing the latest check they received from the NRA.

Then something else hits the news cycle and everyone moves on to the next crisis.

After every mass shooting the Republicans, the wingnuts and the gun freaks yell from the tops of the tallest buildings that now is not the time for politics. They tell us we should wait until the grieving families have buried their loved ones before we can begin any policy discussions. They will argue about the definition of an assault rifle. They will ask what specific new law do you propose. They will argue that we don't need new laws, we just need to enforce the laws that are already on the books.

Then the politicians offer their worthless thoughts and prayers before cashing the latest check they received from the NRA.

And nothing ever happens because we, as a nation, have said that we're okay with mass shootings and that the deaths of school children are no big deal because we really, really, really want to be able to play with our guns.

But after a white middle-class girl from Iowa is found dead and a person here without our government's possession confesses to the murder, now is the time for the Republicans, the wingnuts and racists of all stripes to use this girl's murder to score political points in efforts to restrict immigration from non-white non-Europeans.

Now is the time to wave the bloody flag of a white girl killed by a dark-skinned man to incite hatred and fear in support of a president's racist policies.

Let's forget that the vast majority of murders and other violent crimes are committed by people who were born in this country. Let's forget about the fact that the government long turned a blind eye on illegal immigration because industries needed a cheap work force that would do jobs that citizens didn't want.

I find it utterly repulsive that the same folks who put off talking about gun issues while the bodies are still warm have no problem using the death of Mollie Tibbetts for political purposes. By now, however, hypocrisy on the right shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

When all else fails, purge the voter rolls

One thing about the Trump era is that Republicans don't have to even pretend they aren't racial motives behind more restrictive voting laws and procedures.

The latest example is in southern Georgia. Randolph County is 61% black - double the statewide average. The Randolph County Board of Supervisors voted last week to close down 75% of the polling stations in Randolph County.

The Board will argue that they are making the move for financial reasons but that excuse doesn't hold any water because the real effect is to close as many polling stations in the black sections of the county as possible in order to aid Republican office seekers. If it costs more than the county wishes to pay to keep the stations open there is a perfectly fair solution -- raise the filing fee for running for office.

With the US Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act, white Republicans have been knocking each other down to see who can pass the more restrictive voting laws and who can make it more difficult for the poor and minorities to vote. And the reason is clear -- as I've pointed out before, the old white power structure knows that due to demographic changes, its days of holding power are limited and they are doing everything they can to prolong the inevitable.

As white America showed that it is not afraid to vote for an outwardly racist candidate for president, these moves are to be expected. Those who vote Republican are supporting these efforts whether they wish to admit it or not. It would appear that no Republican candidate running for office has the guts to challenge the overt bigotry of Donald Trump and his administration. Their silence is affirmation of their support.

And, lest you think these shenanigans are used only in the Deep South, it's going on in Houston, too.  Residents of the Third Ward, a mostly black area of Houston just east of downtown, received letters from the County's voter registrar, Ann Harris Bennett, informing them that they had but 30 days to return a letter confirming their address to her office in order to avoid being removed from the voter rolls. The letters were sent out to folks who hadn't moved and who had been living at their current address for years.

“If you do not respond at all to this notice, your registration will be canceled if you have not confirmed your address either by completing the response form or confirming your address when voting before November 30 following the second general election for state and county officers that occurs after the date the confirmation notice is mailed.”

The letters were the result of challenges made by Republicans to voters in predominately minority parts of Houston. You see, Republican candidates will win the majority of votes in the suburbs since most of the residents moved away from Houston to get away from darker skinned folks. But elections in Harris County center on the turnout within the city limits of Houston. If there is a large turnout in the city, it will cancel out the Republican voters in the suburbs. And Republicans are anticipating that will be the case come November.

We're not gonna take it

You might remember the name Darryl Fulton from an earlier blog post about his return to his grounds keeping job for the Chicago White Sox after being exonerated of a murder for which he spent over two decades behind bars.

Adding insult to injury, on two separate occasions, Chase Bank in Chicago refused to accept his deposit of a check for $169,876.00 paid to him by the State of Illinois for taking 23 years of his life.

