Did These Condemnations Fly?

Posted on March 8, 2008 by Tariq Nelson

After the 1963 Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama - in which 4 little girls were killed - by bigots, Police Commissioner Theophilus “Bull” Conner issued the following “condemnation”:

“If you’re going to blame anyone for getting those children killed in Birmingham, it’s your Supreme Court.” (referring to Brown v. Board of Education “You’re going to have bloodshed, and it’s on them (the Court), not us.”

Bull Conner felt that the bombing was bad, but since integration was being forced down the throats of whites, what did people expect? How many think that this is a reasonable ‘condemnation’?

When Emmett Till was brutally beaten and had his eye gouged out before he was shot through the head and thrown into the river with a 75-pound cotton gin fan tied to his neck with barbed wire, the condemnation by some whites of the time was: “Yea, it was tragic, but he was harassing a white girl and white women are afraid of black men” Because they felt that it was justified, they could not even bring the murders on charges. Was that an acceptable excuse?

Am I wrong here in thinking that these ‘condemnations’ were unacceptable?

Whites and Blacks alike condemned the 1963 Birmingham Church Bombings

Filed under: Race

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2 Responses to “Did These Condemnations Fly?”

  1. Peaches, on March 9th, 2008 at 3:41 am Said:

    Mr.Nelson,
    No, you are not wrong for your thoughts. No African-Americans or logical thinking individuals would have justified his words. They had the legal power and what a “better” and cowardly way for those people to express their racism than to use the Supreme Court as an excuse for their actions. Even with those guys, he probably knew that they were going to go against their parents because many of them were just as racist as Connor.

  2. naeem, on March 9th, 2008 at 4:55 am Said:

    AA- Tariq,

    I understand what you’re getting at, but there is a slight difference. The ‘condemnations’ you have referenced were offered by the oppressors in defense of their oppressive actions. That is akin to the Israelis condemning their own brutal actions with a conditional ‘but’. Obviously, that wouldn’t fly.

    However, the condemnations being offered by the defenders of Palestinians (or Chechens or any other oppressed group) are merely contextualizing the (reprehensible) actions that have been carried out by the oppressed.

    And its that difference, my dear brother, which makes your post irrelevant, IMO.

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