Steeped in the Blood of Racism: Black Power, Law and Order, and the 1970 Shootings at Jackson State College - by Nancy Bristow

Just after midnight on May 15, 1970 two young black men, James Green and Phillip Gibbs, were killed by police fire on the Jackson State College campus in Mississippi. Several other students were wounded and a women's dorm at the historically black college was left riddled with bullet holes. 

While often likened to the killings at Kent State University (see my post on When Truth Mattered by Robert Giles) on May 4 of the same year, the shootings at Jackson State were not the result of a Vietnam War protest, 

but rather another chapter in the long history of state violence against African Americans, a story inseparable from their identities as students attending a black college in the capital city of the nation's most racially repressive state.

 Roy Wilkins the national director of the NAACP stated in 1963 that 

There is no state with a record which approaches that of Mississippi in inhumanity, murder, brutality, and racial hatred. [It was] absolutely at the bottom of the list.

Despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act six years before the shootings little had changed in Mississippi. And at Jackson State where "the administration, controlled by the state's all-white Board of Trustees of Institutions of Higher Learning, worked hard to keep the campus quiescent" even as a growing number of students and faculty were starting to protest. 

While there was local and national coverage of the event at the time, including reports in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and even an article in Playboy magazine the tragedy has largely been forgotten since, even as the shootings at Kent State University which happened less than two weeks earlier are remembered each year on its anniversary. There are other parallels with the Kent State shooting, including false reports of rock throwing and sniper fire before police opened fire.

Bristow's book places the shootings within the historical context of a state founded on enslavement, racism, segregation, and white supremacy.

Of particular interest to this blogger was that in 1961 students from another historically black institution, Tougaloo College "attempted to desegregate the downtown's white library with a 'study-in'" as part of a protest of the city's Civil War Centennial celebration.

The students began by visiting the local black library to request volumes they knew the branch did not hold before entering the white library to request those same books. The police were quick to arrive, arresting nine students...They spent the night in the city jail before being released on bail...On the evening following the "study-in" youth from around the city protested the arrest of the group they dubbed the "Tougaloo Nine". At Jackson State College perhaps as many as 800 students gathered outside the campus library...President Reddix attempted to disperse the students and was undone when they resisted. Eventually he was seen just "snatching students at random and shoving them toward a [campus] policeman or deal with orders to expel them".

Documents about the shootings can be found at the College archives, and on display at the library, but "they do not captivate attention as they once did". Even annual memorial events draw low attendance. Although largely forgotten by society at large, the victims still remember. They remember the loss of friends and family, and they live with their own wounds both physical and psychological. There was no justice for the victims of the Jackson State shootings. There were no indictments against any member of law enforcement present that night, and a civil case brought by five of the victims and their families found for the defendants. Although the decision was appealed and a three judge panel found that "the barrage of gunfire far exceeded the response that was appropriate" it was further determined that "despite their guilt, the state and local governments, their officials, and their law enforcement personnel were insulated by 'sovereign immunity', the doctrine protecting the state and its representatives from suits or any penalties that could result". This same doctrine is still in place today and what still allows law enforcement to murder people of color with impunity.

Beyond the Bright Sea - by Lauren Wolk

In the early twentieth century twelve-year-old Crow lives on an isolated island off of Cape Cod with Osh, who found her as a newborn in a boat. Their neighbor Miss Maggie is one of her few other companions. Curious about where she came from Crow asks questions and wonders why others decline to shake her hand, why she is refused admittance to the local school on Cuttyhunk, and why the librarian told Miss Maggie that if books were meant for Crow's hands then she could keep them rather than returning. Crow ultimately unravels the mystery of her origins and discovers her legacy when she learns about the patients in a hospital that was once located on a nearby island. 

The public library does have some information in its archives that Miss Maggie uses to help Crow do some research. They also find an address for a doctor who used to work in the hospital. Crow posts a letter for the first time when she writes to the doctor to see if she can find out more about where she came from.

While this is not a book I would normally pick up, it is the current selection for our One Book One Community program and I am looking forward to hearing the author speak next month.