The first time he tried to deposit the check, the bank refused to accept it because it hadn't been endorsed by his attorney -- even though the only payee on the check was Mr. Fulton. The second time he tried to deposit the check the bank refused to accept it because Mr. Fulton had signed the check over the attorney's name. The bank did say it could deposit the check into the lawyer's account, however.

While acknowledging that the check should have been accepted and deposited the first time Mr. Fulton presented it, bank officials refused to say whether or not the color of Mr. Fulton's skin had anything to do with the bank's reluctance to accept the check.

According to Mr. Fulton's attorney, the bank never offered to accept the check for deposit.

So it's not enough that Mr. Fulton was held in custody during the pendency of his case because he couldn't bond out. It's not enough that prosecutors obtained a conviction after not conducting DNA testing on an item because it didn't fit in the police narrative. It's not enough that the state fought tooth and nail to prevent the evidence from being tested, all in the name of honoring the jury's (wrong) verdict. Now he can't even deposit the meager check he received from the state to compensate him for his lost life.

One can only wonder whether Chase makes white executives go through such hoops in order to deposit a large check. Or is that experience reserved for black men with large checks to deposit?

AG calls for a task force for a return to segregation

For anyone who isn't a wingnut or a complete moron, Attorney General Jeff Session's announcement of a religious liberty task force stands as another milepost on the road back to the era of Jim Crow.

Mr. Sessions claims that the purpose of this task force is to protect religious groups from persecution, except, of course, those who pray to a different god in a different way than the white folks down at the Baptist or Methodist congregations.

Religion still stands as one of the last vestiges of public segregation - even more so than suburban school districts.

The real purpose of the task force has nothing to do with protecting those who choose to pray in their own way. The real purpose is to allow groups and organizations to discriminate against those with whom they disagree under the cover of law.

Catholic hospitals and dioceses don't want to provide contraceptive coverage for their female employees because it shocks their religious sensibilities. But these same religious leaders have no problem proclaiming their support for the latest US bombing raid on a non-white country.

Hobby Lobby didn't want to provide contraceptive coverage for their female employees because god told them it was bad. But that didn't stop executives in the company from smuggling religious artifacts out of the Middle East.

A cake shop owner didn't want to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding and he hid behind his hateful religious beliefs. When pressed, he believed in what a preacher told him was meant by a text that had been translated umpteen times from various sources.

The god-fearing hypocrites at protestant churches across the country voted en masse for a man who boasted of degrading women and looking at teenage girls in states of undress. They voted for a man who has been married three times - each time to a woman he had an affair with while married to someone else.

This cry to protect religious freedom can be seen for what it is by anyone who wants to open their eyes and look around them. We are flooded with religious messages by politicians, school officials, sports organizations, government leaders and even our own money.

The real mission of Mr. Session's task force is to provide cover for those who wish to discriminate against gays, foreigners, blacks, non-English speakers and anyone else who doesn't fit into the mold of 1950's America.

Execution Watch: 7/17/2018

It's Tuesday night and Texas is looking to kill again...

CHRISTOPHER YOUNG. Mr. Young was sentenced to death in 2006 for the murder of a San Antonio convenience store owner. His lawyers said religious discrimination occurred during jury selection when a black woman was ruled ineligible to serve because she belongs to a church that has a prison ministry. The victim's son has asked the state to spare Mr. Young's life. Mr. Young's attorneys urged Gov. Abbott to halt the execution to consider their allegations that race was a factor in the refusal to grant Mr. Young clemency. They said a white man with a situation similar to Mr. Young's was recently spared (Click here to read about Thomas Whitaker's case). The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles turned down Mr. Young's request for clemency.

Just like in the case of Thomas Whitaker, a relative of the victim, in this case his son, has asked the state not to kill. However, in Mr. Whitaker's case, the Board voted unanimously to grant clemency and the governor agreed. The difference? Thomas Whitaker is white and Christopher Young is black.

In defending the Board's decision not to grant clemency in Mr. Young's case, Assistant AG Stephen Hoffman points out that Mr. Young pulled the trigger in his case while Mr. Whitaker merely set the murders in motion. This raises a couple of other questions. First, should we be killing folks who took part in a murder but didn't actually pull the trigger? Second, what's worse: pulling the trigger or hiring someone else to do it?

