DailyKos: The Killing Of Sherrod's Dad By A White Farmer In 1965

[Hissyspit]

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/7/21/886420/-The-killing-of-Sherrods-dad-by-a-white-farmer-in-1965

The killing of Sherrod's dad by a white farmer in 1965
by attytood

Wed Jul 21, 2010 at 08:44:19 PM PDT

Cross-posted at Attytood:

For all the over-warped speed in initially getting that bogus version of the Shirley Sherrod story out there and pushing her our the door at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, other details in this story have been surprisingly slow to emerge. In particular, I'd been waiting to hear more about a comment from Sherrod on CNN that her father had been murdered by a white farmer in 1965.

attytood's diary :: ::

Now we know a few details. Her dad was named Hosie Miller, and he was a deacon at Thankful Baptist Church in Newton, Ga., toward the southwest corner of the state. He was also a farmer who, according to CNN, grew corn, peanuts, cotton and cucumbers and raised hogs, cows and goats. Forty-five years ago, Hosie Miller was shot to death -- in the back, no less -- by a white farmer in what his daughter now describes as ostensibly a dispute over a few cows, although the exact circumstances were murky.

A grand jury investigated the case, and no one was charged. All of the grand jurors were white, as was typically the case before the passage of the landmark civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s. From that incident, a movement was born. Indeed, according to this article, Shirley Sherrod's mother -- Grace Hall Miller -- became the leader of the civil rights movement in Baker County after the killing, organizing marches and other protests from her home. The then 17-year-old Shirley Miller decided to stay in the South and become an activist; she soon married one of the leaders of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, a man by the name of Charles Sherrod. Shirley Sherrod told CNN that ""I decided to stay in the South and work for change."

How unusual was it for a black man to be killed by a white man in the Deep South up through the mid-1960s with no one brought to justice. Way too common. We hear a lot about one particular killing in Mississippi -- the 1964 murder of a trio of civil rights activists that included two white college kids from up North -- but in reality dozens of black men were killed for taking a stand, for trying to vote or just on a whim. If you want to read something sobering, check out this letter (PDF) from 2007 from the Southern Poverty Law Center, asking the FBI to investigate some 74 additional unsolved deaths from the era.

For example:

Banks, Isadore - Marion, Ark., 1954

Banks' charred corpse was found chained to a tree. Black press reports speculated he was killed by whites who wanted his land. His property was later rented by white farmers.

MORE IN DIARY AT LINK

[mmonk]

1. Interesting. Thanks.

[Number23]

2. That's a hell of a read. Rec'd

One of my absolutely absolute favorite posters here, noiretextatique, chronicled the treatment that her grandparents endured. It's very similar to what Ms. Sherrod and her family, and the families of millions of other black Americans have gone through in this country.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=258&topic_id=10230