Last week the PR people for a new show on one of my favorite channels, Discovery ID (Investigative Discovery, sent me an email. They wanted to know if I'd be interested in an early screening of their new show
Injustice Files. The show has since premiered, and it airs on Friday nights at 9PM EST. The show centers on unsolved civil rights-era crimes against people of color; a
Cold Case Files for Negroes if you will. And, can you imagine how many such cases exist?
(Pasadena, CA) - In February 2007, the FBI officially launched a new investigative effort called the Civil Rights-Era Cold Case Initiative, which was tasked with taking a fresh look at racially-motivated homicide investigations that occurred prior to 1970. Since then, over 100 cold cases have been identified for this initiative as the FBI partnered with local and state authorities, the NAACP, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Urban League to help investigate these aging unsolved cases and bring justice to the victims' families. In an effort to bring attention to these important investigations, Investigation Discovery teamed with critically-acclaimed documentary filmmaker Keith Beauchamp, producer of The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, and CBS EYE Productions to showcase three cases included in the FBI's Civil Rights-Era Cold Case Initiative. In commemoration of Black History Month, Investigation Discovery launches THE INJUSTICE FILES... (source)
Ironically, my man
Field Negro reached out to me over the weekend with info on a civil rights-era case that is still unsolved involving 90-year-old Recy Taylor. Taylor was a victim of a crime that many Black women were victims to then, that is never talked about. Of course this being Black History Month, if we're gonna talk about the advances and laud accomplishments of many who came before us. In my opinion, it's only right that we never forget the women permanently scarred like Ms. Taylor; women who were victims of rape:
ATLANTA (AP) -- Years before Rosa Parks fought for justice from her seat on a Montgomery bus, she fought for Recy Taylor.
Parks was an NAACP activist crisscrossing Alabama in 1944 when she came across the case of Taylor, a 24-year-old wife and mother who was brutally gang raped and dumped on the side of a rural road. Taylor survived only to watch two all-white, all-male grand juries decline to indict the six white men who admitted to authorities that they assaulted her.
Taylor was one of many black women attacked by white men during an era in which sexual assault was used to informally enforce Jim Crow segregation. Their pain galvanized an anti-rape crusade that ultimately took a back seat to the push to dismantle officially sanctioned separation of the races, and slowly faded from the headlines.
