Jewish World Review Nov. 14, 2002 / 9 Kislev, 5763

Bob Tyrrell

Bob Greene
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports

Clarence Thomas and the segregationist Mississippi sheriff


http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | I read the other day in The New York Times' obituary columns of the death of a long-forgotten segregationist figure from America's civil rights struggle, Lawrence A. Rainey, a disgraced sheriff from Meridian, Miss.

His death elicited reflections on how far America has come in the struggle for racial equality since his fleeting notoriety in 1964. A speech I had heard at the District of Columbia Circuit Courthouse about the time Rainey was breathing his last made my reflections all the more poignant. It was made by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. I wonder how Rainey accounted for the rise of Thomas. Conceivably, Rainey's views on Thomas were similar to the publicly stated views of the Rev. Jesse Jackson -- another fearful symmetry, that.

Rainey was a rural Southern sheriff implicated in one of the most contemptible episodes of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, the disappearance and murder of three young civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, both white and from New York City; and James Chaney, a black from Meridian.

On June 21, 1964, they were jailed in Neshoba County, Miss., on a speeding violation -- a civil rights worker did not have to drive very fast in those days to get stopped. They were released in the late afternoon and drove off into the night, never to be seen alive again. Over the next few weeks, as the nation clamored for news of their whereabouts, Rainey deprecated the nation's concerns for their safety. With the insolence of a bully, he claimed "they're just hiding out somewhere and trying to get a lot of publicity out of it." Anyone familiar with the taunts of Nazis and communists recognizes the effrontery.

Actually, the three civil rights workers were dead. Their bodies were discovered in an earthen dam on Aug. 4. In early 1965, Rainey and 17 other men were tried on federal charges. Most likely the civil rights workers had been murdered hours after leaving Rainey's jail, after his deputy, Cecil R. Price, handed them over to fellow racists. Of the 17 men tried for violating the civil rights of the victims, nine were convicted, including Price and a Klan leader. Rainey was acquitted, but history was moving fast in the 1960s. He never got another job in Mississippi law enforcement and spent the rest of his days as a security guard in a supermarket and at a shopping mall.

For 37 years, Rainey and racists like him have been watching their segregationist vision of the world evanesce as blacks have moved up into the middle class and on to some of the highest positions in American life. Like the retired Soviet apparatchiks in Russia, they rattle around in their retirement believing that the world has taken a dreadful turn down a dark road. I read an interview some years ago with a retired Soviet pooh-bah. He still believed: Kapitalism doomed, Democracy a sham. Doubtless in the dank holes where the racists of yesteryear brood, many still believe a colorblind society is a Gomorrah.

Then there is Thomas, to give them a migraine. I heard him speak the other day at the portrait unveiling for Judge Lawrence Silberman. There were other speakers, all very distinguished and eloquent; but none spoke so eloquently and learnedly as this black justice, who had been raised in poverty in Sheriff Rainey's rural South. Contrary to his detractors he has a first-rate mind, a fine sense of the law and character of the finest mettle. He thinks for himself. At Yale Law School, his thoughts followed a radical course. As life went on, he adopted conservative principles. For exercising his freedom of thought, he has been abominated by the career civil rights mountebanks. Their tireless public contempt for him has made his life a trial.

Listening to him the other day at the courthouse, it occurred to me that he is too sensitive a man not to be wounded by their slanders, but he remains cheerful and unbowed. His laugh is one of the most musical instruments in Washington. I know of no better-rounded man than Thomas.

America is moving toward the colorblind free society that Martin Luther King Jr. envisaged, and Sheriff Rainey execrated. Jesse Jackson denounces black conservatives for arriving at positions that blacks are not supposed to take. Like the segregationists of yore, Jackson apparently believes that blacks should "know their place." The higher they climb in American life, the more the career civil rights mountebanks will make them suffer. Jackson is not as evil a man as Rainey, but he is not a very good man -- and it is increasingly apparent that he is not a friend of civil rights. Clarence Thomas is.

