Byron de la Beckwith is dead.

Subject: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: GUEST,khandu
Date: 22 Jan 01 - 09:05 PM

Do you know him?

In 1963, civil rights activist Medgar Evers was shot down in his carport in Jackson, MS.

Beckwith was arrested, tried twice with an all white jury; a hung jury both times.

In 1993, he was tried and convicted.

The movie "Ghost of Mississippi" was based on this event.

I met him in the later 60's. He was a boisterous man, not particulary palatable. His ideology was sick, yet he firmly believed in his views, never backed off them.

The day he was found guilty, a Jackson news reporter said,"Now the healing can begin."

Bullshit! There is still a raw open wound in society now, and even Beckwith's death will not heal it.

It takes something bigger than us to fix this mess.

khandu

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: catspaw49
Date: 22 Jan 01 - 09:52 PM

Ya' know khandu ................. yeah, my friend, you do..............

I used to drive past his house everyday on Signal Mountain (Chattanooga) and every day I wondered how such a 'thing' lived. So today, he doesn't..........and here's to you "Dee-Lay"....Goodbye and good riddance you miserable piece of shit.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Jan 01 - 10:14 PM

Yes, I do know who you mean, and I feel the way you do...

What is ended is the hope that he would ever GET it.

Sigh.... I guess there IS something bigger that handles this stuff. I know it's invisible cuz I sure don't see it working most of the time.

I have trouble thinking about it sometimes. Recently I felt and said, about someone who did far less harm, maybe-- if there IS such a thing as Less Harm-- "They better not turn up in heaven or I'll have to kick their ass."

TOTAL illogic, that one. That's how this sort of awfulness makes me feel, though, till I get it out of my system.

~Susan (AKA Praise)

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: Troll
Date: 22 Jan 01 - 10:16 PM

Forty years earlier he would have been a hero.
Times change.
With him dies the truth of exactly who did what.
The bogiemen and newsmakers of an earlier time turn out to be-at their deaths- not glorious warriors in the anti-segregation fight, but pathetic old men who outlived their cause.

troll

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Jan 01 - 10:27 PM

Not to me he wouldn't, and not to anyone I now call friend.

~S~

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: Ebbie
Date: 22 Jan 01 - 11:01 PM

Pathetic, eh? And a good grandfather too, no doubt? And patriotic? A good friend and loyal, right? Would never have hurt anyone worthwhile? Just another product of his tmes?

Troll, that's unconscionable.

Ebbie

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: Sailor Dan
Date: 22 Jan 01 - 11:03 PM

Well the SOB is dead. I hope they buried the SOB in a pine box, along a dirt road where every black person and can stop and piss on his grave. His kind will never be missed.

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 03:07 AM

I've never heard of the man but reading this thread does lead me to wonder:

If we had lived in earlier times, can those of us who condem (wrong) attitudes of the past really be sure that we would have thought the same then? If we were brought up in a community with slavery, would we all have been on the side of freedom? If we were brought up in Germany and listened to Hitler, would we all have been against ethnic cleansing?...

I'd like to think so but I am not so convinced. I think that perhaps rather than being quick to condemn and think of the vilians, we should think of those who have fought for freedom and to enlighten others and the price that some of these people have had to pay for this effort.

Jon

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: Pseudolus
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 08:27 AM

I saw part of a movie recently on HBO about Satchel Page and Jackie Robinson playing in the "Negro Leagues" as it was called and there was a scene where the two of them and a lady friend (maybe wife?) of Page's stopped by the roadside and talked to a white girl possibly for directions. This is the scene from which I started watching the movie so some of it is unclear. It was an incredibly cordial scene where the black woman was telling the white girl what she could do with her hair and makeup, they were laughing and joking and then the black woman asks, "Say, it's been a long ride, could I use your bathroom?" the white girl replied, "Oh, my daddy doesn't allow niggers in the house". It was stated so matter-of-factly and then she was a little taken aback when the three left abruptly. It seemed to be "just the way it was...." So I agree with Jon that it's not easy to say what we would feel or how we would act if we were brought up to hate. I'm sure this man would have been considered a hero by a lot of people, people who were taught hate from the beginning....teachings that still go on today in some circles. I think that's the saddest part of all.

He won't be missed.......

Frank

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: GUEST,khandu
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 08:30 AM

Jon,

Good points. I was brought up in a segregated society. I was in my early teens during the big upheaval in MS. I believed that intergration would destroy the world that I knew.

I told "nigger" jokes. I scoffed at the demonstrators. I felt that the northern whites who traveled to MS to help the blacks were evil.

I was a frightened kid.

When JFK died, my classroom cheered. I cried. When MLK and Robert Kennedy were killed, friends cheered, I cried.

