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<br>Visionaires,<br><br>Keely finally figures out hi-tech, with thanks once again to her son:<br><br>keely<br><br><pre>Recalling rope's horrors<br>Leonard Pitts Jr.<br>Miami Herald<br>October 15, 2007<br> <br>This will be a history of rope.<br> <br>It strikes me that such a history is desperately needed just now. It seems <br>the travesty in Jena, La., has spawned a ghastly trend. Remember how white <br>students at Jena High placed nooses in a tree last year to communicate <br>antipathy toward their black classmates? Now it's happening all over.<br> <br>A noose is left for a black workman at a construction site in the Chicago <br>area. In Queens, a woman brandishes a noose to threaten her black <br>neighbors. A noose is left on the door of a black professor at Columbia <br>University. And that's just last week. Go back a little further and you <br>have similar incidents at the University of Maryland in College Park, at a <br>police department on Long Island, on a Coast Guard cutter, in a bus <br>maintenance garage in Pittsburgh.<br> <br> <br>Mark Potok, the director of the Intelligence Project of the Southern <br>Poverty Law Center told USA Today: "For a dozen incidents to come to the <br>public's attention is a lot. I don't generally see noose incidents in a <br>typical month. We might hear about a handful in a year."<br> <br>The superintendent of schools in Jena famously dismissed the original <br>incident as a "prank." It was an astonishing response, speaking volumes <br>about the blithe historical ignorance of people who have found it <br>convenient not to peer too closely at the atrocities of the past lest they <br>be accidentally … moved.<br> <br>But watching this trend unfold, it occurs to me that maybe what we need <br>here is the opposite of ignorance. Maybe what we need is information. <br>Maybe what we need is a history of rope.<br> <br>A history of rope would have to include, in 1904, Luther Holbert and his <br>wife, who had their fingers chopped off and handed out as souvenirs. <br>Holbert was beaten so badly one of his eyes came out. It hung by a thread. <br>A large corkscrew was used to bore into the couple's flesh. It tore out <br>big chunks of them each time it was withdrawn. A rope was used to tie them <br>to a tree.<br> <br>A history of rope would have to include, in 1917, Rufus Moncrief, who was <br>beaten senseless by a mob. They used a saw to cut off his arms and <br>otherwise mutilated him. The mob hanged Moncrief. Then, for good measure, <br>they hanged his dog. Ropes were used for both.<br> <br>A history of rope would have to include, in 1918, Mary Turner, burned <br>alive in Valdosta, Ga. A man used a hog-splitting knife to slash her <br>swollen stomach. The baby she had carried nearly to term tumbled out and <br>managed two cries before the man crushed its head beneath his heel. A rope <br>was used to tie Turner upside down in a tree.<br> <br>A history of rope would include thousands of Turners, Moncriefs and <br>Holberts. It would range widely across the geography of this nation and <br>the years of the last two centuries. A history of rope would travel from <br>Cairo, Ill., in 1909 to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in 1935 to Urbana, Ohio, in <br>1897 to Wrightsville, Ga., in 1903, to Leitchfield, Ky., in 1913 to <br>Newbern, Tenn., in 1902. And beyond.<br> <br>You might say the country has changed since then, and it has. The problem <br>is, it's changing again.<br> <br>It feels as if in recent years we the people have traveled backward from <br>even the pretense of believing our loftiest ideals. It has become <br>fashionable to decry excessive "political correctness," <br>deride "diversity," sneer at the "protected classes." Code words sanding <br>down hatred's rough edge. "State's rights" for the new millennium. And <br>now, out come the nooses. Just a prank, the man says.<br> <br>Mary Turner would argue otherwise. I find it useful to remember her, <br>useful to be reminded of things we would rather forget. To remember her is <br>to understand that there is no prank here.<br> <br>A history of rope would drown your conscience in blood.<br> <br> </pre><br><br><br /><hr />Climb to the top of the charts! Play Star Shuffle: the word scramble challenge with star power. <a href='http://club.live.com/star_shuffle.aspx?icid=starshuffle_wlmailtextlink_oct' target='_new'>Play Now!</a></body>
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