Justice at long last

James Ford Seale.

Indoctrinate U

Speech codes. Censorship. Enforced political conformity. Hostility to diversity of opinion. Sensitivity training. We usually associate such things with the worst excesses of fascism and communism, not with the American universities that nurtured the free speech movement. But American higher education bears a disturbing resemblance to the totalitarian societies that are anathema to our nation’s ideal of liberty. Evan Coyne Maloney’s documentary film, Indoctrinate U, reveals the breathtaking institutional intolerance you won't read about in the glossy marketing brochures of Harvard, Berkeley, Michigan, Yale, and hundreds of other American colleges and universities.

Put your name on the list to get a screening in our area here. Bogalusa will be on the map as soon as they count my vote ;-).

Via Gates of Vienna, a Very Important Blog.

Black and white and read all over

We heard today that a teacher at one of the public schools read aloud an opinion piece from the Daily News as an example of bigotry.

I agree, wholeheartedly, enthusiastically, in spades, and with bells on. So the opinion piece is gonna receive a fisking.

By Lou Major:

It's bad enough we have horrid academic achievement in the Bogalusa school system, but hand-in-hand with the despicable safety and security problems, we have that age-old menace: Racial Divide.

This promises to be exciting, doesn't it? Danger, failure and "Racial Divide" all at once! Capitalized, even!

There have been many meetings over the past year and-a-half about the fast deterioration of the quality of education in the local school system. School Board members, some parents, teachers and politicians have all joined the quest for improvement. We have been told over and over that this will take time; it cannot be achieved in just one year.

It took more than a year for the problems to develop and become serious, and surely it'll take more than a year to solve them. That makes sense.

If you are going to claim that the deterioration was "fast," I want to see that backed up with stats. The problems have existed for the several years we've been here.

"Zero tolerance" of fighting, insolence and threats has been put into place, presumably as the best thing so far to try to solve those problems. Various thrusts at academic improvement have been introduced at every level.

Sounds pretty good so far. Give "zero tolerance" time to work.

And all the while, very, very few people have wanted to face up to the "racial divide" problem. It is there. Less than a handful of people at all these meetings have dared to talk openly about one of the serious problems that leads to so many of the other problems. They talk in numbers, for the most part. The numbers show that all of the students leaving the Bogalusa schools are white kids. Nobody knows for sure where they are all going and from what I can determine, nobody is zeroing in on finding out.

"The word" is that they are going to Franklinton, Pine, Bowling Green, St. Tammany and Mississippi.

I know that some of them are going to the Franklinton school district, where the parents I spoke to are claiming that the high school is "better." If they think it's academically better, I shot that down in "Dishonest or dumb?".

It's white flight, is all it is. Considering the parish's history, my conclusion is logical.

C'mon, you guys voted for David Duke. And you're surprised there's white flight? The irony has overtopped my hip waders.

Immediately following Hurricane Katrina, Bogalusa students were allowed to go to other schools, presumably until the local school system got up and running again. Hordes of them did just that. The only problem is, they have not come back, and almost all of them are white kids. After the immediate shock of Katrina ended, displaced students were supposed to "go home" to their normal schools. It didn't happen. At one of the meetings recently, it was stated that schools which allowed the Bogalusa students in following the hurricane were supposed to send them back; it was a matter of honoring school boundaries.

That has all added to the growing "racial divide" in the Bogalusa schools.

I thought students were supposed to go to their district schools, unless they were enrolled in a private school - which, naturally, might be outside the district lines. In some places, attending an out-of-district school is illegal.

If anybody's breakin' the law, maybe the DA oughtta get involved, hmmm?

Two years ago, there were 1,270 white students in Bogalusa schools. This year, the number is down to 806. Two years ago, there were 1,595 black students in Bogalusa schools. This year, the number is 1,604. So while there are 450 fewer white students, there are the same number of black students.