It took a while to reconcile my upbringing with what I felt inside.

What I felt inside prevailed.

I am sad for Beckwith. I am sad that lives are wasted on such despicable ideologies. I am sad that he never realized how damnably wrong he was.

I am sad for Medgar Evers, having been shot down for his work.

I am sad that the root problem of the sixties is still here, showing itself in different forms, but here nonetheless.

However, I am glad that the sun has risen this morning and maybe, just maybe, today will be a new beginning.

khandu

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: catspaw49
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 08:46 AM

I certainly understand your point Jon and Frank. Its like we now are all hot to condemn Columbus for his attitudes and actions, but he was a man of his times as well. So I cut Columbus some slack. And do the attitudes still exist? Certainly they do.....they exist in my friend khandu's Mississippi and in my Ohio and to some degree, most other places in this country......and others too I know. Yet I won't cut Beckwith any slack. He lived in my time.......and he murdered a man, in front of his own home, from across the street, shot in the back. Not only did he take pride in his attitudes, he took pride in his act, although his victim never saw his face. It was an assassination pure and simple. Its been a long time since anyone outside of a small group of "backers" that an assassin was considered anything but a coward.....and Deelay was all of that.

He'd make the news every so often in Chattanooga and I would wonder how. He made great copy. But he was a self admitted murderer in the most cowardly fashion and an outspoken bigot and bully of the first order. He held nothing for the murder he committed......and I will hold nothing for him. Perhaps history will cut him some slack. Maybe. I won't. He lived in my time.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 09:08 AM

spaw, one of the greatet Americans (and human beings) to live was Martin Luther King. Those against civil rights killed him but I learned recently that he is now honoured in America by a holiday. Take some courage and recognise the fact that we (even out of the US) all know of him and now - in my case at least - know of another civil rights campaigner called Medgar Evars...

Their (the civil rights people) victory (although yet complete) was more than any bullet to a man can cause. Lets all hope that one day it is complete.

Jon

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: InOBU
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 10:15 AM

I hope they burry him shallow, so he has a longer walk down to hell. Larry

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: Bill D
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 10:39 AM

I try to think of myself as a civilized man....but it scares me when I think what I'd LIKE to have seen happen to that piece of ****...Since he committed his crime and lived free for many years, with everyone KNOWING he did it, justice was not served by convicting him when he was old and ailing...

Now I scare myself by contemplating what I'd like to see happen to those who protected him and applauded him and refused to convict him years ago.....

and he was only one of the more prominent of many like him...HE killed someone well-known...

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: wysiwyg
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 10:57 AM

Jon, I used to wonder about that "what would I do" thing too. Now I know that to answer this, all I have to do is look at what I care about now and at what I take bold action to support.

Do I grieve what others accept? Do I take action in directions that are not popular? Do I support others who are willing to get messy doing the hard work?

Do you?

Why would we be any different at another point in time?

But more important, what is there in present time that you may not care enough about, to suit your own moral code? And what's in the way of doing more in that area, more bravely?

I think it matters which questions we ask ourselves. We can come up with an answer for anything we decide to think about. SOME sort of answer. So... let's ask ourselves and each other the ones that prompt ACTION in ourselves. It may even encourage others to action as well, however poor our example.

~S~

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: Troll
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 12:06 PM

Do not misunderstand my post. I did not then, nor do I now, agree with what de le Beckwith did. But to many at the time he was a hero and, had the feelings of the time prevailed, he would still be a hero.
Those times are gone and men like de la Beckwith are now seen as monsters who shot people in the back to frighten other people into submission. It was a terrorist tactic and it didn't work.
But it could have.
I cannot hate Byron de la Beckwith for what he did any more than I can hate a dog for biting. He was a product fo his times and mine. I can and do hate the philosophy that let him to commit murder in the name of segregation because I considerd it wrong then and I still do.
He is dead and his cause discredited. He killed a man and made him a martyr.
The one great action of his life was a failure.
How can I say anything worse about him?

troll

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 12:19 PM

The news of beckwith's death (I've known his name for TOO many years) caused barely a ripple of emotion in me. The thousands of his neighbours, friends, and townfolk who co-existed day to day, quite happily around him, cause me much emotion.

It's the same thing I feel about a cop who loses it and tortures some prisoner. That's an abberation...but his co-workers and superiors who protect and support him....that's what makes me sad.

Rick

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: Bill D
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 01:58 PM

You see it everyday in the papers.."Mean pit bull bites child..owner claims "he's a nice dog, and plays with my kids"...but we COULD have made it illegal to have a known dangerous dog near the general public...I'm sure de la Beckwith loved his grandchildren...it is just sad that we have no means to cull these warped people BEFORE they cause pain to society.

