"Mississippi Goddam"

[WillyT]

Taking $11 fails to justify life sentences
BY LEONARD PITTS JR. - MiamiHerald
Posted on Saturday, 11.20.10

<snip>
Let’s assume they did it.

Let’s assume that two days before Christmas in 1993, a 22-year-old black woman named Jamie Scott and her pregnant, 19-year-old sister Gladys set up an armed robbery. Let’s assume these single mothers lured two men to a spot outside the tiny town of Forest, Miss., where three teenage boys, using a shotgun the sisters supplied, relieved the men of $11 and sent them on their way, unharmed.

Assume all of the above is true, and still you must be shocked at the crude brutality of the Scott sisters’ fate. You see, the sisters, neither of whom had a criminal record before this, are still locked away in state prison, having served 16 years of their double-life sentences. It bears repeating. Each sister is doing double life for a robbery in which $11 was taken and nobody was hurt. Somewhere, the late Nina Simone is moaning her signature song: Mississippi Goddam.

For the record, two of the young men who committed the robbery testified against the sisters as a condition of their plea bargain. All three reportedly received two-year sentences and were long ago released. No shotgun or forensic evidence was produced at trial. The sisters have always maintained their innocence.

Observers are at a loss to explain their grotesquely disproportionate sentence. Early this year, the Jackson Advocate, a weekly newspaper serving the black community in the state capital, interviewed the sisters’ mother, Evelyn Rasco. She described the sentences as payback for her family’s testimony against a corrupt sheriff. According to her, that sheriff’s successor vowed revenge.

You don’t have to believe that to believe this: Mississippi stands guilty of a grievous offense against simple decency.

But there is hope. Recently, the sisters’ cause has been championed by high-powered allies. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert and the NAACP have called on Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour to pardon the two women. I add my voice to theirs.

I have no way of knowing if the Scott sisters’ fate is tied in to some sheriff’s revenge and at some level, the question is moot. Whatever the proximate cause of this ridiculous sentence, the larger cause is neon clear: The Scott sisters are black women in the poorest state in the Union. And as report after report has testified, if you are poor or black (and God help you if you are both), the American justice system has long had this terrible tendency to throw you away like garbage. Historically, this has been especially true in the South.

<snip>

More: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/11/20/1935670/taking-11-fails-to-justify-life.html

:wtf:

:mad::nuke::mad:

And...

Meantime, Jamie Scott, who is in her late 30s now, is in poor health. She is said to be losing her vision and both her kidneys have failed. And we wait for common sense to take hold in Mississippi.

[WillyT]

1. About Simone's Song...

Mississippi Goddam is a song written and performed by United States singer and pianist Nina Simone. It was first released on her album Nina Simone in Concert which was based on recordings of three concerts she gave at Carnegie Hall in 1964. The album was her first release for the Dutch label Philips Records and is indicative of the more political turn her (recorded) music took during this period. The song was released as a single and boycotted in several Southern states, ostensibly because of the word 'goddam' in the title. Together with "Four Women" and "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" it is one of her most famous protest songs and self-written compositions.

Interpretation

The song is her response to the murder of Medgar Evers in Mississippi; and the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four black children. On the recording she cynically announces the song as "a show tune, but the show hasn't been written for it yet". The song begins jauntily, with a show tune feel, but demonstrates its political focus early on with its refrain "Alabama's got me so upset, Tennessee's made me lose my rest, and everybody knows about Mississippi goddam". In the song she rails on the common argument at the time that civil rights activists and African Americans should "go slow" and make changes in the United States incrementally: "Keep on sayin' 'go slow'...to do things gradually would bring more tragedy. Why don't you see it? Why don't you feel it? I don't know, I don't know. You don't have to live next to me, just give me my equality!"

She performed the song in front of 40,000 people at the end of one of the Selma to Montgomery marches when she and other black activists, including Sammy Davis Jr., James Baldwin and Harry Belafonte crossed police lines.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Goddam

:kick:

[me b zola]

5. Here's a link to Nina permorming Mississippi Goddamn live

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAYVaHEMK0I

[WillyT]

6. Thank You !!!

:yourock:

:hi:

[dixiegrrrrl]

11. Thank you !!!!!

[madmax]

7. Her music was played in a movie with Jodie Foster

don't remember the movie. I remember how Nina Simone's words got to me. Although I'm hearing impaired - not deaf, I could hear some of the instrumental portion and read the words on CC. I loved it, mr. max bought me 2 of her CD's. I can google the lyrics putting the 2 together helps me enjoy a little music. Not as it was before but, I'll take it anyway. She was terrific.

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. Wow. GMTA. I was just getting ready to post this story.

It's absolutely horrible.

K & R

[WillyT]

3. ...

GMTA

:hi:

[Fumesucker]

4. Anyone waiting for common sense to take hold in Mississippi is in for a frustrating time..

MS makes my own home state look good, one of the few things that do..

[ismnotwasm]

8. A few years back here

Someone linked to that song here at DU, I forgot why.

It never loses it's power or it's message, and --unfortunately-- it can be applied to situations to this day.

THIS is a classic American horror story, no need to read the fictional kind once you know the true ones, except as pure escapism. These stories are played out in our justice system every day.

[alcibiades_mystery]

9. Nina Simone actually singing Work Song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwXwzDqN6mc

Breaking rocks out here on the chain gang
Breaking rocks and serving my time
Breaking rocks out here on the chain gang
Because they done convicted me of crime
Hold it steady right there while I hit it
well I reckon that ought to get it
been
working and working
but I still got so terribly far to go

I commited crime Lord I needed
Crime of being hungry and poor
I left the grocery store man breathing
When they caught me robbing his store
Hold it steady right there while I hit it
Well I reckon that ought to get it
been
working and working
but I still got so terribly far to go

I heard the judge say five years
On chain-gang you gonna go
I heard the judge say five years labor
I heard my old man scream "Lordy, no!"
Hold it right there while I hit it
well I reckon that ought to get it
been
working and working
but I still got so terribly far to go

Gonna see my sweet honey bee
Gonna break this chain off the rung
Gonna lay down somewhere shady
Lord I sure am hot in the sun
Hold it right there while I hit it
well I reckon that ought to get it
been
workin' and workin'
been
workin' and slavin'
an'
workin' and workin'
but I still got so terribly far to go

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Or, as Chuck D says,

They got me rottin' in the time that I'm servin'
Tellin' you what happened the same time they're throwin'
4 of us packed in a cell like slaves - oh well
The same motherfucker got us livin' in his hell
You have to realize - what is a form of slavery
Organized
Under a swarm of devils
Straight up
word'em up on the level...

[WillyT]

10. Thank You For That !!!

:yourock:

:hi:

[nofurylike]

12. K&R thank you so much for posting this, WillyT. nt

[bluetrain]

13. wow...who are the criminals?