This case does illustrate a unique aspect of criminal law. When the alleged victim or victim's family wants the defendant punished a certain way (jail instead of probation, for instance), the DA is only too quick to cut off negotiations because of the opposition. But, when the alleged victim or victim's family doesn't want the defendant punished harshly -- or sometimes, not at all -- the DA is quick to point out that he or she represents the State, not the victim. Go figure.

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The contradictions of July 4

Okay, I know, it's a day late. But you try getting in front of the computer with a houseful of kids wanting to watch YouTube and Netflix.

With thanks to many folks on Twitter who posted links to this, here is Frederick Douglass' "What to the Slave is the 4th of July" delivered on July 4, 1852 in Rochester, NY.

Never forget that black men fought for the Union in the Civil War and fought in both World War I and World War II and they call came home to a world in which they were treated as second-class citizens.

We live in a world in which unarmed black men are shot down with impunity by the police but the President of the United States calls a black man taking a knee in peaceful protest an SOB.

Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens:

He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the present occasion.

The papers and placards say, that I am to deliver a 4th [of] July oration. This certainly sounds large, and out of the common way, for it is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall, and to address many who now honor me with their presence. But neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall, seems to free me from embarrassment.

The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable — and the difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to the former, are by no means slight. That I am here to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I will proceed to lay them before you.

This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot’s heart might be sadder, and the reformer’s brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations.

Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the associations that cluster about this day. The simple story of it is that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects. The style and title of your “sovereign people” (in which you now glory) was not then born. You were under the British Crown. Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. This home government, you know, although a considerable distance from your home, did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives, impose upon its colonial children, such restraints, burdens and limitations, as, in its mature judgment, it deemed wise, right and proper.

But, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home government in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints. They went so far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to. I scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my opinion of those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. Such a declaration of agreement on my part would not be worth much to anybody. It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies. It is fashionable to do so; but there was a time when to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried men’s souls. They who did so were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. But, to proceed.

Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly sought redress. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. Their conduct was wholly unexceptionable. This, however, did not answer the purpose. They saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and scorn. Yet they persevered. They were not the men to look back.

As the sheet anchor takes a firmer hold, when the ship is tossed by the storm, so did the cause of your fathers grow stronger, as it breasted the chilling blasts of kingly displeasure. The greatest and best of British statesmen admitted its justice, and the loftiest eloquence of the British Senate came to its support. But, with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea, the British Government persisted in the exactions complained of.

The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted now, even by England; but we fear the lesson is wholly lost on our present ruler.

Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard it. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it.

Such people lived then, had lived before, and will, probably, ever have a place on this planet; and their course, in respect to any great change, (no matter how great the good to be attained, or the wrong to be redressed by it), may be calculated with as much precision as can be the course of the stars. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor.

These people were called Tories in the days of your fathers; and the appellation, probably, conveyed the same idea that is meant by a more modern, though a somewhat less euphonious term, which we often find in our papers, applied to some of our old politicians.

Their opposition to the then dangerous thought was earnest and powerful; but, amid all their terror and affrighted vociferations against it, the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on, and the country with it.

On the 2d of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress, to the dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshipers of property, clothed that dreadful idea with all the authority of national sanction. They did so in the form of a resolution; and as we seldom hit upon resolutions, drawn up in our day whose transparency is at all equal to this, it may refresh your minds and help my story if I read it. “Resolved, That these united colonies are, and of right, ought to be free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, dissolved.”

Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation’s history — the very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny.

Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.

From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. Cling to this day — cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight.

The coming into being of a nation, in any circumstances, is an interesting event. But, besides general considerations, there were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this republic an event of special attractiveness.

The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified and sublime.

The population of the country, at the time, stood at the insignificant number of three millions. The country was poor in the munitions of war. The population was weak and scattered, and the country a wilderness unsubdued. There were then no means of concert and combination, such as exist now. Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order and discipline. From the Potomac to the Delaware was a journey of many days. Under these, and innumerable other disadvantages, your fathers declared for liberty and independence and triumphed.

Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men too — great enough to give fame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.

They loved their country better than their own private interests; and, though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited, it ought to command respect. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests.

They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was “settled” that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were “final;” not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times.

How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all their movements! How unlike the politicians of an hour! Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future. They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their defense. Mark them!

