Rotting Magnolias

I mentioned before the hurricane hit that I had lived as a child in Mississippi when Hurricane Betsy hit in 1965. I lived in Bay St. Louis, which was at the eye of Hurricane Katrina and seems to have been completely destroyed.

I’m sad to hear it. It was a beautiful little gothic southern town, dripping in drawly, molassas charm and warm hospitality. It was the location for the Natalie Wood and Robert Redford movie version of Tennessee Williams’ “This Property is Condemned.” I was there when they filmed the scenes down at the abandoned railroad tracks. I haven’t been there in many years, but it was like a place out of time when I lived there and I doubt it changed all that much. We had heirloom roses growing in our backyard that locals said had been planted during the antebellum days. Apparently the house was on the site of an old planatation. My school was said to have been Henry Clay’s summer home, although I don’t know if that was true.

The period I lived in this little town was a momentous time in the south and there was a palpable undercurrent of profound disturbance. In 1965, the march on Selma hit as hard as the hurricane that came along months later.

Many of my readers know that my father is a blazing, unrepentant right wingnut. At 83 he’s still going strong, but in those days he was something to behold. He had been career military (WWII and Korea vet) who retired by the mid 60’s and went to work for the military industrial complex. He was such a die hard conservative that he had even hated Roosevelt. During the depression! In 1965 he was a formidable and charismatic figure. He was also a racist. Still is, but he’s much less open about it. In those days it was no holds barred. And down south, in that period, he had a lot of company.

So, when I was over at Michael Berube’s place last night I came across a vile comment by a reader giving a litany of crimes allegedly committed by the hurricane victims in New Orleans during those horrible days at the convention center and the Superdome, I recalled a strange episode from a period of my childhood spent deep in the heart of Tennessee Williams country.

After Selma, somebody wrote a book that made the rounds among my parents’ friends in Bay St Louis that supposedly showed that the marchers had defecated in the streets, had sex in public and then made the police dogs aggressive with their “sex smell.” I was not allowed to see this book, but my little friends and I got a hold of it. I’ll never forget the images. It was racist pornography.

And then, exactly 40 years later I read this inside that amazing comment I linked to above:

“That same day, when it was time to board buses for Houston, soldiers had trouble controlling the crowd. People at the back of the mob crushed the people in front against barricades the soldiers put up to contain the crowd. Many people continued to yell obscenities whenever they saw a patrol go by. Some were afraid of losing their place in line and defecated where they stood.”

The commenter didn’t provide links, but the quote above appears to be traced to a story in the Marine Corps Times:

Outside, thousands of civilians were mobbing a walkway leading into a mall that the military is using to process people getting onto the Houston-bound buses. Many civilians have been in the stuck waiting for more than 24 hours. People afraid of losing their places in line have defecated where they stand. People in the front of the mob have been injured from being crushed against steel barricades that separates the civilians from the military men and women trying to conduct the evacuation

Think about what the phrase “defecated where they stood” conjures up. Animals. Cows and Horses defecate where they stand. Humans don’t.

The doctored quote from Berube’s blog takes it to the next level, of course, and explicitly condemns that evacuees as animals (read the rest of his comment for a real treat.)But the original quote is somewhat jarring in itself. It’s a “mob” that somehow “waits.” The barricade is described as “separating” the military from the evacuees. The injuries of people pressed against the barricade are portrayed with out emotion as necessary to “processing” which is not defined. There is no discussion of how a “mob” can stand in a crushing line for 24 hours with no food, water or toilets. The defecation quote seems to be in the story as a prurient non-sequitor.

Here’s a description of the very same scene from a tourist who stood in the same lines:

Finally, Thursday morning, Major Bush—I’m not making this up—declared on a megaphone that we would be evacuated. There was total calm for two hours.

We got in lines that went out towards the neighboring commercial center by a footbridge. They separated men and women, I don’t know why (I thought it might be in order to search people, but we weren’t searched). A guy who was with us was separated from his wife, and he had already lost his home and job.

The line was like the Paris metro at the height of rush hour. We were packed like sardines, we couldn’t even see our feet. We walked on garbage, diapers that exploded sometimes, bottles full, with urine, perhaps. There were also bottles of liquor. This lasted from midday Thursday until Friday morning, a total hell.
People fainted every two or three minutes. We heard cries of “somebody down.” They evacuated people towards the barriers. A pregnant woman’s water broke. Twice we heard gunshot and everyone dove for cover. We didn’t have anything to eat, only water.

Imagine for a minute what it would be like to stand in a crushing line for more than 24 hours in overpowering stench and blazing heat after having lived in hell for the previous three days inside the Superdome. Imagine how hard it would be to keep control of yourself, how frightened and how frustrated you would feel.

And yet, that Marine Times reporter and his racist reinterpreter do not see human beings stretched to their limits by conditions that are unimaginable — many of them young mothers with children, old people and others who had no means to get out before the hurricane hit; they see misbehaving animals.

These stories have already become urban legends. Stories of blacks shitting in the streets are making the rounds all over the internet and becoming more and more lurid with each retelling. Just like these very same stories made their way into the homes of racist whites forty years ago and validated all their preconceived notions.

Be skeptical, my friends, and don’t let these claims go unchallenged. This is the illness in our American soul that will not die. It lurks inside all of us, of all races, to some degree. I grew up inside the belly of the beast and I know that I must be vigilant to challenge certain assumptions.

Martin Luther King and the freedom marchers weren’t shitting in the streets in 1965. Desperate victims of Hurricane Katrina were not animals — they were treated like animals. Let’s make sure that we understand the difference.

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