A Spot on the Map: VA-05 circa 1963...2006

Now...
Could citizens in Virginia's 5th Congressional District possibly be more divided than we are now?  The answer is yes, but there's no denying that the passionate letters to the editor of the last several weeks reflect realities that seem to come from different universes.  Juanita Morton Giles of Keysville had this to say yesterday in the Farmville Herald:

Rarely in American history, in my opinion, has such vehement bigotry and hate been expressed as blatantly as by Congressman Virgil Goode. While many Congressmen are known for their racist slurs and outbursts, look at our own George Allen. Virgil Goode has raised the bar of ignorance to heights unseen since JoeMcCarthy.

Glory to my congressman, Virgil Goode. He is a man of character who has the backbone to stand up for America. He is a true American who has the guts to save American values. I applaud him on his stand on illegal immigration.

America may be a land of immigrants, but legal immigrants came here because they wanted some of what we had - not to change us and our way of life. American tradition has no meaning to the foreigners who are trying to take over and change the United States of America.
Trust Muslims? Never! Change to pacify one Muslim? Never! The meaning of Islam is trouble. And throw in the illegal Mexicans also.
Save America. Stay American. Stand your ground, Mr. Goode.

A few days ago, Mitchell L. Jennings also wrote to the Register Bee.

Muslims have been in this area and the United States for many, many years. Not until George Bush decided to use the work of 19 Muslims who attacked us on 9/11 as his platform of fear to win re-election did we begin this ignorant behavior toward Muslims.

Danville needs to learn to shake this ignorance off and hope and pray that at least by the year 2020 we can become an understanding and productively diverse community. Otherwise, itGÇÖs inevitable that the events that occurred in Danville on June 10, 1963, will be repeated.

...and then

Speaking of 1963, William G. Thomas, III, now at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, put together an excellent multimedia piece on that era for Southern Spaces:
Television News and the Civil Rights Struggle: The Views in Virginia and Mississippi .  Read the entire piece, including the video. You won't be disappointed.

There are vast differences between those times and now, but much is uncomfortably familiar. Bloggers may be interested in the print media omissions and skew along with efforts to silence television.

This is from Thomas' section on Birmingham and Danville, 1963:

Few events underlined just how deeply segregated public opinion was in the South during the civil rights struggle more than those that took place in the spring and early summer of 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama, and Danville, Virginia.  In both places newspaper and television played important roles in shaping the protests and how the public understood them. In Birmingham Martin Luther King, Jr., pushed local African American leaders to use the television media to their advantage, so much so that some in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) grew disillusioned with the strategy and saw it as a corruption of the ideals and spiritual grounding of the movement. Local white papers, according to Fred Shuttlesworth, never "printed what it is that we are demanding." The newspaper coverage shutout led to deep misunderstandings and misinformation among both races in Birmingham. Similarly, in Danville after six days of protests in June 1963, the white major newspapers had yet to cover the events, a remarkable silence that prompted the Associated Press to threaten to cut off its wire service if these papers would not provide the coverage. One reporter who investigated the Danville violence called the white newspapers "a hindrance to communication and understanding."

Same first amendment. Same game, different roles, different players. 

Rob's diary shows that some television outlets have extended the role of the 1963 print media in questioning the exercise of Constitutional rights by going so far as to question whether or not religious choice ought to be exercised in this country. Back in 1963 the controversy was on the assembly aspect of the first amendment.

It is obvious, too, that in some instances blogs perform the tasks that television did back in 1963.

I have not had time to watch all of the video clips in TNATCRS, but I can't say enough about the few pieces that I did get a chance to watch. It's difficult to imagine a sharper contrast between Governor Almond's 1958 inaugural speech and the one delivered by Tim Kaine.

Comments