Joe Lowery and the history of a joke that failed
We are in a strange place when, days from a vote to pick an American president and – in Georgia – settle a statewide dispute over charter schools, political discourse is focused on a 91-year-old man attempting to explain a 50-year-old joke.
But that’s where a host of journalists and the Rev. Joseph Lowery had gathered on Friday, in a downtown Atlanta office building at the corner of Auburn Avenue and Absurd Street.
By definition, a dissected joke is a failed joke– no matter how reliable its service might have been in the past. The elder of the Civil Rights era knows this. Throughout his long life, he’s been something of a cut-up.
“I’ll say something at the beginning to relax people and cut through whatever hostility or apprehension there might be,” said Lowery, whose middle years at the height of the movement were fraught with hostility and apprehension.
This was the fellow who helped lead the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott in the ‘50s. He and Martin Luther King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. You do not make people easy about race by ignoring the topic. You do it by confronting it.
Eight days ago, in the small town of Forsyth, Lowery and former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, 80, made a stop at a local church. It was part of an effort to boost votes for President Barack Obama in Georgia.
When Lowery’s turn to speak arrived, he dragged out a tried-and-true chestnut. “I told the story of when I was a bad militant, a bad fellow, I said, ‘White folks are going to hell.’ And it always got a laugh from white folks, because white folks don’t think they’re going to hell.
“But then when I got converted and became a preacher and Christian, I changed my mind,” Lowery continued. Only some white people, he decided, were hell-bound.
But a punchline requires bite, and this was it: Given their recent behavior, Lowery said, he’s considering a return to his original position.
The joke dates back to the 1960s, Lowery estimated. I probably first heard it in the 1980s. Diane Glidewell heard it for the first time last Saturday. She’s a writer for the Monroe County Reporter, the local weekly, and didn’t think it was a joke. Or funny.
“I’m frightened by the level of hatred and bitterness coming out in this election,” she quoted Lowery as saying.
Glidewell also wrote that Lowery used the n-word as he condemned the hundreds of thousands of black Georgians who won’t vote next Tuesday, even with an African-American president at the top of the ticket.
Lowery said he used the word “Negro” – and doesn’t employ the other phrase at all. The reporter says she has no audio recording.
Fox News and conservative outlets on the Internet couldn’t resist the headline over the Monroe Reporter article: “Lowery: Don’t think whites going to heaven.”
They focused on the fact that Lowery had delivered the benediction at Obama’s 2009 inauguration. Which was one reason that Lowery responded with his Friday session with reporters, attended by his wife Evelyn and a dozen white, black and tan supporters.
“Obviously, there are people that would like to use anything to get at the president. We’re not stupid. We know what’s happening,” Lowery said.
The name wasn’t mentioned, but there’s no doubt that Lowery also would rather not see his 60-year legacy go the way of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
“I’ve never been more surprised that people didn’t realize I was kidding, and took it and made something nasty of it,” Lowery said. “I would never wish anybody seriously to go to hell. We could never have had the gains in the Civil Rights movement without the support and participation from God knows how many white people. We certainly couldn’t have elected Obama,” he said.
Besides, people like Eleanor Roosevelt, Mother Theresa, Joe Biden, Madonna, Betty Grable and Hedy Lamarr – “You’re too young. Look her up” — all deserve their shot at the Pearly Gates, he said. Ba-dum-dum.
There is another reason worth paying serious attention to this fracas. For a man in his ninth decade, Lowery still wields serious clout in Georgia.
Only hours after the Monroe County Reporter posted its account of his speech online, Lowery’s voice was featured in a series of radio spots condemning Amendment One, the ballot measure to reaffirm state government’s authority to create charter schools – even when local school systems reject them.
The 60-second spots will be aired through Tuesday on stations with African-American audiences. “Don’t let them resegregate our schools,” Lowery says in the ads. He isn’t joking.
African-Americans in favor of the measure, and in search of alternatives to urban school systems, have politely hinted that Lowery is dating himself. “The time has come for us to move beyond the comparisons of education reform efforts to brutally painful and overtly inhumane periods in our nation’s history,” said state Rep. Rahn Mayo, D-Decatur.
