Thursday, January 29, 2015

The Rhino's John Hammer on Susan Ladd's "factually inaccurate" article on Earl Jones and Mike Barber

[Susan Ladd's] column in the Sunday N&R about Earl Jones and Mike Barber is simply factually inaccurate about both of them.

What was factually inaccurate?

"...As far as Earl Jones goes, there has been a lot of discussion about changing the focus of the museum...

“It’s my speculation that there’s a part of the mayor’s group
that would like to see the museum taken over 
so the history and integrity of the civil rights movement
can be undermined and whitewashed.

I think that’s what it’s about.”

Earl Jones from Susan's article

Jones calls that watering down the message.

Others call it changing the focus of the museum.

What was inaccurate?

I’ve heard other people say that if that if international is going to be the name then make it international.  ...But the way it is now, once you go through, why would you ever go back?

As far as Mike Barber is concerned, anybody who has been around the City Council, the Board of commissioners or any other political body for longer than an hour knows, Barber wasn’t saying there isn’t any racism today, he was talking about Nelson Johnson and his followers.

“The bigger issue for me 
is that in a city of almost 300,000 people, 
we continue to have just a handful of people 
who live their lives looking in the rearview mirror.

...That’s what holds Greensboro back 
— a small group of people
 who make an industry of racism and unhappiness, 
marketing all that’s unpleasant and negative 
no matter how long ago these things occurred.”

Mike Barber

Johnson has made his living these past 36 years off the shooting that he helped orchestrate, but when it came down to actually fighting the Klan, he hid under a car.  Five of his comrades gave their lives for the cause and they gave Johnson a way to make a living for the rest of his life.

There is no need to furnish a plaque for the KKK rally,
which has caused this city so much strife 
over these many years.  

It is one of the darkest days in Greensboro history.

Roy Carroll's Rhino Times

...What I have never seen from Johnson is a rejection of the Communist Workers Party plan for a violent overthrow of the United States government.  What I have heard from him is a constant celebration of the communists who were killed that day.

Where does John say what Susan Ladd wrote 
was inaccurate?

Perhaps Ladd doesn’t know that sometimes people don’t say exactly what they mean.

Where is John's quote of Susan Ladd
that shows what she wrote was inaccurate?

Women don’t actually go to “powder their noses” and men don’t really go to “see a man about a horse.”  Sometimes you have to read between the lines."

http://www.rhinotimes.com/rhino-shorts.html
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Susan Ladd on Jones and Barber's comments;

"Both are prime examples of the rhetoric that keeps Greensboro from having a meaningful dialogue about race relations.

Both statements shut down productive conversation by demonizing others and drawing sweeping conclusions based on little more than opinion and suspicion.

Both take the extreme view and generate mostly anger.

Both statements are offensive.

And both are wrong."