After a teenager’s death, a tiny Mississippi city confronts certainly one of racism’s earliest taboos.
- By Scott Baldauf Staff author of The Christian Science Track
By all reports, Raynard Johnson ended up being an excellent kid: a straight-A pupil, a skilled soccer player, a church-going son who constantly wore a grin.
Then when the school that is high ended up being found hanging from a pecan tree, simply actions from their entry way, this mixed-race community in rural Mississippi discovered it self confronted by uncomfortable concerns: Did Raynard commit committing suicide, as being a coroner’s report shows? Or was he lynched by somebody who disapproved of their dating white girls?
«He would not hang himself, in my experience,» says Curtis Johnson, a relative, sitting at a picnic dining table inside the shady front side yard. «He ended up being life that is enjoying well.»
With Raynard’s household doubting the report that is official along with the NAACP investing in a personal detective to check in to the child’s death — the difficulties of competition and interracial dating are instantly looming big in a city where white and black colored live side by side and work, worship, and fish together.
«You go in to the food store, and individuals state, ‘How ya doin’?’ whether you are black or white,» states Craig Robbins, superintendent associated with school district that is local. «If someone has difficulty on your way — I do not care exactly just what competition its — people stop which help them.»
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However in Marion County, like in many rural corners of America, interracial relationship nevertheless appears to engender some opposition.
«This is basically the final bogeyman that is great the final great taboo,» claims Mark Potok of this Southern Poverty Law Center, a hate-group watchdog in Montgomery, Ala. The Ku Klux Klan’s initial charter, he notes, was to «protect white ladies’ chastity» after the emancipation of slaves.
But Mr. Potok is fast to incorporate that lingering opposition to racial blending is certainly not unique towards the south.
Nationwide, marriages of black colored and couples that are white increased nearly sevenfold since the 1960s, from 51,000 partners in 1960 to 340,000 in 1996. Interracial marriages now total 1.5 million, however these partners have a tendency to focus in cities more tolerant of changing mores that are social.
Buddies say Raynard’s easy-going color-blindness might have confronted the difficult legacy of segregation.
«People do not accept of interracial dating,» states Eddie Conerly, a new neighbor that is african-American Kokomo, whom knew Raynard in college and today has a vehicle clean in Columbia, the county chair. «the way that is only’s likely to alter occurs when the great Lord comes. Then it will not be described as a black colored or white thing.»
Members of the family state Raynard had been dating a find sugar Indianapolis girl that is white few weeks before he died, but stopped if the woman’s uncle turned up during the Johnson household and voiced their disapproval. Quickly later, Raynard had been discovered hanging from the tree, a baseball limit nevertheless on their mind.
Their death has drawn wide, if notably unwanted, nationwide awareness of this separated corner of southwestern Mississippi. FBI detectives and television teams from over the state have descended around town, interviewing relatives and buddies people alike. The Rev. Jesse Jackson talked at Raynard’s funeral an ago monday week.
While using the concerns, tensions are increasing in this mild landscape of pine trees and red-earth rolling hills, in regards to a drive that is two-hour of brand new Orleans. The local paper published a photo of racist graffiti spray-painted on a local bridge — very public evidence that some nasty racial undercurrents persist beneath the placid surface of Marion County after the 17-year-old’s death.
«This has got the prospective to divide the city, and no one desires to observe that happen,» states the Rev. Barry Dickerson, pastor regarding the United Methodist church in Columbia, whoever church has met along with other Methodist churches, grayscale, to help keep the lines of interaction available. «the job for the Christian is always to love. We should continue steadily to love the other person and work for justice too.»
After Raynard’s death, a coroner’s report found «marks in keeping with suicide but there is no proof accidents from a battle.»
People in the man that is young household, though, state a few concerns went unanswered. They note, by way of example, that the gear Raynard had been discovered hanging from will not fit in with him, and it belongs to that they don’t know who. They even keep in mind that the person whom approached Raynard about dating their niece is just a sheriff that is former Department prison guard.
Meanwhile, neighborhood police force is continuing to analyze. «I am sure the agents hear every thing, and I also cannot imagine which they wouldn’t follow-up on every thing,» says assistant district attorney Hal Kittrell.
The Johnson family members, meanwhile, has authorized a 2nd autopsy and, by using civil rights teams, has retained an attorney and a personal detective to be certain every lead is pursued.
Rip Daniels, section supervisor of WJZD, A african-american-owned news radio section in Gulfport, Miss., states such actions are understandable, offered Mississippi’s historic and frequently violent opposition into the civil liberties motion for the 1950s and ’60s. And then he does not think it is uncommon that Raynard’s human body revealed no indications of challenge.
«Have a look at these photos,» he states, leafing through an accumulation of commemorative postcards of lynchings in James Allen’s guide, «Without Sanctuary.» Web web Page after gruesome web web page shows photos of black colored males hanging. Some have actually their arms bound. Other people do not.
«People ask, ‘How can they be therefore docile? How comen’t they fight?’ » Mr. Daniels sets the guide down. «When someone holds a weapon to your mind, plus they threaten your household Raynard had been taking care of a cousin that is mentally disabled the evening he died, you may do anything, will not you?»
Vicki Dillistone, Raynard’s Spanish teacher, states news of their death additionally the risk of committing suicide surprised teachers that are many because «he always had that not-a-care-in-the-world smile.»
While she understands that no community is wholly without any racism, she hopes that long lasting upshot of the outcome, Marion County can go back to the peaceful, trusting, friendly city she is constantly known that it is. «I would personally hate to note that modification through specific stupidity, if as it happens to be homicide instead of committing committing suicide.»
(c) Copyright 2000. The Christian Science Publishing Community
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