The Isolated Political Blurt Thread

IrezumiKiss said:

Click to expand...

Aglaopheme said:

On August 28, 1955, Emmett Till, a black teen-ager from Chicago, was abducted from his uncle's home in Money, Mississippi, by two white men after he had supposedly whistled at a white woman; he was found brutally slain three days later found with a bullet hole in his head, barbed wire wrapped around his neck and a cotton gin fan weighing him down -- Mobley insisted on an open-casket funeral in Chicago. The shocking image sparked a louder call for civil rights, and Mobley, who died 12 years ago, spent her life working and encouraging young people to challenge injustice after her son was killed.

Click to expand...

A young black man arrested by police in Portsmouth, Virginia, has been found dead in jail after spending almost four months behind bars without bail for stealing groceries worth $5.

Jamycheal Mitchell, who had mental health problems, was discovered lying on the floor of his cell by guards early last Wednesday, according to authorities. While his body is still awaiting an autopsy, senior prison officials said his death was not being treated as suspicious.

“As of right now it is deemed ‘natural causes’,” Natasha Perry, the master jail officer at the Hampton Roads regional jail in Portsmouth, said of his death in an interview. Perry said there were no obvious outward signs of injury to the 24-year-old’s body. Portsmouth police are looking into the death.

Mitchell’s family said they believed he starved to death after refusing meals and medication at the jail, where he was being held on misdemeanour charges of petty larceny and trespassing. A clerk at Portsmouth district court said Mitchell was accused of stealing a bottle of Mountain Dew, a Snickers bar and a Zebra Cake worth a total of $5 from a 7-Eleven.

“His body failed,” said Roxanne Adams, Mitchell’s aunt. “It is extraordinary. The person I saw deceased was not even the same person.” Adams, who is a registered nurse, said Mitchell had practically no muscle mass left by the time of his death.

A few hours after Mitchell was arrested on 22 April by Portsmouth police officer L Schaefer for the alleged theft, William Chapman was shot dead by officer Stephen Rankin outside a Walmart superstore about 2.5 miles away in the same city. State prosecutor Stephanie Morales said on Thursday she would pursue criminal charges over Chapman’s death.

Except for a brief item stating that an inmate had been found dead, the story of Mitchell’s death has not been covered by local media in Virginia, and is reported for the first time here.

Adams said in an interview that her nephew had bipolar disorder and schizophrenia for about five years. Nicknamed Weezy, he lived with his mother Sonia and had been unable to hold down work. “He just chain-smoked and made people laugh,” said Adams. “He never did anything serious, never harmed anybody.”

Officials said that after his arrest, Mitchell was taken to Portsmouth city jail, where he stayed for almost three weeks before being transferred across the city to the regional jail on 11 May.

Ten days after that, the court clerk said, Judge Morton Whitlow ruled Mitchell was not competent to stand trial and ordered that he be transferred to Eastern State hospital, a state-run mental health facility in Williamsburg, for treatment.

The clerk said that typically in such cases “we do an order to restore the defendant to competence, send it to the hospital, and when the hospital has a bed, we do a transportation order, and he’s taken to the hospital.” Whitlow reiterated the order on 31 July and was due to review the case again on 4 September, according to the clerk.

But the hospital said it had no vacancy and the 24-year-old was therefore detained in jail until his death on 19 August, according to Adams, Mitchell’s aunt, who said she had tried to assist the hospitalisation process herself but was left frustrated.

“He was just deteriorating so fast,” she said. “I kept calling the jail, but they said they couldn’t transfer him because there were no available beds. So I called Eastern State, too, and people there said they didn’t know anything about the request or not having bed availability.”

When asked which state agency was ultimately responsible for ensuring Mitchell was transferred to the hospital, the court clerk said: “It’s hard to tell who’s responsible for it.”

Click to expand...

gotsnowgotslush said:

Aglaopheme, the level of inhumanity...

I read, but it is hard to understand that there was no advocate within the system, that would have stopped it from going so far.

Then, again, the prison system in America ignores the medical conditions of children, teens, women, and men. The prisoners die in pain.

The system in place to keep America's food, safe, is inadequate.
It is no surprise that the system in place, to keep prisoners from suffering is inadequate.

Have we marched backward, to early, brutal times ?
Or, have we been given a false impression that reforms made a difference ?