Fully appreciating the hardship to be encountered, firmly believing in the right of their cause, honorably inviting the scrutiny of an on-looking world, reverently appealing to heaven to attest their sincerity, soundly comprehending the solemn responsibility they were about to assume, wisely measuring the terrible odds against them, your fathers, the fathers of this republic, did, most deliberately, under the inspiration of a glorious patriotism, and with a sublime faith in the great principles of justice and freedom, lay deep the corner-stone of the national superstructure, which has risen and still rises in grandeur around you.

Of this fundamental work, this day is the anniversary. Our eyes are met with demonstrations of joyous enthusiasm. Banners and pennants wave exultingly on the breeze. The din of business, too, is hushed. Even Mammon seems to have quitted his grasp on this day. The ear-piercing fife and the stirring drum unite their accents with the ascending peal of a thousand church bells. Prayers are made, hymns are sung, and sermons are preached in honor of this day; while the quick martial tramp of a great and multitudinous nation, echoed back by all the hills, valleys and mountains of a vast continent, bespeak the occasion one of thrilling and universal interest — a nation’s jubilee.

Friends and citizens, I need not enter further into the causes which led to this anniversary. Many of you understand them better than I do. You could instruct me in regard to them. That is a branch of knowledge in which you feel, perhaps, a much deeper interest than your speaker. The causes which led to the separation of the colonies from the British crown have never lacked for a tongue. They have all been taught in your common schools, narrated at your firesides, unfolded from your pulpits, and thundered from your legislative halls, and are as familiar to you as household words. They form the staple of your national poetry and eloquence.

I remember, also, that, as a people, Americans are remarkably familiar with all facts which make in their own favor. This is esteemed by some as a national trait — perhaps a national weakness. It is a fact, that whatever makes for the wealth or for the reputation of Americans, and can be had cheap! will be found by Americans. I shall not be charged with slandering Americans, if I say I think the American side of any question may be safely left in American hands.

I leave, therefore, the great deeds of your fathers to other gentlemen whose claim to have been regularly descended will be less likely to be disputed than mine!

My business, if I have any here to-day, is with the present. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now.

Trust no future, however pleasant,
Let the dead past bury its dead;
Act, act in the living present,
Heart within, and God overhead.

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. But now is the time, the important time. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. You live and must die, and you must do your work. You have no right to enjoy a child’s share in the labor of your fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. Sydney Smith tells us that men seldom eulogize the wisdom and virtues of their fathers, but to excuse some folly or wickedness of their own. This truth is not a doubtful one. There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. It was fashionable, hundreds of years ago, for the children of Jacob to boast, we have “Abraham to our father,” when they had long lost Abraham’s faith and spirit. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abraham’s great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? Need I tell you that the Jews are not the only people who built the tombs of the prophets, and garnished the sepulchres of the righteous? Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men shout — “We have Washington to our father.” — Alas! that it should be so; yet so it is.

The evil that men do, lives after them, The good is oft-interred with their bones.

Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold, that a nation’s sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation’s jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the “lame man leap as an hart.”

But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. — The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”

Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave’s point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery — the great sin and shame of America! “I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;” I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.

But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man, (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write. When you can point to any such laws, in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian’s God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively, and positively, negatively, and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. — There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is passed.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Take the American slave-trade, which, we are told by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. Ex-Senator Benton tells us that the price of men was never higher than now. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. It is carried on in all the large towns and cities in one-half of this confederacy; and millions are pocketed every year, by dealers in this horrid traffic. In several states, this trade is a chief source of wealth. It is called (in contradistinction to the foreign slave-trade) “the internal slave trade.” It is, probably, called so, too, in order to divert from it the horror with which the foreign slave-trade is contemplated. That trade has long since been denounced by this government, as piracy. It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. Everywhere, in this country, it is safe to speak of this foreign slave-trade, as a most inhuman traffic, opposed alike to the laws of God and of man. The duty to extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our DOCTORS OF DIVINITY. In order to put an end to it, some of these last have consented that their colored brethren (nominally free) should leave this country, and establish themselves on the western coast of Africa! It is, however, a notable fact that, while so much execration is poured out by Americans upon those engaged in the foreign slave-trade, the men engaged in the slave-trade between the states pass without condemnation, and their business is deemed honorable.

Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and America religion. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. You know what is a swine-drover? I will show you a man-drover. They inhabit all our Southern States. They perambulate the country, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. You will see one of these human flesh-jobbers, armed with pistol, whip and bowie-knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill. Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! There, see the old man, with locks thinned and gray. Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! The drove moves tardily. Heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their strength; suddenly you hear a quick snap, like the discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have torn its way to the center of your soul! The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. Follow the drove to New Orleans. Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Yet this is but a glance at the American slave-trade, as it exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the United States.

I was born amid such sights and scenes. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. I lived on Philpot Street, Fell’s Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves, the slave ships in the Basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of human flesh, waiting for favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake. There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. His agents were sent into every town and county in Maryland, announcing their arrival, through the papers, and on flaming “hand-bills,” headed CASH FOR NEGROES. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. Ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. The fate of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness.

The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by dozens, and drive them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. When a sufficient number have been collected here, a ship is chartered, for the purpose of conveying the forlorn crew to Mobile, or to New Orleans. From the slave prison to the ship, they are usually driven in the darkness of night; for since the antislavery agitation, a certain caution is observed.

In the deep still darkness of midnight, I have been often aroused by the dead heavy footsteps, and the piteous cries of the chained gangs that passed our door. The anguish of my boyish heart was intense; and I was often consoled, when speaking to my mistress in the morning, to hear her say that the custom was very wicked; that she hated to hear the rattle of the chains, and the heart-rending cries. I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror.

Fellow-citizens, this murderous traffic is, to-day, in active operation in this boasted republic. In the solitude of my spirit, I see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the South; I see the bleeding footsteps; I hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity, on the way to the slave-markets, where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and swine, knocked off to the highest bidder. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. My soul sickens at the sight.

Is this the land your Fathers loved,
The freedom which they toiled to win?
Is this the earth whereon they moved?
Are these the graves they slumber in?

But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. By that act, Mason and Dixon’s line has been obliterated; New York has become as Virginia; and the power to hold, hunt, and sell men, women, and children as slaves remains no longer a mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United States. The power is co-extensive with the Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. Where these are, man is not sacred. He is a bird for the sportsman’s gun. By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. Your broad republican domain is hunting ground for men. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. Your lawmakers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. Your President, your Secretary of State, our lords, nobles, and ecclesiastics, enforce, as a duty you owe to your free and glorious country, and to your God, that you do this accursed thing. Not fewer than forty Americans have, within the past two years, been hunted down and, without a moment’s warning, hurried away in chains, and consigned to slavery and excruciating torture. Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. The right of the hunter to his prey stands superior to the right of marriage, and to all rights in this republic, the rights of God included! For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, not religion. The Fugitive Slave Law makes mercy to them a crime; and bribes the judge who tries them. An American judge gets ten dollars for every victim he consigns to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. The oath of any two villains is sufficient, under this hell-black enactment, to send the most pious and exemplary black man into the remorseless jaws of slavery! His own testimony is nothing. He can bring no witnesses for himself. The minister of American justice is bound by the law to hear but one side; and that side, is the side of the oppressor. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. Let it be thundered around the world, that, in tyrant-killing, king-hating, people-loving, democratic, Christian America, the seats of justice are filled with judges, who hold their offices under an open and palpable bribe, and are bound, in deciding in the case of a man’s liberty, hear only his accusers!

In glaring violation of justice, in shameless disregard of the forms of administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the defenseless, and in diabolical intent, this Fugitive Slave Law stands alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation. I doubt if there be another nation on the globe, having the brass and the baseness to put such a law on the statute-book. If any man in this assembly thinks differently from me in this matter, and feels able to disprove my statements, I will gladly confront him at any suitable time and place he may select.

I take this law to be one of the grossest infringements of Christian Liberty, and, if the churches and ministers of our country were not stupidly blind, or most wickedly indifferent, they, too, would so regard it.

