perspective. the new times is literally doing the work that jet magazine did back in 1955. jet magazine was like black twitter at the moment. emmett till s picture catalyzed the modern civil rights movement because these lynching images have the effect of literally traumatizing people. in the same way, the new times took on the responsibility of reporting, investigating and pressing the case on behalf of michael donald. this precipitated the anger, the outrage, the fear of the klan. the klan actually called the new times office and requested a subscription to the paper. that was one of their moves in terms of keeping a constant threat to say, you know, we re going to come and get you. and michael did not back down. on the morning of march 21st, 1981, michael went down to see for himself what was going on,
and he took pictures of everybody at the scene that he could. there were a group of people right across the street from where it took place, and these guys was just sitting there, smoking cigarettes, talking like it was just a normal day. that s one of the things that caused michael to take so many pictures of them. he was just wondering how they could just stand there nonchalantly. and we had no idea who they were. it turned out he took pictures of the klan.
in a dumpster. then that s when we found an id card identifying the young man as michael anthony donald. that morning one of my cousins called and said they believe is michael. it s him. that s all i could say is it s him. i was just numb, i could not believe this was happening to us and i looked outside my mom s door, and it was people everywhere, i mean everywhere in the neighborhood. they had come from far and near. my sister cynthia hamilton, she went to identify the body with my husband. all he had done was left his mom s house that night to walk to the service station to buy a
pack of cigarettes. not knowing what was waiting for him. i can only imagine what mrs. donald went through. the crowd just gathered. people started gathering there. michael figures and i, we jumped in the car. senator michael figures was the de facto leader of the black community. as a lawyer, michael was there to gather facts. we started looking around and trying to talk to people to see anybody knew exactly what happened, who was involved. someone has taken a young man hung him in a tree. who would do something this hideous in the community? what s going through my mind is who the hell did this and why?
michael was well loved. he was quiet. he worked at night and he kept my oldest son during the daytime. michael was a well-mannered and a polite young man. michael is a true example that hard work pays off. the housing project we lived in, everybody knew each other, and this family cooked, we ate from them. and if my mom cooked, they ate from us. there was gang stuff back then, but we didn t get involved in it. my mom was always sitting on the front porch waiting for us to arrive home from school. if he came home and i was lying down, he ll do little things to help. that s the kind of boy he was. we didn t know nothing of the world and what the world was doing out there. we just knew we lived in the housing project, but we could