Month: June 2012

(All of these pictures were taken by me a few years ago, so…)

Today is the 48th anniversary of the killings of Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman.

In 2005, Av and I spent a few days in Philadelphia, Mississippi for the Edgar Ray Killen trial.  We were especially interested in how it was going to turn out, as Av especially had studied the facts of the case and for years we had gone to the church service at Mt. Zion Methodist each June in memory of the James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman.

We had met members of James’ family as well as Michael’s wife, and Andrew’s mother.

This is Andrew’s mother, in the middle here behind the monument at the church:

I remember vividly for the trial, that we were put into the media building which had been set up, so there was a large television running with the trial going on so we could see everything very well.  There were members of the media from all over the South, as well as national outlets.  It was huge.

During breaks in the case, we would go outside, and down by the courthouse there would sometimes be family members who were upset in some way, or the cameras would be following teams of lawyers.  There was a certain side door of the courthouse that the jurors would enter.  CourtTV had a tent set up on the lawn and was beaming updates to viewers everywhere.

It was surreal to be in the midst of all of the excitement, and it was truly a very strange excitement because it was over something so cruel and mean and disgusting.  Was this man, who had been such a big part of all this awfulness, who had lived freely all these years — was he really going to be convicted?  Was there enough evidence, were there enough people to give testimony after all this time, to prove it?

There was one part in which I just lost it.  I think in our media room, we had a closed circuit beam, because at one point, Michael Schwerner’s wife…his widow, now…was talking (pic of her in the screenshot I made, bottom-left).  Her name is Rita Schwerner Bender, and she was giving testimony about when Michael — Rita called him ‘Mickey’ — left to go back to Mississippi.  ‘J.E.’ is what she calls James Chaney.

Just very quickly — I was taking a transcript of all the pertinent (to us) testimony.  She says:

We talked about it. We were both extremely upset about the beatings and the burning of the church. We were very worried about the church members, both the people who had been beaten and the risk to any of the other people and I know J.E. was very upset too and they decided that they needed to go back to MS. I’m sorry, it’s a little bit emotional. I’m sorry. They decided to go back to MS and go to the Mt Zion church and meet with church members.


He (Mickey) felt a terrible sense of responsibility about what had happened to the church members. He was extremely distressed.


I think he and J.E. both felt that they had a responsibility to the people who had put themselves at risk and that’s why they decided they had to go back and see those people. You don’t abandon people who you’ve put at risk.


When we were first talking about it the original thought was that I would go back with them. And I was asked to stay in Oxford, OH to continue helping with the training and so the plan was that I would stay in Ohio for another week and then I would get a ride back to Meridian with other people who were driving down.


Around 3 or 4 in the morning of June 20th, Mickey got up and got dressed, he kissed me goodbye and he left. In the blue station wagon.


That’s the very last time I saw him.

When Rita says, above, ‘Mickey got up and got dressed, he kissed me goodbye and he left.  In the blue station wagon. That’s the very last time I saw him.’ the screen on the media television screen went dark.  The video signal was bad, and it faded right when she gave that part of her testimony.  And in my mind — and this still gets to me — I thought, that’s it, that’s when it went dark for Rita and Mickey, when he left her behind, he left her behind to stay alive while he came back to die.  So all around are all these media people who have heard all the awful stuff there is in the world, and I’m sitting there crying, seeing her world go dark just as the screen did.

I have so much of it that I transcribed.  Remember how last week I talked about the new statue in Ruleville of Fannie Lou Hamer?  Rita said, “I was at the airport in Cincinnati and Bob Zellner and I bumped into Fannie Lou Hamer who had also been at the college for a few days and was unknown to us until we bumped into her at the airport, was traveling back to MS on another flight, and we were standing and talking when we heard that the car had been burned.


I think it really hit me for the first time that they were dead. That there was really no realistic possibility that they were still alive and Fannie Lou and I, Ms. Hamer, both started to cry. She led me over to a bench and she just wrapped her arms around me and the two of us had our faces together and both of us had, our tears were mingling with each other’s.”

On June 21, 2005, exactly 41 years to the day from the murders, Killen was convicted.  At sentencing he was given 20 years for each murder.

There’s even more news about all this, going on right now.

Edgar Ray Killen’s cellmate in prison, James Stern, is now a preacher, and according to the AP is “suing over statements related to a land transfer and book and movie rights.”  He “alleges reputed Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen gave him power of attorney while they were cellmates at the Mississippi State Penitentiary and he has taken control of 40 acres of Killen’s land.” and showed the media documents that show such at a news conference in Jackson last week.


Here’s the most interesting part of the (again, alleged) transaction of all:
Stern said he transferred the land last month to a nonprofit called Racial Reconciliation, which he controls, and would donate one acre to be used as a memorial site to the three civil rights workers.


A government clerk’s office confirmed the land had been transferred.

Bette Mott’s home in McComb, Mississippi was always the *most* fun to go by —

When we drove by earlier this spring, there were no more hearts painted on the driveway and the gingerbread men have left:

The most well-known art environment/home in McComb isn’t there any more — it was Loy Bowlin’s ‘rhinestone cowboy’ home — called the Beautiful Holy Jewel Home of the Original Rhinestone Cowboy — that was purchased and moved…it was to have been demolished…to Kohler, Wisconsin (to the John Michael Kohler Arts Center there) where it was reconstructed and on display there for a long time, although it is not on display currently.

Used under Creative Commons 2.0 Gen, by The WildWood.  Thank you!

