And nobody cared …
by digby
He thought it would get attention:
One Monday in June, 79-year-old Charles Moore, a retired United Methodist minister, drove to Grand Saline, Tex., his childhood home town some 70 miles east of Dallas. He pulled into a strip mall parking lot, knelt down on a small piece of foam and doused himself with gasoline.
Then, witnesses said, he set himself on fire.
Bystanders rushed to help, splashing him with bottled water and beating the blaze with shirts. Finally, someone found a fire extinguisher. Unconscious, he was flown to Parkland Hospital in Dallas, where JFK died. Moore died that night, June 23.
Moore’s death seemed a mystery. He put a note on his car and left behind letters explaining his act, said a former colleague and relative by marriage, the Rev. Bill Renfro, but his writings were not released for nearly a week. His thoughts are now becoming public.
The Tyler Morning Telegraph obtained a copy of the suicide note from Grand Saline police. In it, Moore lamented past racism in Grand Saline and beyond. He called on the community to repent and said he was “giving my body to be burned, with love in my heart” for those who were lynched in his home town as well as for those who did the lynching, hoping to address lingering racism.
In his letters, obtained by The Washington Post, he called his death an act of protest. He said he felt that after a lifetime of fighting for social justice, he needed to do more.
“I would much prefer to go on living and enjoy my beloved wife and grandchildren and others,” he wrote, “but I have come to believe that only my self-immolation will get the attention of anybody and perhaps inspire some to higher service.”
Those who knew him call it a tragedy.
“It would have been nice to have had some sort of counseling, somebody to point out that his life had mattered, that he hadn’t failed,” Renfro told the United Methodist News Service. “He had done plenty.”
Moore had gone on a two-week hunger strike in the 1990s to move the United Methodist Church to remove discriminatory language against homosexuals. While working with the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, he stood vigil in front of George W. Bush’s governor’s mansion to protest more than 100 executions. He served in the slums of India, Africa and the Middle East.
Moore had “a conviction that if the Bible stood for anything, it stood for radical inclusiveness,” the Rev. Sid Hall, a former colleague, told the Dallas Morning News. “If you ever were on the side of powerlessness, if you were ever on the margins yourself and were looking for someone to help you, Charles was the person.”
But for Moore, it wasn’t enough.
“I have no significant achievements to offer from that period so that my influence on contemporary issues might have a significant impact,” he wrote, “so I am laying down my life here today, in order to call attention to issues of great human concern.” He seemed particularly disturbed by capital punishment, racial discrimination, prejudice against the LGBT community.
Since his death, some news accounts described him as a man who seemed troubled. One asked if he was a “madman or a martyr.”
But Moore seemed to anticipate the response.
“There is one thing I have absolute control over: that is, the manner of my death,” he wrote. “History will decide whether my offering is worthy.”
It was recorded. But that’s about it. We have so much violence and mayhem in our society that this was just a tiny blip. It happened a year ago …
You have to shoot and kill 9 innocent black people in a church to get anyone’s attention in this country. The right wing extremists understand this.
h/t to @eliasisquith
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