|
Dear John,
When the Ku Klux Klan murdered my protector, it made me see the world differently.
I was always the shortest kid in school, which made me an easy target for bullies. To protect myself, I got into the habit of befriending older boys who’d watch my back.
One summer when I was around 8 years old I found Mickey, a kind and gentle teenager with a ready smile who made me feel safe.
Over the years, I lost track of Mickey. It wasn’t until the fall of 1964, my freshman year in college, that I heard what had happened to him.
Mickey, whose full name was Michael Schwerner, had gone to Mississippi to register Black voters during what was known as “Freedom Summer.” He would not survive the trip.
On June 21, 1964, Michael and two other civil rights workers, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, were abducted by Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Ray Price, turned over to a gang of the sheriff’s fellow Ku Klux Klan members, and brutally murdered.
In this week’s video, I discuss how the murder of my childhood friend changed me. It built in me an unyielding resolve to confront bullying in all its forms. Please share this video with your friends and help us build a larger community against the forces of hate.
When the news reached me that Mickey, my childhood protector, had been murdered by violent white supremacists, something snapped inside me.
I began to see everything differently. Before then, I understood bullying as a few kids picking on me for being short. Now I saw bullying on a larger scale, all around me.
In Black people bullied by whites. In workers bullied by bosses. In girls and women bullied by men.
In the disabled or gay or poor or sick or immigrant bullied by employers, landlords, insurance companies, and politicians.
Sixty years after the Freedom Summer murders, America still wrestles with bullies; there has been a rise in hate crimes targeting people of color, LGBTQ people, immigrants, Jews, and Muslims, and in new restrictive laws and leaders who insult and demean others.
Mickey did not die in vain. His tragedy has inspired me and many others to never stop fighting against cruelty and violence. I hope it inspires you too.
Thank you for standing up to the bullies. We must be each other’s protectors.
Robert Reich
Inequality Media
|
