Apartheid. USA 1988

January 25, 1987:

Rabbi James Rudin of the American Jewish Committee recalled entering Cummings, Georgia two days ago and said he spoke from the perspective of a middle-aged man. ‘I have got to tell you, when we entered Cummings there was a real sense of dread. On both sides the march was primarily a phenomenon of the younger generation, black and white. From their place on the road, squeezed in by protective flanks of armored lawmen, the young faces looked up in silent incredulity at the invective pouring down on them from the crowd of whites of the same age

[p. 22]

atop a rise. ‘White trash! White trash nigger lovers!’, the whites above shouted at the whites below. ‘You are worse than a nigger!’ And to the upturned black faces, it was ‘Go home nigger! Go home!’ And then from the mouths of young women and men, some of them carrying babies and children on their shoulders, there was worse. They were young, bearded or stringy-haired, dressed in work caps and boots, plaid flannel shirts and jeans, military fatigues or bib overalls festooned with Confederate emblems, they had the unmistaken look of the poor white rural lower class. Larry G Wright (30), a machinist said, ‘A lot of it has to do with being born and raised right here, in Southern society. It's inbred in me and it's going to be inbred in my kids too. That's just the way it is. We are white and we are proud of it.’^34.

Five Mississippi mayors have complained about New York Mayor Koch, who remarked about the Howard Beach affair on national television, ‘I had expected this kind of thing to happen in the deep South.’ Mayor WW Godbold of Brookhaven, Mississippi remarked to a reporter of a local newspaper, ‘That Jew bastard, I believe, Jews like him, who get in this office don't know the hell what they are talking about. It opens up wounds when he persists that the South has problems like this. Especially when he has murders up there every minute and he compares New York to Mississippi.’ Mayor Koch replied in a letter to Mr Godbold, ‘I do hope you were misquoted in today's paper when you referred to me as a “Jew bastard”.’ Even if Mr Godbold had said it, the New York Mayor would ‘turn the other cheek’. Later Mayor Godbold told the Associated Press, he had not meant to slur all Jews.^35.

34. The New York Times, from a report by Dudley Clendinen

35. The New York Times, from a report by Joyce Purnick