| Popis: |
on the night of June 13, 1996, arsonists torched First Missionary Baptist Church in Enid, Oklahoma.1 It was only one of dozens of fires in Black and mixed race churches that occurred in the rural South and West in that year. Whether there was a widespread conspiracy or these were copycat crimes, such tragedies were not new in American history. African Americans have suffered such hate crimes for many generations. In these cases, as in many cases before, most of the perpetrators went undetected and unpunished. Nonetheless, common or not, punished or not, it is essential that we remember these crimes and their victims, each and every one, lest, in allowing ourselves to forget, we reduce the measure of our humanity. In 1945, some things happened to a family named Short in Fontana, California. They are worth remembering. The Short family's story is not particularly a California story. What happened to them could have happened anywhere in America in 1945. It could probably happen a lot of places today. |