As the trend has continued, this means that five years ago there was a 50/50 ratio of white to black students in the Bogalusa schools. Today, the ratio is 65 percent black to 35 percent white.

If we want our kids to grow up to be able to work with people of other ethnic backgrounds, we need to quit caring about this. Yes, just quit caring. Don't see color, see people, and you'll teach your kids to do the same.

That's the only way to stop the "Racial Divide" if by that phrase you mean bigotry.

Sadly, as I read on, it appears that you mean something else.

This growing preponderance of black students is manifesting itself in ways that most people don't even realize.

What? The nearest store sells less Prell, more Hair-Gro?

Forgive me, I couldn't resist. Hang on, it gets much better.

The Bogalusa High Paper Dolls illustrates the point. In 1970, there were 27 Paper Dolls, the dancing group which struts at football games, parades, etc. Of the 27, only 2 were black girls; 25 were white. By 1992, of 23 Paper Dolls, 21 were white and 2 were black, still about the same as 20 years earlier. However, by 1997, the numbers changed to 21 white girls and 6 black girls. In just the next three years, the numbers had gone to 15 white girls and 7 black girls.

Continuing the quickening trend, the next year there were 22 white girls and 11 black girls.

This year, the "racial divide" was glaring. There are 11 Paper Dolls at BHS; not one of them is white.

Additionally, the varsity cheerleading squad this year is made up of 12 girls. Only one is white.

A look at the BHS Band tells the same story.

All this tells me is that the white kids either aren't trying out for the Paper Dolls and varsity cheerleading, or they aren't making the grade. Apparently the white kids aren't choosing band as an activity, either.

Why don't you do some research and find out why this is? And publish what the black/white ratio is at the high school, too. If white students are a small minority, it shouldn't shock you that some extracurricular activities are all black.

Now your editorial sounds like the whine of a white supremacist.

"Waaaah! The blacks have everything! They locked us out! Waaaaah!"

At most of the "curative" meetings, I recall one person willing to stand up and recognize there is a problem: Rev. Coleman Moses, one of the school system's Task Force members who has continued to be active with the group initially appointed by School Supt. Jerry Payne. Rev. Moses has repeatedly spoken out about the need for all of the school disciplinary problems to be attacked first at home. That is the obvious starting place, but getting that accomplished is another thing.

Getting down to the nuts and bolts, how do you get into the homes of the most unruly kids and get their parents, many of them only the mother, to make their kids obey the rules, be polite, study hard, cause no trouble? I sure don't have the answer and it seems like nobody else has, either.

The problems are more than readin', writin' and 'rithmetic.

I definitely believe that "zero tolerance" needs several years to show results.

However, I am dismayed at this juxtaposition of "the blacks have it all," a bunch of white kids left, and discipline problems in the editorial. There's a very unpleasant implication floating between the lines, there.

Elementary school kids are still staying in the Bogalusa school system. Even the discipline nightmare at the Bogalusa Middle School (junior high) has not sent white students running elsewhere. But the trend at Bogalusa High is alarming. The numbers prove the point. Something has to be done or the enrollment of white students will continue to dwindle until "racial divide" will be almost complete.

This won't be PC, Lou, but I can and will explain it to you.

We ain't from here. But we have had the distasteful experience of being told by white "born-heres" that we should send our kids to another high school, out of the district, because otherwise those boys will try to date our girls.

They weren't talkin' 'bout white boys.

You may recall from a previous post that back in the 60s, the FBI considered Washington Parish to have the highest per-capita membership in the KKK of any county in the nation. Do the math. It's those klukkers' grandkids that are being pulled out of Bogalusa High and sent elsewhere.

You think attitudes like that change in one or two generations? I know better. Judging from how I've been warned of the "dangers" of BHS, those attitudes are alive and kickin'. Kickin' hard, Lou.

I've never been anywhere else in this whole wide world where so many whites were so willing to be upfront and vocal about their racism. Anywhere else, the majority of the white population would shun them.