Labor Day (the movie)

On Labor Day weekend 1987 a mysterious wounded man, Frank (Josh Brolin) coerces Adele (Kate Winslet) and her son Henry (Gattlin Griffith) into bringing him into their home. When Adele and Henry learn that Frank is an escaped convict they are understandably quite fearful at first, but as Stockholm syndrome kicks in the predictable love story ensues. Once Adele and Frank's lust takes over they manage to get Henry out of the house by sending him to the library to look up information on Prince Edward Island. Adele has heard it's lovely there and so they make a plan to escape New Hampshire together to build a life in PEI. (This is of course in the days when one didn't need a passport to go to Canada.) 

I have been unsuccessful in verifying that the gorgeous interior library scenes were filmed in Fairhaven, Massachusetts' gorgeous Millicent Library, but my husband and I are both convinced that they were. The imdb page for this film lists seventeen filming locations for this movie, sixteen of which are in Massachusetts.

We did not watch this movie on Labor Day, but we did watch it from our Fairhaven home on Pi Day (3.14). This film has a wonderfully sensuous peach-pie-making scene. I found out about the movie by googling "movies about pie". The library scene was a bonus.

When Truth Mattered - by Robert Giles

Published last year for the 50th anniversary of the Kent State Shootings author Robert Giles describes how the Akron Beacon Journal (the local paper that covered the protest and the shootings as they happened) worked to ensure that the reporting was accurate and true. 

On May 4, 1970 four students at Kent State University were murdered and nine others wounded when National Guardsmen fired on a peaceful demonstration against the Vietnam war. Of course in 1970 there was no internet, and no one had a cell phone, so newspaper reporters and photojournalists who were on the scene were entrusted to report the events. Live reports came in via landline telephones to the newspaper offices, that were then turned into stories by news writers. What is clear from this work is that misinformation, and indeed the deliberate spreading of disinformation are not new phenomena. Stories that two Guardsmen were among the dead who were "taken to the hospital, but someone switched their uniforms for hippie clothing" resonated with contemporary rumors that antifa dressed as Trump supporters in MAGA hats were really responsible for breeching the Capitol last month. Of course this book was published prior to the events of January 6, and as I was reading I couldn't help but wonder how the events would get reported if they happened today. I was not alone in questioning this. The final chapter of the book "The Meaning" explores this.

Initially the crush of digital information would be unmanageable for editors and news directors to sort out...Before long, though, differences would emerge. Common facts would no longer be universally accepted. The cultural wars of the time would twist reason and truth in the emerging search for blame. Each witness would possess personal evidence they would carry with them for a lifetime.

The digital images would shape memories; some would become weapons for taking sides, framing opinions, and inserting bias.

Algorithms would create a moment in which hundreds, maybe thousands, would be clicking, trying to tell the story...

The Beacon Journal had resources to quell some of the early rumors. Early reports indicated that a sniper among the protesters had shot at the Guardsmen prior to their opening fire. Evidence in the form of a bullet hole in a metal sculpture on the campus seemed to corroborate this.

To the untrained eye, the shape of the bullet hole - about the size of a penny - affirmed the sniper theory. Metal from the hole splayed in the direction of the Guardsmen as they fired their rifles. The smaller smoother edge was on the other side of the sculpture, away from the soldiers. This seemed to clinch the sniper argument...

The newspaper, however, had the resources to perform its own forensic testing and demonstrate that a metal plate when shot by an M-1 rifle and .30 caliber ammunition "identical to that used by the National Guard" caused the metal to splay out "from where the bullet had entered the the steel plate, rather than from the exit" thereby providing evidence that the bullet came from the direction the Guardsmen were firing. 

I can't imagine that a local newspaper today would have the resources to conduct this kind of investigative journalism. Where the Beacon Journal had a staff of hundreds, contemporary newspapers may employ dozens. Furthermore, I wonder whether providing this kind of evidence would even matter. When Obama produced his long-form birth certificate (exactly the evidence that "birthers" claimed would stop the madness) those same deniers refused to believe what they saw.

Of course no discussion of Kent State would be complete without mentioning of the Cosby, Stills, Nash, and Young song "Ohio". For this blogger the most relevant information I learned about the song from Giles' book is that it was initially censored after it was recorded. When it was released in June 1970 some AM radio stations refused to play it. It did, however, find a place on the air on some underground FM stations and ultimately became the well known protest song it is today.

The Beacon Journal received a Pulitzer Prize in 1971 for its reporting of the events at Kent State. Giles describes his visit (in 2018) to Colombia University's Rare Book and Manuscript library, where the Pulitzer Prize Collection is housed, in order to do research for his book. The reverential tone of this passage makes clear the importance of librarians and archives in keeping our history and telling our stories.

