James Campbell: Not all of us answer the call. But one Mississippi woman dared to stand up for civil rights
[James T. Campbell (James_T_Campbell@brown.edu), an associate professor of American civilization and Africana studies at Brown University, is the author of "Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005," published this week.]
Last week, the government of Canada offered a billion-dollar settlement to Native Americans who were taken from their families as children and consigned to state boarding schools as part of a forced assimilation policy. At the same time, the governor of Montana issued posthumous pardons to 78 people convicted of sedition during World War I for no offense other than being of German descent. Meanwhile, the Episcopal Church of the United States considers joining the ranks of churches, corporations and universities that have apologized for their complicity in slavery.
Whether this wave of apologies, pardons, and reparations payments represents the triumph of an international culture of human rights or a descent into silliness and sentimentality - "contrition chic," in one critic's phrase - is a matter of debate. But the questions these initiatives pose are both timely and timeless. How do institutions and communities move forward in the aftermath of great injustice? How do we reconcile those aspects of our past that are beautiful and gracious with those that provoke shame and horror?
As we consider these questions, it is worth pausing to observe the passing of Florence Mars.
Florence Mars came from Philadelphia, Miss. She was born there in 1923 and died there last month. She was also there in 1964, when a group of local Klansmen murdered Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman and buried their bodies in an earthen dam.
Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman were not the first civil-rights workers to disappear in Mississippi, but they were the first whose disappearance engaged the nation. The unprecedented interest in the crime was, in part, a function of race: in contrast to previous cases, where victims had been black and Southern, two of the three men murdered in Philadelphia were white Northerners. But Americans were also transfixed by the behavior of the local citizenry, who seemed determined to live down to every stereotype of Southern recalcitrance and bigotry.
Crowds jeered FBI agents as they dragged rivers and swamps, searching for the bodies. Journalists were assaulted. One frustrated FBI agent remarked that Philadelphia did not need a Klan, since everyone in town seemed intent on shielding the killers.
Almost everyone. As her town fell silent, Florence Mars stood up, five feet tall in her shoes, and spoke out. She openly cooperated with FBI agents. She confronted church and community leaders, demanding that they reveal what they knew about the murders. She became such a thorn in the side of Sheriff Lawrence Rainey, one of the men responsible for the killings, that he tossed her in the drunk tank, an act that scandalized some community members more than the murders themselves. ...
Last week, the government of Canada offered a billion-dollar settlement to Native Americans who were taken from their families as children and consigned to state boarding schools as part of a forced assimilation policy. At the same time, the governor of Montana issued posthumous pardons to 78 people convicted of sedition during World War I for no offense other than being of German descent. Meanwhile, the Episcopal Church of the United States considers joining the ranks of churches, corporations and universities that have apologized for their complicity in slavery.
Whether this wave of apologies, pardons, and reparations payments represents the triumph of an international culture of human rights or a descent into silliness and sentimentality - "contrition chic," in one critic's phrase - is a matter of debate. But the questions these initiatives pose are both timely and timeless. How do institutions and communities move forward in the aftermath of great injustice? How do we reconcile those aspects of our past that are beautiful and gracious with those that provoke shame and horror?
As we consider these questions, it is worth pausing to observe the passing of Florence Mars.
Florence Mars came from Philadelphia, Miss. She was born there in 1923 and died there last month. She was also there in 1964, when a group of local Klansmen murdered Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman and buried their bodies in an earthen dam.
Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman were not the first civil-rights workers to disappear in Mississippi, but they were the first whose disappearance engaged the nation. The unprecedented interest in the crime was, in part, a function of race: in contrast to previous cases, where victims had been black and Southern, two of the three men murdered in Philadelphia were white Northerners. But Americans were also transfixed by the behavior of the local citizenry, who seemed determined to live down to every stereotype of Southern recalcitrance and bigotry.
Crowds jeered FBI agents as they dragged rivers and swamps, searching for the bodies. Journalists were assaulted. One frustrated FBI agent remarked that Philadelphia did not need a Klan, since everyone in town seemed intent on shielding the killers.
Almost everyone. As her town fell silent, Florence Mars stood up, five feet tall in her shoes, and spoke out. She openly cooperated with FBI agents. She confronted church and community leaders, demanding that they reveal what they knew about the murders. She became such a thorn in the side of Sheriff Lawrence Rainey, one of the men responsible for the killings, that he tossed her in the drunk tank, an act that scandalized some community members more than the murders themselves. ...