There is no doubt that Lowery has learned that humor translates differently across the decades. “I will never use this story again!” he declared, reading from a prepared script.
“That’s probably not true,” Lowery then confessed, off-script. “I like that story. And it’s original. I didn’t steal it from Jesse Jackson, as he has stolen from me.”
Which is a joke — and a good one. Though it’s probably 50 years old, too.
- By Jim Galloway, Political Insider
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192 comments Add your comment
honested
November 3rd, 2012
12:30 pm
Whatever the comments, I certainly hop Rev. Lowery accomplished the task at hand and GETS OUT THE VOTE.
I am sick of the failure of the current OnePartyState in GA and the smugness with which the failed ‘leaders’ continue to expand failed policies.
Only with the votes of EVERYONE can we set about returning GA to a positive, growth oriented, progressive State!
Monica
November 3rd, 2012
12:37 pm
Ahm, I’ve seen the video of that speech. WTF. It wasn’t a joke, he wasn’t laughing nor was anyone else. 91 years-old man. It is what it is, respect the elderly but just don’t take them seriously, his mind is going… I don’t mean to be crass, but this country will be much better off once those civil rights leaders pass on, maybe then we can all move on and stop bringing up something that truly is no longer relevant, we have a black president for crying out loud.
Robert
November 3rd, 2012
12:38 pm
Mary Elizabeth, quit with the self-hate. Get real. I just voted for Rep. John Lewis. I don’t hear Lewis make race-baiting comments like the “Reverend” Lowery does. Lowery’s “joke” was racist, plain and simple. Judging by different standards is racist, whether you are white or not.
Robert
November 3rd, 2012
12:41 pm
One more comment: age is no excuse, neither are collected titles. Billy Graham’s anti-gay comments are reprehensible, as are “Rev” Joseph Lowery (even though the Bible says that “Only God is Reverend”, so those titles should not be used). Age 93 or 91 is still quite young when compared with supercentenarians, people old enough to be these guy’s mothers.
Lee
November 3rd, 2012
12:42 pm
How’s this: All white people who voted for Obama are going to Hell.
Mary Elizabeth
November 3rd, 2012
12:43 pm
WAW, please know that I was born in south Georgia in 1942. I have known, firsthand, all about the injustice of racial prejudice in Georgia for 70 years, now.
TO REV. JOSEPH LOWERY: I hope that you will continue to use your wise voice to speak out for moral justice in today’s Georgia and in today’s America. If no one had spoken out against slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries, and if no one had spoken out against Jim Crow in the South in the 19th and 20th centuries, then nothing would have changed regarding “man’s inhumanity to man” in our nation. African-Americans, and others of good conscience, have helped our nation to keep evolving toward its highest ideals of egalitarianism. May God continue to bless you, and to keep your truthful, courageous voice present, as an instrument for His divine purposes.
Lester Maddox....
November 3rd, 2012
12:43 pm
Folks Please……..This is where Babbling Joe Biden gets his material…..Vote Joe in ‘16…….
Robert
November 3rd, 2012
12:48 pm
A computer would say these comments are racist. Those who believe they need to “compensate” for the past do not. The fact of the matter is, scientific studies show that 80% of the human population are biased in favor of people that “look like them”. This is a tribal instinct…persons in groups were more likely to survive than people outside of groups. Note that in Kenya and Tanzania right now, albinos (”white” colored “black” people) are often killed, and their limbs are used for potions by witch-doctors. The whole argument that “blacks can’t be racist because only those in power are racist” is a fallacy. We see in the city of Atlanta and Fulton county a long, long term history of “black political power,” from a black mayor for 39 consecutive years, to black police chiefs, fire chiefs, the Fulton County Commission chairman, and the majority of African-American commissioners. When I went to vote last week in Buckhead, though 80% of the voters were white, 100% of the poll workers were black…no whites, no Asians, no Hispanics. Is that not “insitutional racism”, whereby the people who do the hiring tend to hire “people that look like them.”