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: BanjoRay
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 03:50 PM

According to Bob Dylan, he was "only a pawn in the game" - what do you think?

Cheers
Ray

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: Bill D
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 04:20 PM

perhaps so, but not 'only' a pawn.... a willing pawn

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: Linda Kelly
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 05:19 PM

already the world seems a slightly better place

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: Jeri
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 05:22 PM

As to knowing how I would feel about something had I been born in a different time, some things I don't know. I don't know if I would have been sucked into lies and mob mentality like many otherwise good German people, or otherwise good racists. I know this sounds pretty weird - I am NOT saying that their beliefs or actions were good, but human beings can be incredibly stupid whenever they unthinkingly jump on ANY bandwagon. The results may be cruel, but they as individuals aren't - only stupid.

Convincing a person that a thing is wrong is not as effective as convincing them they must figure it out for themselves. Believing you're incapable of becoming one of the bad guys can allow it to happen, if it lets you stop questioning your beliefs and actions.

I can't ever see myself thinking cold blooded murder is justified, not that I'd be the same person I am today if I had been grown up in different circumstances.

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: GUEST,khandu
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 06:53 PM

Going against the grain here, but what the hell. I do not believe Beckwith pulled the trigger. I believe he knew it was going to happen. I believe he let them use his gun so that he would be the suspect, arrested and tried, believing he would get off because of (1) he would have an all white jury and (2)he had an alibi; two cops said the had seen him in Greenwood, 100 miles north of Jackson, about the time of the murder. No, I do not think he pulled the trigger, but nonetheless, he murdered Medgar Evers.

A postscript:

While he was in the Jackson jail in 1993, the central Post Office, the largest in Mississippi, was renamed The Medgar Evers Memorial Post Office. Also, he could look out his jail window and watch "The Ghost of Mississippi" being made. (IMHO, lousy movie, historically incorrect)

Though it has no conection to this thread, I still will tell this story; My friend, Tunk, an old black man in Carroll Co. MS was asked by a drunken white man, "Tunk, you're a pretty good nigger, ain't you?" Tunk smiled at me and said, "I guess I ain't." The drunk man said "what you mean?" Tunk said softly, "Mr. H..., you always said the only good nigger is a dead nigger, and I ain't quite dead yet."

I loved old Tunk.

khandu

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: wysiwyg
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 06:55 PM

Jeri,

You said, "Convincing a person that a thing is wrong is not as effective as convincing them they must figure it out for themselves."

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES......... and it isn't usually easy to do, eh? Sometimes they have been persuaded that they can do no such thing.

Don't you adore people who live that way though? People who are lives in motion, works in progress, explorers trying to figure things out for themselves? Don't they light up a room?

People whose ON SWITCH has been flipped.

I believe anyone's "on" switch can be flipped, and that many people never, somehow, get to meet the right switch-flipper. While persuading everyone--in their desperate attempt to attract a switch flipper--that they HAVE NO SUCH SWITCH.

But they do!!

Then I have to think, immediately, of the kids Spaw fights for-- attachment disorder??????? And to grieve the ones who are never flipped ON. Some of them become our Beckwiths. Some become Specks or Dahmers. Some just never enter into life.

And some are here at Mudcat doing the best they can.

I look for the switches.

~S~

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: Jeri
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 07:31 PM

It's funny, Susan - I heard "question authority" for years and it never quite connected. Should be "question everything." Question whether something's true, whether it's right or just, whether black and white are really shades of grey. One of my pet peeves is people who distrust one thing, but embrace its opposite (or competitor) without question.

If Beckwith did pull the trigger, did he do as much damage to society as the people who let him get away with it? Beckwith may have killed a man, but as khandu (sort of) said, his death won't do anything to heal the wound inflicted by the actions of two juries, the courts, and the people who supported him.

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: Troll
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 07:47 PM

BillD, I want you to stop and think, really THINK about what you said here.
"...it is just sad that we have no means to cull these warped people BEFORE they cause pain to society."
Who makes the decision? Spiro Agnew, faced by demonstrators against the war in Viet Nam?
The organizers of the WTO meeting in Seattle facing demonstrators that caused so much bad publicity?
The Nazis, blaming everything bad in post-WWI in Germany on the Jews?
Who makes that determination?
Who sits in judgement to decide who has the right to his/her opinion.

troll

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: Bill D
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 08:21 PM

.....I thought VERY carefully...and, of course, I know that we DONT have the means to judge and predict accurately....but it still makes me sorry that we can't.