At the very moment that they are thanking God for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, and for the right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, they are utterly silent in respect to a law which robs religion of its chief significance, and makes it utterly worthless to a world lying in wickedness. Did this law concern the “mint, anise, and cumin” — abridge the right to sing psalms, to partake of the sacrament, or to engage in any of the ceremonies of religion, it would be smitten by the thunder of a thousand pulpits. A general shout would go up from the church, demanding repeal, repeal, instant repeal! — And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. Further, if this demand were not complied with, another Scotland would be added to the history of religious liberty, and the stern old Covenanters would be thrown into the shade. A John Knox would be seen at every church door, and heard from every pulpit, and Fillmore would have no more quarter than was shown by Knox, to the beautiful, but treacherous queen Mary of Scotland. The fact that the church of our country, (with fractional exceptions), does not esteem “the Fugitive Slave Law” as a declaration of war against religious liberty, implies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man. It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. A worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy, is a curse, not a blessing to mankind. The Bible addresses all such persons as “scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, who pay tithe of mint, anise, and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith.”

But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent Divines. who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity.

For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny, and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke, put together, have done! These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. It is not that “pure and undefiled religion” which is from above, and which is “first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.” But a religion which favors the rich against the poor; which exalts the proud above the humble; which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves; which says to the man in chains, stay there; and to the oppressor, oppress on; it is a religion which may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of mankind; it makes God a respecter of persons, denies his fatherhood of the race, and tramples in the dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man. All this we affirm to be true of the popular church, and the popular worship of our land and nation — a religion, a church, and a worship which, on the authority of inspired wisdom, we pronounce to be an abomination in the sight of God. In the language of Isaiah, the American church might be well addressed, “Bring no more vain ablations; incense is an abomination unto me: the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. They are a trouble to me; I am weary to bear them; and when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea! when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. YOUR HANDS ARE FULL OF BLOOD; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge for the fatherless; plead for the widow.”

The American church is guilty, when viewed in connection with what it is doing to uphold slavery; but it is superlatively guilty when viewed in connection with its ability to abolish slavery. The sin of which it is guilty is one of omission as well as of commission. Albert Barnes but uttered what the common sense of every man at all observant of the actual state of the case will receive as truth, when he declared that “There is no power out of the church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained in it.”

Let the religious press, the pulpit, the Sunday school, the conference meeting, the great ecclesiastical, missionary, Bible and tract associations of the land array their immense powers against slavery and slave-holding; and the whole system of crime and blood would be scattered to the winds; and that they do not do this involves them in the most awful responsibility of which the mind can conceive.

In prosecuting the anti-slavery enterprise, we have been asked to spare the church, to spare the ministry; but how, we ask, could such a thing be done? We are met on the threshold of our efforts for the redemption of the slave, by the church and ministry of the country, in battle arrayed against us; and we are compelled to fight or flee. From what quarter, I beg to know, has proceeded a fire so deadly upon our ranks, during the last two years, as from the Northern pulpit? As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appeared — men, honored for their so-called piety, and their real learning. The Lords of Buffalo, the Springs of New York, the Lathrops of Auburn, the Coxes and Spencers of Brooklyn, the Gannets and Sharps of Boston, the Deweys of Washington, and other great religious lights of the land have, in utter denial of the authority of Him by whom they professed to be called to the ministry, deliberately taught us, against the example or the Hebrews and against the remonstrance of the Apostles, they teach that we ought to obey man’s law before the law of God.

My spirit wearies of such blasphemy; and how such men can be supported, as the “standing types and representatives of Jesus Christ,” is a mystery which I leave others to penetrate. In speaking of the American church, however, let it be distinctly understood that I mean the great mass of the religious organizations of our land. There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. Noble men may be found, scattered all over these Northern States, of whom Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn, Samuel J. May of Syracuse, and my esteemed friend (Rev. R. R. Raymond) on the platform, are shining examples; and let me say further, that upon these men lies the duty to inspire our ranks with high religious faith and zeal, and to cheer us on in the great mission of the slave’s redemption from his chains.

