Seven years later, Alton is still trying to forget the ugly tragedy of Richard Skelton.
Kicked to death by a 25-person mob smack dab in the middle of one of its city streets, bystanders didn’t help. They laughed, cheered, and hurled insults, urging the thugs to “kill the cracker.”
The 48 year-old and unarmed Skelton, you see, was white. He had been looking for his stolen television in a black neighborhood.
“(Skelton) came with the wrong attitude and using the wrong words,” said St. Clair County NAACP honcho Johnny Scott, when asked then about the incident.
Scott added that he called the FBI himself to “assure the people that the investigation (of Skelton’s murderers) is not slanted.”
With enemies like these, who needs friends?
That’s what we thought as Scott and his equally unhinged Madison County counterpart, James Gray, took aim at new Madison County Circuit Court Judge Don Weber last week.
As a plain-spoken county prosecutor, Weber put Skelton’s killers behind bars. He also spoke too candidly for the comfort of some.
“There’s no way African-Americans are going to get a fair hearing in his court,” said Gray.
“It is absolutely unfair to African-Americans and poor people,” said Scott, after doing his best Dick Durbin imitation, comparing Weber to Adolph Hitler.
To those of us sick and tired of political correctness; who’ve had it with the race card, their venom is proving a reverse-endorsement.
Scott rationalized Skelton’s death because he was white. And he apologized for a murderous mob because it was black. Such unconditional loyalty on account of race or ethnicity is the core element undergirding prejudice in America today.
And in our mind, it absolutely discredits anything and everything a person says or does.
Our courts aren’t just for black people. They’re for all people. That’s why we’re with Judge Weber, and we’re against the race-baiters who unequivocally side with their skin color.
Time heals all wounds— if only temporarily when the sheerest of scabs don’t go unpicked.