If one really wants to move away from the tribalistic, us-against-them approach, then voters should decide who to vote for based on ISSUES, NOT THE COLOR OF THE CANDIDATES. I don’t see “Rev” Lowery going to non-African American churches to preach for them to “vote for Obama.” And by the way, religion and politics shouldn’t mix, so how about dropping tax breaks for religious institutions that are used for political “get out the vote” drives. That’s what I thought.
Robert
November 3rd, 2012
12:54 pm
Mary,
You may have experienced anti-black racism in South Georgia decades ago…but that is just one experience. What if you had lived, instead, as a white person in a 98% black community, such as parts of Detroit? You would have experienced anti-white racism instead. Racism is about the majority in power maintaining that power. However, who is the “majority” tends to change, and more often than we might think. 500 years ago, the area that is Georgia was majority Native American. Right now, it is majority white. 100 years from now, it may be that there is no majority of anyone. Already, US states such as California and Texas are not majority-white. If you are truly concerned about the concept of race, power, and equal opportunity, then you need to clear your mind of the idea that racism goes only one way and instead embrace the concept of a post-racial society, where people are judged, as MLK said, not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character. Attempting to overcompensate for past anti-black racism is, in fact, still racist, because you are judging groups of people by their skin color.
Balance
November 3rd, 2012
12:57 pm
So let me understand this. People want to through down the sensitivity red card over a joke. Let’s have a flash back. I didn’t see these sensitive people when that business owner in North Ga put a sign out that said get that N out the white house. I didn’t the red card thrown when Rick Santorum almost said the N word in a speech. Nobody said anything when Herman Cain said the reason the majority of black republicans voices have not been heard is because they are out working and not at home doing nothing. Nobody jumped u[ when Collin Powell, an avid republican, was accused of voting for Obama just because he is black. People just want to throw that card just to say that black folk can be racist too. And that reporter says she did not want to gain attention. We as black people should forgive and not blame everything on the black/white card, however we shall never forget so that past actions and treatment will never happen again. Some people will never climb down from VS mountain.
“I’m frightened by the level of hatred and bitterness coming out in this election,” she quoted Lowery as saying.
November 3rd, 2012
1:08 pm
Really? You old race-baiting bigiot, just shut up.
Motocross Survivor
November 3rd, 2012
1:08 pm
Write in Ron Paul, even if it doesn’t “count.” The US will continue the slide whoever of the two main candidate dregs wins. Do you really believe it makes a hill of beans difference?
What's the problem?
November 3rd, 2012
1:14 pm
No problem…only White Liberals and Blacks have the right to Free Speech.
Dirty Dawg
November 3rd, 2012
1:19 pm
Watch out Joseph, you’ve given ‘them’ an opening, even at 91, with those comments about Hedy Lamar, Betty Grable, etc., to say, ’see there, just another black man lusting after white women.
My Two Cents
November 3rd, 2012
1:21 pm
Joe Lowery is the REAL joke here – a really bad joke!
Dirty Dawg
November 3rd, 2012
1:26 pm
You know this whole thing wreaks of just more ‘false equivalence’…fact is no way the feelings could ever be equivalent so long as there’s no history of gangs of black men lynching white men in order to make examples of em.
JohnPaul2
November 3rd, 2012
1:50 pm
Rev. Joseph Lowery could not hold Rev. Billy Graham’s proverbial “jockstrap”…
Selah…
Rafe Hollister
November 3rd, 2012
1:54 pm
Didn’t sound like a joke to me! Usual excuse that works for blacks, but not for Trent Lott, when he made a joke about Strom. Good job Diane, pointing out how Lowery, once again, was trying to inflame the base with fear, as do the Dems in all elections.
Mary Elizabeth
November 3rd, 2012
1:57 pm
Robert, your words are logical but they still tend to polarize, imo. The only way to transcend racial hatred is through compassion and love, not by the “winning” logical points as to which group or groups is/are more right or wrong.
