Could you please clarify this (before I get cranky)?-dawg
That's easy!
From the Socialist Party WebSite:(google searched Miss. Hanging)
Mississippi Hanging
Poem by Sam Friedman
We are a land of progress,
almost everyone agrees,
so there are no longer lynchings
from Mississippi’s trees.
So Roy Veal dangled, hanging,
from a tree-entangled rope,
but it couldn’t be a lynching
just one man who couldn't cope.
No, it couldn't be a lynching,
the Wilkinson County Sheriff said—
black Sheriff Jackson said—
so it’s suicide instead,
the doc found no abrasion
no contusions, no duress,
so suicide’s the verdict,
there’s no torture, just distress,
he was a man of weakness,
poor Roy Veal just couldn't cope,
so he hanged himself from his tree-limb
with self-inflicted rope.
This is the verdict.
This is the law:
a tragic self-destruction,
just this, and nothing more.
Or is it rich folks' justice?
Is this just rich folks' law?
The greed of White landowners
who grasp for ever more?
They coveted his trees for money,
claimed to own his family’s land,
with a cash-and-power lawsuit
to back up their demands.
And since it's rich folks' justice,
so for damages they sued,
for 18 thousand dollars,
with Veal’s land and forest too.
So white folks’ just-us fingers
may not have held his rope,
but merely rich white justice
that lynched family, land and hope.