"Run, run! They'll rape your daughters!" Sheesh.

Gee, maybe the black parents are the ones who should be worried. There's a lot more historical precedent about white boys raping black girls, isn't there?

Let the bigots pack their sheets and leave the system. From what I've seen, the kids that remain at Bogalusa High - of all races - get along across racial lines and have a decent, open-minded attitude. I applaud them. They are our future; perhaps this is the generation that will bury the sorry past.

Y'all definitely need fresh blood, y'know? More come-heres, to dilute out this nonsense.

R.I.P, David Creed Rogers

Sad news [link]:

David Creed Rogers, 85, one of the last remaining links to Washington Parish's bloody civil rights legacy, died Monday at Good Samaritan Nursing Home.

And excellent news:

"We have some very hot leads on this case," Jim Bernazzani, special agent in charge of the FBI in New Orleans, said.

It's a shame Mr. Rogers didn't live to see justice. He surely wanted to.

But he isn't the last remaining link to those times. The last links are the people who know -- the people who need to unburden themselves by calling the FBI, before they've gotta try and explain it to St. Peter.

Get on the phone and do the right thing, folks. Help put the murderers in prison where they belong, and truly end Bogalusa's sordid legacy of lynchings and killings and bigotry.

The murder of Oneal Moore

A Google news alert showed up in my inbox, with a link to this at the Times-Picayune - also being discussed on the Hard Copy board. Excerpt:

The unsolved 1965 killing of a black Washington Parish sheriff's deputy by a group of white assailants is among roughly a dozen unsolved murders from the civil-rights era that the FBI is giving new scrutiny, said Jim Bernazzani, special agent in charge of the bureau's New Orleans office.

The murder of Oneal Moore is one of 10 to 12 unsolved inquiries into suspicious deaths around the country that FBI Director Robert Mueller said Tuesday the agency is re-examining.

Further down in the article [emphasis mine]:

Ironically, Moore and Rogers were hired in part to help quell racial unrest in Washington Parish, which at the time was thought to have more members of the Ku Klux Klan per capita than any county in America.

I believe it. Remember David Duke's run for a seat in the Louisiana legislature?:

Duke actually carried Tangipahoa Parish, a rural county which is one of four in the district, and finished second in another rural county, Washington Parish. Link

And here's an excerpt from a 1965 Time article:

Governor McKeithen offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to a murder conviction, promised to "demonstrate to the world that Louisianans are law-abiding, Godfearing citizens, and that our state is no haven for cowards and murderers."

Sadly, he has been proven wrong. In this case, Louisiana, specifically Bogalusa, was indeed a haven for a murderer and his two accomplices.

Turn them in. This is a terrible blot on the city, and it's way past time for justice.

Justice at last

Good news [emphasis mine]:

A white former sheriff’s deputy who was once thought to be dead was arrested on federal charges Wednesday in one of the last major unsolved crimes of the civil rights era — the 1964 killings of two black men who were beaten and dumped alive into the Mississippi River.

The break in the 43-year-old case was largely the result of the dogged efforts of the older brother of one of the victims, who vowed to bring the killers to justice.

James Ford Seale, a 71-year-old reputed Ku Klux Klansman from the town of Roxie, was charged with kidnapping hitchhikers Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, both 19. He is expected to be arraigned on Thursday in Jackson.

Maybe there will be more word soon on Oneal Moore's murder, too:

The crime occurred around 10 p.m. in Varnado, a village on the outskirts of Bogalusa. Rogers and his partner, the first two black sheriffs deputies in Washington Parish, noticed they were being trailed by a pickup truck with a Confederate flag emblem on its front bumper. When they crossed some railroad tracks on the way to Moore's home nearby, they were fired upon. Moore was killed instantly, and Rogers lost an eye in the shooting.