One is struck with the difference between the attitude of the American church towards the anti-slavery movement, and that occupied by the churches in England towards a similar movement in that country. There, the church, true to its mission of ameliorating, elevating, and improving the condition of mankind, came forward promptly, bound up the wounds of the West Indian slave, and restored him to his liberty. There, the question of emancipation was a high religious question. It was demanded, in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God. The Sharps, the Clarksons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, and Burchells and the Knibbs, were alike famous for their piety, and for their philanthropy. The anti-slavery movement there was not an anti-church movement, for the reason that the church took its full share in prosecuting that movement: and the anti-slavery movement in this country will cease to be an anti-church movement, when the church of this country shall assume a favorable, instead of a hostile position towards that movement. Americans! your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as embodied in the two great political parties), is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen. You hurl your anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russia and Austria, and pride yourselves on your Democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the mere tools and body-guards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot and kill. You glory in your refinement and your universal education yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation — a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. You shed tears over fallen Hungary, and make the sad story of her wrongs the theme of your poets, statesmen and orators, till your gallant sons are ready to fly to arms to vindicate her cause against her oppressors; but, in regard to the ten thousand wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence, and would hail him as an enemy of the nation who dares to make those wrongs the subject of public discourse! You are all on fire at the mention of liberty for France or for Ireland; but are as cold as an iceberg at the thought of liberty for the enslaved of America. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. You can bare your bosom to the storm of British artillery to throw off a threepenny tax on tea; and yet wring the last hard-earned farthing from the grasp of the black laborers of your country. You profess to believe “that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth,” and hath commanded all men, everywhere to love one another; yet you notoriously hate, (and glory in your hatred), all men whose skins are not colored like your own. You declare, before the world, and are understood by the world to declare, that you “hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and that, among these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;” and yet, you hold securely, in a bondage which, according to your own Thomas Jefferson, “is worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose,” a seventh part of the inhabitants of your country.

Fellow-citizens! I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. Oh! be warned! be warned! a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation’s bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions crush and destroy it forever!

But it is answered in reply to all this, that precisely what I have now denounced is, in fact, guaranteed and sanctioned by the Constitution of the United States; that the right to hold and to hunt slaves is a part of that Constitution framed by the illustrious Fathers of this Republic.

Then, I dare to affirm, notwithstanding all I have said before, your fathers stooped, basely stooped

To palter with us in a double sense:
And keep the word of promise to the ear,
But break it to the heart.

And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters that ever practiced on mankind. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape. But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. There is not time now to argue the constitutional question at length — nor have I the ability to discuss it as it ought to be discussed. The subject has been handled with masterly power by Lysander Spooner, Esq., by William Goodell, by Samuel E. Sewall, Esq., and last, though not least, by Gerritt Smith, Esq. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour.

Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it. What would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a track of land, in which no mention of land was made? Now, there are certain rules of interpretation, for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. These rules are well established. They are plain, common-sense rules, such as you and I, and all of us, can understand and apply, without having passed years in the study of law. I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. I hold that every American citizen has a right to form an opinion of the constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to use all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing one. Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. Ex-Vice-President Dallas tells us that the Constitution is an object to which no American mind can be too attentive, and no American heart too devoted. He further says, the Constitution, in its words, is plain and intelligible, and is meant for the home-bred, unsophisticated understandings of our fellow-citizens. Senator Berrien tell us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. The testimony of Senator Breese, Lewis Cass, and many others that might be named, who are everywhere esteemed as sound lawyers, so regard the constitution. I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument.

Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.

I have detained my audience entirely too long already. At some future period I will gladly avail myself of an opportunity to give this subject a full and fair discussion.

Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic, are distinctly heard on the other. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, “Let there be Light,” has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. “Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God.” In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it:

God speed the year of jubilee
The wide world o’er
When from their galling chains set free,
Th’ oppress’d shall vilely bend the knee,

And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes no more.
That year will come, and freedom’s reign,
To man his plundered fights again
Restore.

God speed the day when human blood
Shall cease to flow!
In every clime be understood,
The claims of human brotherhood,
And each return for evil, good,
Not blow for blow;
That day will come all feuds to end.
And change into a faithful friend
Each foe.

God speed the hour, the glorious hour,
When none on earth
Shall exercise a lordly power,
Nor in a tyrant’s presence cower;
But all to manhood’s stature tower,
By equal birth!
That hour will come, to each, to all,
And from his prison-house, the thrall
Go forth.

Until that year, day, hour, arrive,
With head, and heart, and hand I’ll strive,
To break the rod, and rend the gyve,
The spoiler of his prey deprive —
So witness Heaven!
And never from my chosen post,
Whate’er the peril or the cost,
Be driven.

Source: Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings, ed. Philip S. Foner (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1999), 188-206.