Who would judge? Who makes the decision? No one...beacuse no one can pluck someone out of society because of what they 'might' do....but every day judges DO make the decision, based on 'laws' to return proven sociopaths to society and allow them to murder, rape and terrorize again. Prisons are full..if it continues, it could become a major drain on society's resources to continue that 'solution'...I flatly PREDICT that someday the moral attitude about the value of human life will change ...as it has throughout history...This does not make me feel better, and I dread being IN a society where the question must be seriously addressed....but there simply are mathematical limits to what can done in any like situation, and, like environmental problems, if it is not addressed, it will eventually be worked out by default...and NO ONE will like the answer. Doomsayer? *shrug*..I prefer realist.

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: Bill D
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 08:23 PM

(and I really AM a fairly pleasant fellow to talk with most of the time..*smile*)

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: wysiwyg
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 08:41 PM

Jeri...

Yeh. I don;t care if people violate MY set of standards in their own lives, but I have not yet acheived patience when they violate their own and are not coinsistent with what I KNOW they really believe. I have to work on that one, but in the meantime, when I spot a violation of what I call "pattern intergrity," I seem to be able to puncture some amount of M=BS at least. And hopefully then, the thinking begins.

Hey Bill? How far back would we go, in culling-- who do you think first ruined another humnan being for the rest of us? Long chain reaction there, I think. I'd rather be part of the chain reaction of making things better. That one's going on, too.

Culling, BTW-- ever do that, on a farm? It sucks.

~S~

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: Ebbie
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 08:41 PM

Bill D and Troll, adult psychopaths and sociopaths (whatever they are called nowadays) are not likely to be rehabilitated, imo. But it is definitely cost-effective to reach our children very early on.

I have a teacher friend who has an absolutely wonderful effect on children, including problem children. I believe that it derives from her ability to feel and show respect for them at the same time as they learn that they can choose what kind of life they will create for themselves, that they are not helpless/hopeless. (Incidentally a lot of her teaching is transmitted through her music.)

If all of our teachers were like her, generations of children would grow up to become whole adults with all that implies. If there is such a thing as a child that is 'born bad', that phenomenon would be so rare that the effect on society would be very small.

But money- lots of it- for early programs is essential. Programs, Not Prisons!

Maybe someday we won't have people reaching adulthood so full of hate and fear that they are capable of these crimes.

Ebbie

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: Bill D
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 09:00 PM

"I'd rather be part of the chain reaction of making things better."...indeed!...I surely hope I do that! But it doesn't change my emotional feeling about the other.

and Ebbie, I too know people who are astonishingly good at relating and encouraging others..I applaud and cherish them. I do, however, SINCERELY believe that many aberrations in human beings are simply genetic and hard-coded ...and that MUCH work should be done in science to see to what extent this is true and what might be accomplished to 'weed out' problem people before they ARE people, so that the hard choices become fewer over the years.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a society where 'murder mysteries' were an anachronism, because few could understand why anyone WOULD commit murder?

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: Sorcha
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 10:05 PM

Or because no one did...........

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: GUEST,khandu
Date: 24 Jan 01 - 08:49 AM

Ah, but there lurks another Beckwith in the bushes across the street awaiting another Medgar Evers' arrival at home.

"Funny how the circle goes around, first you're up, then you're down again."(The Byrds)

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: LR Mole
Date: 24 Jan 01 - 09:01 AM

Ochs on Medgar Evers: "The country gained a killer and the country lost a man. Too many martyrs..." Well, and now the killer is gone too. No loss.

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 24 Jan 01 - 12:12 PM

BillD - maybe you are right about a nightmare future for America. But I'd sooner think that before it happens Americans will wake up and look around them, and realise that it just doesn't have to be that way. And in most countries it really isn't.

Picking-out villains and magnifying them as if they were important is a waste of time. People like Beckwith are thrown up and do the kind of things that others of their kind talk about in bars.

Focussing too much on them as individuals takes our attention from the people who colluded with him, and the kind of people who still collude with murder. The killers of Amadou Diallo are walking free. In Israel a policeman who beat an 11-year-old Arab boy to death with his rifle has just been given six-months community service. But that's not the problem - the problem is the people who set them free, the courts that hand down a sentence like that. Snd the community within whuich for so long Beckwith was not seen as a pariah.

Subject: RE: Byron de la Beckwith is dead.
From: ray bucknell
Date: 24 Jan 01 - 05:14 PM

When I read about the man's death in the paper yesterday, these Phil Ochs lyrics started going through my mind: "I cried when they shot Medgar Evers, tears ran down my spine. And I cried when they shot Mr. Kennedy as though I'd lost a father of mine. But Malcolm X got what was coming; he got what he asked for this time. So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal." Not entirely germane to the tenor of this thread, but just about everything reminds me of one lyric or another and I have a lot of respect for Ochs' work.