One hour later, Mississippi authorities stopped Ernest Ray McElveen in nearby Tylertown. He was driving a truck that matched Rogers' description, and authorities said he was armed with a .45 caliber pistol and a .22 caliber pistol. But two weeks later, the local district attorney released McElveen, and nobody was ever tried in connection with the shooting. Attempts to reach McElveen, who lives in Bogalusa, were unsuccessful by presstime. [...]
In a 1998 interview with Gambit Weekly ("The Last Klan Case," Dec. 15, 1998), Rogers said he hasn't forgotten the night of the attack. "The older I get, the more it gets to me," he said.

There were three original suspects. McElveen has died. If he was guilty, presumably he's down in that hot place. As for the other two, there are a couple of the worst murderers living among us. Could be my neighbors. Or yours.

Turn 'em in, people. Closing ranks around this kinda scum is inexcusable.

Open note to Creed Rogers: Keep after the FBI, sir. I wanna see the perps fry.

Don't do business with Discount Mats.

Via Gulf Coast Pundit:

Wisconsin Mat Company Gives US Troops the Finger

The link leads to Gateway Pundit, and this:

Sgt. Hess, who is from the 1st Cavalry Division stationed in Iraq, emailed a company called discount-mats.com, an online retailer in West Allis, Wisconsin to inquire about ordering some mats but wanted to verify that they would ship to a APO.

From: SGT Jason Hess
Sent: Tue Jan 16 3:25

Do you ship to APO address? I’m in the 1st Cavalry Division stationed in Iraq and we are trying to order some mats but we are looking for who ships to APO first.

Well, you wouldn’t believe the disgusting reply he received back from the company:

From: contact@discount-mats.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 9:44 PM
Subject: Re: Feedback: from discount-mats.com

SGT Hess,
We do not ship to APO addresses, and even if we did, we would NEVER ship to Iraq. If you were sensible, you and your troops would pull out of Iraq.

Bargain Suppliers
Discount-Mats.com

As Gateway Pundit notes, it's been verified as true by Snopes.

Send an email, phone, write 'em a snail mail. They deserve it [big evil grin].

414-736-8394 contact@discount-mats.com

Bargain Suppliers
3259 S.106th Street
West Allis, WI 53227

Breathtakingly idiotic - Barbara Boxer

From the New York Post:

Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, an appalling scold from California, wasted no time yesterday in dragging the debate over Iraq about as low as it can go - attacking Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for being a childless woman.

And the Post gives her a scolding in turn. Read it all.

St. Bernard's new housing ordinance

Wow. The nerve. The stupidity.

And now, inevitably, the federal lawsuit:

A New Orleans civil rights organization filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday seeking to overturn a St. Bernard Parish ordinance that prohibits many homes from being rented to anyone who is not a blood relative of the owner... [...]After enacting an across-the-board moratorium on renting single-family homes in March, the council voted 5-2 on Sept. 19 to lift the moratorium, but require that the renter be a blood relative of the owner.

Trust a transplant to see through this nonsense:

“Blood relatives? That’s just a code word for skin color,” said Munoz, who moved to Violet from Los Angeles 20 years ago. “How would they even enforce this? Are they going to run DNA tests on everyone who wants to rent a house?”

Heck, maybe they will.

Somebody ought to check out whether the "yea" voters on the council have interest in a genetics lab...

Update:

Related: Just go home?

Nice. And not nice.

Fourteen Bogalusa students are spending the week in Jackman, Maine:

"The people are very nice," said Tre Johnson, a Bogalusa eighth-grader. "They don't catch attitudes. They are very friendly people."

The ambitious weeklong stay was arranged through the help of Rural School and Community Trust affiliates in the Northeast and Southeast, and through various fundraisers in Jackman.

Sadly, later on in the article is this [emphasis added]:

Daisy Slan, southeast representative for the Rural School and Community Trust, emphasized that white people probably would not be hosting blacks in Louisiana.