When I first started teaching I was the only white person in an all black segregated elementary school. I ended my full-time educational career 30 years later teaching in an (essentially) all black suburban high school. However, half of the staff were white and half were black. The staff worked well together as colleagues with the mutual purpose of serving all of the students well.
As Martin Luther King understood, when faced with hatred of those who are not as elevated as oneself in any situation, one must practice love not hate, in return. I have no doubt that many of various races and ethnic groups have intense dislike toward those of other groups, but as a teacher to my core, I will always try to diffuse that hatred through the enlightenment of love, not through the “proof” of logic.
Moreover, when one considers the sweep of history, slavery in America and Jim Crow in the South are relatively recent phenomena. Society does not overcome the destructiveness of those social systems in only a few years. The effects linger for generations and one of those effects will be anger of some toward others. Understanding historical effects and practicing love in the face of hatred will do more good for humanity than simply “choosing sides.” In truth, we are all on the same side, for we are all human beings. However, we must confront each situation that life will present to us individually, and within our time, with love, rather than with undue judgment. That includes being the only white person in an all black Detroit neighborhood or school or a segregated south Georgia neighborhood or school.
We do not become “post-racial” simply by proclaiming it to be so, or by ignoring racial phenomena as we exist within it currently, but by seeing it as it is, and by healing racial and ethnic difficulties with love for all humanity.
I think you and I may be after the same goal but our visions in how to move society toward a state of consciousness that will embrace differences in humans as beauty – as flowers are each different but each beautiful in its own unique way – while simultaneously recognizing that all humans are essentially the same, i.e. “all are created equal,” is somewhat different in our perspectives of how to arrive at that level of consciousness.
puff
November 3rd, 2012
2:08 pm
Wonder if the AJC generally and Galloway in particular will be as gentle the next time a conservative says something this lame to explain a major malaprops. I’m guessing no.
There is not a bigger racist in Georgia than Lowery. No not one.
Steve Perkins (De Kalb Democrat)
November 3rd, 2012
2:14 pm
Spare me the fake outrage. It was a joke ,An Old joke one that he has tole many many times. What is not a joke it what one of your own sidi just a couple of days ago. Mike Huckabee said that anyone who voted for President Obama was risking their eternal life…Where was your outrage then?
Attack Dog
November 3rd, 2012
2:27 pm
I’m not sure I understand what he said was so wrong, and it was not a joke. At least he changed, but Dixiecrats have remained the same most vile, evil, bulling, thin-skinned creatures on the planet. Do we want to have a dialogue about the statements made by evangelical “preachers?” So, let’s see how many Dixiecrats defend them…Holla!
Attack Dog
November 3rd, 2012
2:31 pm
Are we saying that those who were hung, shot, bitten, and treated like 4th class citizens are to be forgotten, but we are suppose to praise Dixiecrats with “Hell No, I Ain’t Forgettin’” tags?
bud
November 3rd, 2012
2:34 pm
Do you have a degree in smart sciences?
Wilbur
November 3rd, 2012
2:37 pm
Lowrey’s racist comments line right up with his comments at Obama’s inauguration. If this is what post racial, hope and change looks like, I will pass.
Black racism is still racism.
emz
November 3rd, 2012
2:53 pm
I agree with GAPeach @ 11:03 am.
Attack Dog
November 3rd, 2012
3:06 pm
Some might say that Rev. Joseph Lowery could not hold Rev. Billy Graham’s proverbial “jockstrap,” but Rev. Graham never suffered under the hands of Dixiecrats. On the other hand, Franklin Graham is not worthy of even being mentioned, let alone carrying the jockstraps of Rev. Lowery or his father.
captguitarman
November 3rd, 2012
3:09 pm
Reasonable and fair minded white folks, who believe “that people should be judged by their character and not by the color of their skin” to quote a famous person, and who support equal opportunity, equal rights, civil rights, integration, and equal pay for equal work, and who do not cast their votes based upon color (as millions of them demonstrated in 2008), but on character, ability, and reasoned political thinking — yes all of those white people — listen up.