Same permission granted for these below. Thanks again!:

Okay, if we’re making a list of the most fantastic doughnut shops…

In Memphis — or actually East Memphis — Gibson’s Donuts is *the best* in town:

Original, traditional, that neverletyoudown glazed:

And here we have (clockwise) chocolate glazed, red velvet cake, elephant ear, chocolate cruller (which Av likes).  That bottom-right elephant ear/cinnamon roll/whatever-you-call-it was innnncreddddible.

Yes, yes, yes.

Another community I wanted to visit in New Orleans was Musicians’ Village, which was conceived by Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis, and organized by Habitat for Humanity.  The idea behind the post-K project was, as they put it:
…establishment of a community for the city’s several generations of musicians and other families, many of whom had lived in inadequate housing prior to the catastrophe and remain displaced in its aftermath. A central part of this vision is the establishment of a focal point for teaching, sharing and preserving the rich musical tradition of a city that has done so much to shape the art of the past century. The concept was quickly embraced by NOAHH, the organization that has developed a model for building single-family homes that low-income families may purchase with zero-interest financing. In keeping with its commitment to build not just homes but communities, NOAHH has given its support to an effort that redefines neighborhood revitalization.

There are 70+ of these single-family homes.  Short bios of some of the residents here.

There’s a new bakery in B’ham that we tried this week — not huge fans of the cupcakes (not sweet enough and not a fan of whipped icing, and wish the strawberry had been strawberry-er), but that’s not mostly what I want to show:

…what was fantastic…the designs on the cakes.  An artist:

As always, unless otherwise noted, all pics here copyright Deep Fried Kudzu. Ask me before using in any fashion. Thank you.

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The NYT writes about The Making of ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’: …set in a mythologized bayou area called the Bathtub, a harsh utopia that is cut off from civilization by an imposing levee but pulsating with natural beauty and the raucous, defiant spirit of its inhabitants. At the core of the film is the tiny heroine, Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis), and her magical way of making sense of the mysteries around her: the absence of her mother; the failing health of her father, Wink (Dwight Henry); and the apocalyptic storm that’s threatening to wash her world away.


With its story of a community facing a devastating flood (and, later, a forced evacuation) “Beasts” has resonated with many early viewers as a Katrina allegory. But while “Glory at Sea” grew directly out of New Orleans and the hurricane’s aftermath, “Beasts” has its roots farther away, on the southern fringes of Louisiana. When developing the idea for his film, Mr. Zeitlin traveled outside of his adopted hometown in search of real-life cultures that live on the front lines of storms and coastal erosion. “When you look at the map, you can see America kind of crumble off into the sinews down in the gulf where the land is getting eaten up,” he said. “I was really interested in these roads that go all the way down to the bottom of America and what was at the end of them.”

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Louisiana Contemporary — a new, juried exhibit at the Ogden — deadline early July.

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Australian ABC comes to Alabama, and they learn how to say ‘ball’…among other things (start audio at the site with the purple bar).

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The AP reports that a life-size statue honoring Fannie Lou Hamer will be unveiled in Ruleville, in October.  “She was perhaps best known for describing her feelings about the oppressive segregation she had grown up with in Mississippi by saying: “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.”” She was worlds more than that too.

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The Times-Picayune fired Brett Anderson, but not really.  Mignon Faget came up with a ‘Save the T-P‘ pin.  Jazz funeral for the paper.  (Added on Sunday:) And in regards to the new jobs, I think we’d all like to consider ourselves a ‘discussion leader on high-value topics’ as they put it.

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The Washington Post reviews, likes the new Craig Claiborne bio, ‘The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat‘ — I read most of the book last week; pretty good.

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http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1
The Music Box art/music installation in New Orleans is looking for a new home.

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From the press release:
Fifty years after his death, novelist William Faulkner is finally getting his wish for “The Sound and the Fury,” the 1929 novel widely considered his most difficult reading experience.
Employing multiple, shifting points of view—including that of a mentally disabled narrator—the book long has presented challenges for readers and scholars. At the time, Faulkner lamented the fact that publishing hadn’t yet devised a way to graphically represent in color the time-shifts and changes of narrators.


Now, Mississippi State University English professor emeritus Noel Polk and co-editor Steven M. Ross have done just that.


The color-coded, limited edition of 1,400 is a Folio Society release. Orders of the 320-page publication may be completed at www.foliosociety.com/book/SAF.

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The NYT writes from Donaldsonville and the River Road African American Museum and the Freedom Garden there, which features plants that would have been familiar to slaves:

Put another way, it’s easy enough to find white colonial re-enactors, in bonnets and breeches, picking a tidy row of carrots. But it’s a loaded act for the black culinary historian and heirloom gardener Michael W. Twitty to don a period costume, as he will this weekend as part of a Juneteenth demonstration at Natchez National Historical Park, in Mississippi. In a similar spirit of historical restoration, Mr. Twitty, 35, compiled the African American Heritage Collection of heirloom seeds for the D. Landreth Seed Company.


Among the 30-odd plants are the long-handled dipper gourd, the white cushaw and the West India burr gherkin. What historical gardeners like Mr. Twitty and Ms. Hambrick-Jackson hope to demonstrate is how these plants were instrumental in African-American survival and independence.

I’m going to see Michael Twitty speak here in Alabama later this month, and I’m bringing my Little Sister because I think they might be related!

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Finster’s Paradise Garden has received a $445k grant from ArtPlace America, and the money is projected to make possible almost all elements of the restoration of the art environment that were outlined by an Atlanta architecture firm.  This is a listing of all the grants ArtPlace just made.  Very nice.