Back To Welcome
The Zwamp News
The Zwamp News2005
Back To April 05

 

April 30 2005

The Word of the Day for April 30 is: 

bereft • \bih-REFT\  • adjective 
1 : deprived or robbed of the possession or use of something
*2 : lacking something needed, wanted, or expected
3 : bereaved 

Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.

 Clear channel with 1200 radio stations: Once tried to control artists: banned Dixie Chicks profits drop 59%

  Red State Bertram Texas people need to get a life: In oatmeal day parade drop oatmeal packets from the sky 

 Red State Texas wants to ban Gay foster parents.

No memorials in Bible belt of Texas: 

Waco City Manager Larry Groth, who is white, said he is NOT certain the Washington lynching needs to be memorialized. I don't think we should be judged by an event in 1916," said Groth, a Waco native.

WACO - Of the nearly 500 lynching that took place in Texas before the crime abated in the 1930s, the "Waco horror" is among the most notorious

On May 15, 1916, Jesse Washington, a retarded black farm hand, was mutilated, tortured and hanged over a bonfire in the Waco town square as a crowd of 15,000 watched and cheered. Minutes earlier, the 17-year-old had been convicted in a brief trial of the rape and murder of a white woman, a crime to which authorities said he confessed.

Neither the county sheriff nor presiding judge did anything to stop the mob from dragging Washington from the stately domed McLennan County Courthouse, according to historical accounts. The mayor and police chief watched the gruesome spectacle as Fred Gildersleeve, Waco's most successful commercial photographer, took pictures that he sold as souvenirs.

What stirs him most was that the lynching appeared to be condoned by officials in Waco. The crowd was not riffraff and lowlifes but the so-called "better element."

Vengeance is mine says the Lord:

"People say the tornado that hit Waco in 1953 supposedly followed the path of the lynch mob," said Debose, recalling an event that blacks in Waco came to see as divine retribution. The tornado, which cut a 23-mile path through the region, passed through the center of downtown, killing 114 people of all races.

Texas Legislature wants to ban same sex marriages: Should Bible belt lynch black gays?