Bound to the Horror Stories of the Past
Black elites plan to keep the fires of victimhood burning
[Reprinted from Issues & Views March 15, 2006
]
If there were any doubts that black elites plan to keep the fires of victimhood burning for as long as the earth revolves around the sun, such doubts should have disappeared with the renaming of James McCosh Elementary School in Chicago. In February, the school was rededicated as the Emmett Louis Till Math & Science Academy, named for the 14-year-old boy, who, on a visit in 1955 to Money, Mississippi, was beaten to death, after inflaming some men who observed him whistling at a white woman.
However regretful one might find Till's ultimate fate, what kind of a figure is this to honor with his name on a school attended by children? Institutions, especially schools, are usually named for public figures who have contributed to the general welfare, and whose admirable lives serve as models for emulation. Since the school board found it imperative to remove the name of the white former president of Princeton University, was there no black scientist or scholar or entrepreneur whose name could have graced this school?
When a youngster asks about the personage for whom his school is named, he will be zapped with one of the goriest of stories -- battered body with unrecognizable head dragged from the Tallahatchie River, barbed wire wrapped around the neck attached to a 75-lb steel fan. If that doesn't leave the little inquirer depressed and ready to run for cover, there's still more that can bring down his spirits.
On the school's first floor is a bulletin board filled with newspaper and magazine clippings about the crime, along with relevant poetry and other writings. There is also a planned "museum" for the school grounds, which will house still more memorabilia and artifacts dedicated to Till's short life. It is clear that black elites are setting out to milk the Till story as thoroughly as they have the legends surrounding Rosa Parks.
There are those Negroes who never want the patient to get well, Booker T. Washington said of those blacks who profit by emphasizing past adversities and maintaining dejection among the masses. A hundred years later and his words ring truer than ever, as the same elites strive to keep the race immersed and bound to the horror stories of the past.
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