Enjoy this writer's work? Why not sign-up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


JWR contributor Bob Tyrrell is editor in chief of The American Spectator. Comment by clicking here.

11/07/02: I muffed up
10/31/02: Is the American university turning its back on change, on progress?
10/24/02: So why aren't the Dems buoyant?
10/17/02: Mourning the loss of the "yellow-belly"
10/10/02: American politics at its most ignominious
10/03/02: A man above the law, a bully
09/26/02: Is Bob Greene a victim of an anti-Clinton backlash?
09/19/02: I knew Mafiosi and …
09/12/02: Chickens and poseurs
09/05/02: Sympathizing with the Europols
08/29/02: 9-11 did not change us forever
08/22/02: Public persons frivoling with serious matters
08/15/02: Beachcombing among the fat of the land
08/08/02: They pave the way for corruption, not personal responsibility
08/01/02: Believing the unbelievable
07/25/02: The congressional posse comitatus
07/18/02: Cosmopolitan Arab fashion
07/11/02: What the prez actually knows
07/04/02: The vindication of a truly original thinker
06/27/02: The perfect book for Hillary
06/20/02: To say that they were ordinary is not to slight them
06/13/02: Daschle must begin to act like an adult
06/06/02: Lack of "intelligence" --- and sheer stupidity
05/30/02: Revealing a carefully guarded media secret
05/23/02: In these times, thank Heaven for Clinton!
05/16/02: Fast Times at the Church of the Nativity
05/09/02: "Name the Prettiest Suicide Bomber"
05/02/02: Vindication for the Boy Scouts
04/25/02: A topic almost no other columnist will touch
04/18/02: 'Conventional Wisdom' --- and those who defy it
04/11/02: Let the Sun shine in
04/05/02: Hooded men of color in sheets
04/01/02: A McCain-Feingold Act for Hollywood
03/21/02: Yakkin' on Yates
03/15/02: No role for Paul Volcker in Enron: the movie
03/07/02: My membership in the Communist Party U.S.A.
02/27/02: This award is bestowed by 'contrarians'
02/21/02: Mike Tyson: Made for Washington?
02/14/02: Enron as underdog?
02/07/02: Freed from the presence of money -- hard or soft -- most politicians would be just as bad
01/31/02: Needed: Bush to make a preemptive strike against his enemies …. Ones who'd like to see him fail even during war
01/24/02: Hucksters will move on to make their next marks
01/17/02: Debonair prez should begin to do the High Life
01/10/02: Move over Twinkies --- "the acne medicine made him do it!"
01/03/02: Leaving the Nazis looking comparatively humane
12/27/01: A "self-made journalist"
12/20/01: Calamities and unanticipated benefits
12/13/01: America's grief ought not to give comfort to those who caused it
12/06/01: Leahy, the strict civil libertarian!? A short-term exploiter of the Constitution is more like it
11/29/01: Welcome to Afghan, Maryland?
11/26/01: So, why don't more folks hate us?
11/15/01: America's quagmire and other certainties
11/09/01: No longer the smug statists, the prodigal Keynesians?
11/01/01: The New Seriousness
10/25/01: Bright lights and the Taliban
10/18/01: Is bin-Laden propaganda from Western intelligence?
10/12/01: No yellow ribbons
10/05/01: Bubba's back --- again!
09/28/01: Exposing peacetime's frauds
09/21/01: So protected, we're vulnerable
09/14/01: At Barbara Olson's home
09/11/01: Duh! All conservatives are racists
08/31/01: Arafat's terrorists have created their own hell
08/24/01: Time for some political prophecy
08/16/01: They claim to be doing so much good
08/10/01: Visiting the source of the White House braintrust
08/03/01: Morality and reality
07/31/01: Blinded by success?
07/24/01: The latest Kennedy capitulation in Massachusetts
07/13/01: Talk about tawdry
07/06/01: Delighting in the Dictator
06/29/01: The Godphobes
06/21/01: Fashionable Washington is sempiternally in a stew
06/15/01: The limits of hypocrisy
06/08/01: Flagging our general apathy

© 2001, Creators Syndicate