He was a soldier who, after 20 years or so in the service, decided to retire. He was an officer, a major in fact. He found a nice house in an area known for retirees, lots of fishing. But the area just did not suit him.
It may have had something to do with the fact that people would drive by his house in the middle of the night and shoot his house full of lead. Even though he had not had a chance to make any friends or enemies. There was great rejoicing in the community when he left.
He was black.
No, this did not happen in where you might expect drive-by shootings. No gangs were involved. It happened in rural Missouri, in a community I lived in briefly in 1985. Nor was it ancient history, it had happened a little before I lived there.
I write this as an introduction to Pam Dewey's newest series at her blog, The Prophecy Panic Button, about a very sordid part of America's past--lynching. In part two of this series she talks about an infamous lynching in Springfield, Mo., another community in which I lived for many years. I can say from personal experience that Pam did not exaggerate one bit in her depiction of the incident and the ongoing problem. Springfield, Missouri, still has a much smaller population blacks than one would expect in a city that size as the effects of the lynching lingered for decades, and still lingers.
You can begin the series by clicking here.