"The only way that you get into a white home in Bogalusa is if you're cleaning their homes, taking care of their babies or cooking their meals," said Slan, who is black.

Bogalusa's bad reputation still goin' strong [sigh].

Previous:
Jackman to Bogalusa
Just go home?
Dishonest or dumb?

Dishonest or dumb?

There are a number of Bogalusa-area high schoolers that are commuting to Franklinton these days. It has been suggested to yours truly that Franklinton High School is better than BHS, with better test scores, and that's the reason parents send their kids 20-something miles to school.

Is FHS better?

At the Louisiana Department of Education site, here are the GEE scores for spring 2006 (percentages):

Bogalusa High School:

• Advanced = 1
• Mastery = 13
• Basic = 39
• Approaching Basic = 31
• Unsatisfactory = 16

Franklinton High School:

• Advanced = 0
• Mastery = 7
• Basic = 43
• Approaching Basic = 28
• Unsatisfactory = 22

Bogalusa High School clearly has the lead in Advanced and Mastery: a combined 14% versus Franklinton's 7%. In the Basic and Approaching Basic categories, BHS 70%, FHS 71%.

Unsatisfactory is in Bogalusa's favor by six percentage points.

The GEE scores for Pine, Varnado and Mr. Hermon aren't much different than Franklinton's. The numbers don't seem to bear out Franklinton High School being better than Bogalusa High School - the opposite, in fact.

I suspect this has more to do with White Flight than parents worried about the education of their children. It's the only explanation that makes sense. Why else send your kid on a half-hour bus ride to a school in another town that isn't any better than the one down the street?

Humble pie, served warm

July 10th editorial:

It's all about attitude and, outside the "Bogalusa means business" campaign, ours is not that good.

Said without a trace of irony, too.

I'd suggest you start with admitting all the problems Bogalusa has, and quit blaming "outsiders" - those who weren't born here - for our sorry state of affairs.

Previous:
Just go home?
Crime in Bogalusa

Just go home?

What looks like an unsigned editorial in the June 30, 2006 issue of The Daily News.

Hateful stuff. But then, Bogalusa has a sordid history of hate, and a distrust of "outsiders" which some older residents blame all those old problems on. "Problems" like fair treatment and integration. A reputation like that dies a hard, slow, noisy death.

What did the charming Daily News editor tell us?

T here were two drive-by shootings and an arson within a 24-hour period in our community on Wednesday and all have been tied back to New Orleans.

Allrighty. I guess people came up here from The Big Easy and raised some heck, huh?

In the arson, a New Orleans resident took a cab to the apartment of his ex-girlfriend, broke in and started a fire.

Took a cab all the way from New Orleans?? 60-something miles? Wow.

According to Bogalusa police, all those involved in the shootings - with the exception of victim Dagrick Moses - were "New Orleans transplants."

Big effin' deal. There are a whole lot of folks in the area who moved here from somewhere else. Apparently since Katrina, there are 8,000 to 10,000 of them.

Last time I checked, the people who are considered to have founded Bogalusa moved to the area from somewhere else. Stop the presses!

We don't need New Orleans' mess that has spilled all over the Southeast and Southwest in our community. Goodness knows, we have enough problems of our own without that brought along by transplanted thugs.

Hate, hate, hate. Even though there's a bit of a disclaimer in the second sentence - "we have enough problems of our own" - there's a clear implication that things were rollin' along just fine before those dang "New Orleans thugs" moved here.

You know, those "transplants." Those "come-heres."

Jeez, out of several thousand people, I betcha a few of them were bad guys. Ya think?

Oh, and Daily News? The correct term for people who have been living here long enough to vote is residents.

Residents, yes. Many of whom are sick and tired of the slurs against those who weren't born in Bogalusa, the town that smells like a fart.

Perhaps they'll register to vote and get some new blood in office. Hopefully, they'll refuse to buy the local rag, too.

Sheesh.