Be prepared if Obama is not re-elected. Be prepared to receive the greatest onslaught of racial hypocrisy, racial recrimination, and pure racial vitriol ever expounded by a political party and its lamestream media wing, in our nation’s history. In the minds of Lowery and other bad to the bone Obama loyalists, if you did not vote for Obama the last time, and if you did and do not this time . . . . it was and will be for only ONE reason. YOU ARE A RACIST. You are a racist to you white bigoted, ignorant “Obama hating” core. Your ignorant, hateful, and racist heart just cannot stand the thought of a black man in the White House.
Lack of economic leadership, deficits that will never be re-paid, incompetence, unemployment, the housing crisis, the Mid East foreign policy based on fantasy??? All vallid reasons??? No way. Four years, two with both houses of Congress, was not enough. If Obama loses, it will be because, and ONLY BECAUSE, a white, still racist to its rotten core, America reared its ugly head and threw him out of office. They are already saying it. What do you think it will be like if he loses?
Just get ready for it. And their actions will unfortunately lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy, and many fair minded white Americans will be inclined to just give up and say what’s the use? How sad. Lowery and his friends might want to think about whether the real racists are staring back at them in the mirror when they shave in the morning.
someone else
November 3rd, 2012
3:24 pm
The problem I have is not the issue of where anyone will be spending their eternity, that is not thebiggest problem with the statement. It is the idea of “white people’s recent behavior”. How can that be anything but racist? If someone else talked about “black people’s recent behavior”, would anyone see that as anything but racist? Does he truly believe “white people” act as a group that should be condemned? Or was his clarification was that he can name a handful of whites who can be excepted, so he is not a racist. And is voting against Obama the evil that “white people” do? Fortunately, he is not in charge of where anyone else spends eternity. I just hope he learns how to spend his time now loving more and condemning less.
Craig Gustafson
November 3rd, 2012
3:38 pm
Romney has 100 million in a trust fund in Switzerland. Its called tax evasion. I have no problem with your conservative values. Thats why America is great. The day we cant hear you is the day freedom is gone. But i do have a problem with your complete lack of effort in doing anything to to find a proper representative. Romney is as un-concerned about you as he is me. Michelle Bachman spends more time talking about gay sex than gays do. CREEPY, CREEPY, CREEPY! And, from here it seems like you’d fight to the death to keep a fetus alive (in someone elses body) but once the fetus becomes an infant – well ain’t your problem. Find your happiness mind your own business, and count your blessings. Quit bitching. Well bitch if you want, but stay off the damn freeway if you dont wanna pay taxes. Americans are the most fortunate people on the planet…..thats not going to change now that China can feed itself, or Arabs are trying to lift their heads out of hell, or if Blacks (or Mexicans)have the same freedoms you do. Whatever you do or dont do do remember the real Jesus
forgives you.
Craig Gustafson
November 3rd, 2012
3:42 pm
oh, and The Rev. is awesome whether or not you agree.
Shar
November 3rd, 2012
3:47 pm
What Dr. Lowery said is neither funny nor appropriate. It’s the effort to push himself back into relevance in a world that has grown beyond his influence – partially, and to his credit, as a result of his own efforts.
However, when he is reduced to using racist remarks to get people to notice him, it’s time for him to quietly fade away before he permanently damages what he worked so hard to achieve.
Is is racist? Yes, without a doubt. If a white person cannot flip the races around and say it without giving offense, it’s racist. It’s also rather pathetic, in that it is spoken in the vein of the old-timey black yes-man, using knowing innocence to tweak The Man.
A sad ending for a brave statesman.
Al Sharpton
November 3rd, 2012
3:53 pm
US of KKKA, People that say they are tired of the right wing, what about the left wing that wants illegals to vote. They want your child to have free contraceptives without your permission along with abortions without letting you know. I guess you will find out when she bleeds to death. What about giving murders access to air conditioning, cable, and state paid education, all at the victims expense. How about the left taking your money and telling you I have to live in your house or demand you give me 1/4 of the food in your refrigerator. How about how the left has re segregated society with their class warfare rhetoric.