Click to expand...

first day of integrated classes happened without a major incident, but the next day was filled with threats, violence, and large, agitated crowds, fired up by the harangues of John Kasper. The tension level escalated overnight and on Wednesday, August 29, 1956, Federal Judge Taylor issued a temporary restraining order, forbidding Kasper and his followers from interfering with school integration. Yet, Kasper that very day addressed a crowd of 1,000 to 1,500, bragging that the restraining order was meaningless and that the Brown decision was not the law of land. Judge Taylor ordered federal marshals to arrest Kasper for criminal contempt of court. On August 30, he gave Kasper a one-year sentence. His aggressive action was a first in the implementation of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. A federal judge had ordered agents of the federal executive to intercede in a local police matter to arrest and detain suspects accused of violating a federal order designed to allow desegregation to proceed in an orderly manner.
Taking Kasper out of the picture, however, did not calm the situation. Asa Carter, another White Citizens Council leader from Birmingham, Alabama, joined the protest effort in Clinton. Crowds at the courthouse continued to grow, reaching 1,500 according to some estimates. Then, on a hot, steamy Labor Day Weekend, September 1-2, 1956, full-scale rioting broke out. Cars were overturned, windows smashed, and Negro travelers, some of them servicemen who happened to be coming through, were frightened. Youngsters and juvenile-minded adults had taken over the town, threatening to dynamite the mayor’s house, the newspaper plant, and even the courthouse. The black residential community was also threatened by segregationists driving through, but this was reported only later when dynamite was thrown in their neighborhood. The small Clinton police force was overwhelmed, and city officials asked Governor Frank G. Clement for help. Other city residents formed a “Home Guard” to protect property and lives from the white mob until state assistance could arrive. With the arrival of approximately 600 guardsmen, and their occupation of the town, the worst of the violence ended. The use of the National Guard by Governor Clement was another first in the Civil Rights movement. The National Guard stayed in Clinton for the rest of September to keep order.
For Governor Clement, the Clinton request had been a moment of truth: Would the state’s chief executive support the law of land and a request from city officials or would he refuse to activate the National Guard (the situation that occurred in Little Rock, Arkansas, the following year)? Governor Clement activated state highway patrolmen and National Guard forces to maintain the peace and keep the roads open in Clinton. Segregationists across Tennessee decried Clement’s decision, but as the news from Clinton received national and international attention, other Tennesseans praised the governor’s decision to intervene.
That fall, segregationists continued to engage in intimidation tactics. Crosses were burned on the lawns of some high-school faculty members as well as at the homes of civic leaders who supported integration. Other incidents included rock throwing and threatening phone calls. As the intimidation escalated, shots were fired at the home of two black students attending Clinton High School, and dynamite blasts punctuated the peace of the county. Kasper returned to Clinton in November and organized a Junior White Citizens Council composed mostly of high-school students.
Tensions continued in spite of the state’s intervention, especially once a slate of pro-segregationists challenged city incumbents in municipal elections. The segregation of the schools was the main, and really only, issue. Harassment and threats escalated against the African American children, their property, and their institutions to the point that the black parents met at Green McAdoo School and decided they could no longer send their children to the white school. Then, in an amazing turn of events, a white Baptist minister, Reverend Paul Turner, pastor of the First Baptist Church, and others escorted the black students to Clinton High School on December 4, 1956, the day of municipal elections. That morning, the Reverend Paul Turner of the white First Baptist Church, along with Sidney Davis and Leo Burnett, met the high-school students at Green McAdoo School and escorted them down Foley Hill to the white high school, creating in effect a white human shield to protect and reassure the black students. Once the three white leaders left the students at school, they went their separate ways and a white mob severely beat Reverend Turner on his way to First Baptist Church. In reaction to the attack on Turner, and other threatened violence, Principal David J. Brittain closed the high school and did not reopen it until December 10, during which time Federal Judge Robert Taylor again reaffirmed his court injunction forbidding anyone from interfering with the integration process.
In December 1956 and January 1957, leading national journalists were in Clinton recording the events and interviewing local residents. CBS TV’s Edward R. Murrow produced one of his famous “See It Now” programs on Clinton, titled “Clinton and the Law.” The process of desegregation in Clinton became national and international news throughout the spring of 1957. Attention often focused on Bobby Cain, a senior, who would be the first African American graduate of a white public high school in the south since Jim Crow. On May 17, 1957, exactly three years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Bobby Cain graduated from Clinton High School and became the first African American graduate of a state supported public integrated high school not only in Tennessee, but also in the South. The following spring, in 1958, Gail Ann Epps became the first African American female to graduate from a public integrated high school in Tennessee. Sadly, on Sunday morning, October 5, 1958, Clinton High School was bombed and much of the school was destroyed. But with the assistance of evangelist Billy Graham, columnist Drew Pearson, and a host of local citizens, the school was rebuilt.
The desegregation of Clinton High School in 1956-58 was not replicated at the city’s primary grammar school for African Americans. Not until 1965 would the Green McAdoo School end its days as a segregated blacks-only institution. Finally, in that year, the ten-year struggle to desegregate public education in Clinton and Anderson County was over.

Click to expand...