Getting access to the Pulitzer Prize newspaper files was an elaborate process. We were accompanied to our destination in the University's Butler Library. Our first task was to establish our identity. The librarian explained the limits on material that could be taken into the "reading room". This was even quieter than most library spaces...Glass doors gave a full view into the reading area

The librarian gave each of us a pair of white gloves to wear in our search of the material. She explained that we each had to use a No.2 lead pencil to write notes from our research...

On a final note I have this story of my own to tell. Five years ago I was in Nicaragua and spoke to a muralist who was touching up an outdoor painting. The artwork depicted a shooting on a college campus with four students dead. I asked him about it and he told me it was an incident from the 1950s in which the government brought in the military to a student protest. I told him about Kent State Shooting and pointed out the striking comparisons between it and the event he described. He told me he hadn't heard about the Kent State shootings, but he really wasn't surprised to learn about them because since he'd created the mural he'd spoken to people from all over the world who had described similar events in their own countries.

In an age of fake news, and misinformation this work makes clear the importance of a free press. 

Rufus M - by Eleanor Estes

Back in September I attended a webinar with the librarian's librarian Nancy Pearl. She was doing a virtual book tour for her most recent work The Writer's Library (which I have not yet read). She said something that I wish more people would take to heart: "Any book your haven't read is a new book". I have never understood the obsession some people have with buying some hot new book, as if there aren't literally millions of other things they could be reading while they wait for their turn on the waiting list at the library, or until the book is available in paperback. During the Q&A someone asked about library-centric books and it was here that I learned about Rufus M. 

Pearl specifically said that the first chapter was especially worthwhile for demonstrating the magic of getting a library card. Although the book was published in 1943 this was indeed a "new book" to me. And I imagine even almost 80 years after its first publication that the first chapter will still resonate with anyone who has earned the privilege of getting their first library card. I wonder how many people remember that moment? 

Rufus is tasked with making sure his hands are clean, and learning to write his name before he can get his own card and check out a book. The librarian makes clear both that she wants Rufus to have a card, and that having one is a serious responsibility. She is kind yet firm in her insistence that Rufus learn to sign his own name in order for him to get his own card. 

There is a bit of "shushing" action in this chapter as well. 

There are a dozen other episodic chapters in this work, the library is mentioned again in a few of them. This work will likely appeal to those who enjoy Beverly Cleary's works.

Nancy Pearl discusses her book The Writer's Library

Not a Scientist: How Politicians Mistake, Misrepresent, and Utterly Mangle Science - by Dave Levitan

The title of this work comes from a quote made by Ronald Reagan as he was campaigning against Jimmy Carter during his Presidential campaign in 1980. He was speculating that Mt. St. Helen's volcano, which had erupted a few months earlier, was responsible for emitting more sulfur dioxide than were human sources. Reagan was wrong in his assumption, but as the author points out he doesn't get a free pass simply for prefacing his comments with a disclaimer that he's "not a scientist", nor do any of the politicians who have uttered it since whenever they want to dismiss climate science.

There are many other examples in the book of politicians cherry picking data, and sometimes even facts, to make their cases about things from why we should stop undocumented immigration to why Planned Parenthood should be shut down. What I found most interesting in all this was that in some cases they apparently did understand the math and science enough to know that they had to look for very specific data points (in some cases only one) which ironically meant that they did understand, but were counting on their audience not to. 

Everything All at Once - by Katrina Leno

About to graduate from high school Lottie is mourning the death of her favorite aunt (Helen) a famous children's book author. Aunt Helen's books are about a pair of immortal siblings (Alvin and Margo Hatter) and are wildly popular among people of all ages. There are of course those who do not like her books "the Anti-Hatters [who] burn the books on YouTube...They say the idea of immortality is a sin against God".

Aunt Helen donated half of her estate to "various charities and libraries of her choosing". She clearly understands the importance of libraries to authors. Some authors seem to think that libraries are somehow stealing royalites from them.

Aunt Helen also had owned the "most expansive private library" of anyone Lottie knew. Helen was even "featured on the front page of Libraries International twelve separate times". Lottie is emphatic in her instance that "Libraries International was an actual magazine". I, however, could find no evidence that such a magazine exists.

We don't actually see much of Lottie using the library although she does meet her friend Sam at one. Sam travels a lot and tells her that he gets a library card wherever he goes "that's important" he tells her.