Obama is a product of Marxism, progressiveness of the 1920’s and Sal Alinsky. The left has done a great job at convincing black preachers its OK to kill your baby, they even gave Martin Luther King an award, it was form planned parenthood for his buying into their dogma blacks are human weeds that need to be mowed down. This is a declining race soon to be extinct.
Al Sharpton
November 3rd, 2012
3:58 pm
The 100 million is call a blind trust and Obama has money in the Caymens, its call a investment portfilio. American is becoming a nation of dumb jack%%%% that believe anything George Soros and media matters will tell them. Common sense would have told you Craig, Romney was governor of Mass, ran for the presidency in 2008 and this lie did not surface until a community organizer repeatedly lied until you believe it. The IRS would have fine and made this public after his tax disclosure. You are just too dumb and liberal to realize this.
Mary Elizabeth
November 3rd, 2012
4:02 pm
Shar, I have agreed with you in other matters, but I disagree with you regarding Rev. Lowery. I continue to urge Joseph Lowery to exercise his voice.
Wisdom comes to any who are receptive to it, and wisdom knows no age. I perhaps am closer to Rev. Lowery’s generation than you are because I reacted with a smile to the humor in his remarks. Rev. Lowery is neither a petty, nor a malicious, man. Age has no bearing on one’s ability to see and to contribute.
Sweet William
November 3rd, 2012
4:14 pm
Anyone that thinks Joe Lowrey is a great man is a dumba$$. He might have been a great man at one time. Now he is a cancer along with Sharpton and Jackson. They’ll be little racial healing until those racial profiteers are gone. Tavis Smiley might be another one to prolong the healing.
Mary Elizabeth
November 3rd, 2012
5:13 pm
MM, 5:54 pm
Beautifully analyzed and stated essay. You speak truth, imo. I agree with you with one exception. Rev. Lowery should have backed down from his remarks, somewhat, because, as he well knew, his remarks would have been used and twisted as to Lowery’s intent by those of devious motivation to effect the election.
Edward
November 3rd, 2012
5:16 pm
Cue the whining and faux poutrage of the continually butthurt conservatives.
Mary Elizabeth
November 3rd, 2012
5:17 pm
NOTE to readers:
I do not know how my remarks – which I wrote at 6:13 pm – got posted at 5:13 pm. My remarks should have followed MM’s 5:54 pm comments, not preceded them. Technical error, I feel certain.
jgalloway
November 3rd, 2012
5:29 pm
Sorry, Mary Elizabeth. In anticipation of the loss of daylight savings time, I had switched the clock on the blog.
cc
November 3rd, 2012
5:34 pm
All white conservatives are racists. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Joseph Lowery and Jeremiah Wright are heroes.
That’s the way it works, isn’t it?
Steve Barden
November 3rd, 2012
5:35 pm
I find it sad that a man who walked with Martin Luther King Jr. would tell a joke with the premise that one can judge the content of a person’s character by the color of his or her skin. I can ignore his bigotry, but the hypocrisy is profoundly disappointing.
MM
November 3rd, 2012
5:54 pm
I understand why many whites are made uncomfortable by Lowery’s statement which, decades after it was made, still reflects the angry resentment of many Black Americans today which they seldom voice when whites, or the media, are listening. The Christian religion explicitly urges compassion toward the poor which are disproportionately black. We pick-and-choose what legitimizes our selfishness and ignore the rest. Old story I know but behind it lurks the true evil that Christ actively opposed. We are not the good people we would like to think. This is no joking matter.
What Lowery said about whites going to hell makes sense only if you are a true Christian and not just someone looking to legitimize their position of accumulated advantage. Conservative political correctness tries to make the world a more comfortable place for those that let their less productive brethren rot on the vine. If you have the moral courage, drive around south Atlanta south of downtown and you’ll see what I mean. Depending on the depth of your conscience, you might feel you have to do something about it. Not just help out with a few cans of food around the holidays or shallow volunteerism but actually confront the powerful political forces that refuse to deal with his problem because it would decrease their wealth. Drive around North Atlanta if you want to see white folks going to hell. Many Christian’s real religion is based on gain from a law-of-the-jungle economy which has historically been brutal toward the less powerful. In Jesus’ time as it is in ours.
Lowery’s days of confronting racism are well behind him. Like Young, after the civil rights time, he settled for becoming a member of the black royalty that has been given lip service respect by the white media elites because they can be trusted to tamp down any talk of black resistance like that implied by the anger of “white folks are going to hell.” It was sad to read that Lowery backtracked on his comments. He wants to maintain his position of “respect” and advantage just the same as whites. King would cry.
Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” Jesus physically attacked the moneychangers in the temple while we try to elect them president.
Attack Dog
November 3rd, 2012
5:55 pm
Rush, Drudge, Bill, etal are the real racial profiteers, and are really good at it. That is what is meant by throwing Dixiecrats some “red meat,” Phrases like “Blah” people, lazy-shiftless, food stamps people, nappyhead, shuckin’ and jivin’, uppity, and then have the nerve to say, they didn’t mean anything by it!
JP
November 3rd, 2012
6:11 pm
“Sorry, Mary Elizabeth. In anticipation of the loss of daylight savings time, I had switched the clock on the blog.”
Jim, that would be, “daylight saving time,” as opposed to, “daylight savingS time.”
And this was the worst article I have read from the AJC this week. I’m sure you’ll churn out several more gems next week.
Mary Elizabeth
November 3rd, 2012
6:11 pm
jgalloway, 5:29 pm
“Sorry, Mary Elizabeth. In anticipation of the loss of daylight savings time, I had switched the clock on the blog.”
=================================
No problem, Jim. I later figured out that the time change was probably what had caused the “back to the future”
posting of my remarks. I simply wanted to alert readers to think of my 5:13 pm post as actually following MM’s comments at 5:54 pm – in response to his/her thoughts..
Sweet William
November 3rd, 2012
6:17 pm
Attack Dog – How many millions and millions have Sharpton and Jessie Jackson pocketed off of playing the race card? How about the Duke Lacrosse deal? No retraction after that turned out to be total BS. Both are are liars and bullsh1t artist. However, they’ve gotten filthy rich doing so and haven’t been held accountable in the slightest for their reckless behavor. They get paid handsomely for racism to continue to exist!
Truth is
November 3rd, 2012
6:18 pm
You can argue all you want “if a white person said that….”. I live in this area and white people say racist stuff all the time to other white people and use the “n” word and it’s not Negro. They just don’t do it in mixed company.
bigbill
November 3rd, 2012
6:41 pm
@Mary Elizabeth 12:43 PM
Your statements of support for Reverend Lowery are most appreciated by many, many of us white folks who have long admired what he and Doctor King achieved in their campaign for human and civil rights in our country. I am 69 years old and have lived in the South since I was 4 years old and have lived for the last 59 years in Atlanta with brief stays elsewhere in the South. I too witnessed the evils of racism and segregation growing up and living most of my life in Atlanta. And I and many millions of others see how Atlanta and our entire country have, in great part, been transformed into a more just society by the civil rights movement these men led.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Joseph Lowery inspired millions of us -black and white – to seek equity and justice for those who were poor and oppressed and denied the most basic civil rights. We are so fortunate to still have Reverend Lowery walking among us, this man whose life and deeds have been a shining example, a beacon for all of us. Dr. King and all those other brave civil rights martyrs who gave their lives, to ensure, among many other things, the rights of black people to vote and whose names are enshrined at the Civil Rights Memorial at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, will never be forgotten. They should especially be remembered now at a time when powerful reactionary radical right-wing forces are doing everything in their power to suppress the votes of black citizens, hispanic,the elderly, women and students, especially now when these forces seek the repeal of the 1963 Voting Rights Act which was enacted under the leadership of Dr. King and Reverend Lowery after so many sacrificed their very lives for these precious rights. Thanks, Elizabeth, for keeping the flame burning!
AB
November 3rd, 2012
6:57 pm
Beautifully said Big Bill!