someone has taken a young man, hung him in a tree. who would do something this hideous? michael donald was an innocent good samaritan, not a thug. the mobile police department just didn t want to believe that mobile would still have klan in it. but they did. that s why we kept marching and protesting, letting them know we were going to take this lion down. the admitted klansmen turned to action as the words, guilty of capital murder, sank in. it was the first time since at least the early 1900s that a white had been sentenced to death for a crime committed against a black person in the state of alabama. beulah mae donald is grieving, but also seeking justice for her child. this is a black woman who s just lost her son to lynching. finds the strength to move forward in a civil suit against the klan in alabama. the stakes could not be higher. the body of a black man has been found hanging from a tree in mobile, alabama. lynching is a tool to control and oppr
Finds the strength to move forward in a civil suit against the klan in alabama. the stakes could not be higher. the body of a black man has been found hanging from a tree in mobile, alabama. lynching is a tool to control and oppress black people. racialized violence is as old as the constitution. klans are not running around with white sheets over their head, but it s still happening. today, people are horrified of the police. it s the modern-day lynching. what are we going to do about it? we move forward with people deciding, i m bold enough, and i m going to make it change. beulah mae donald took on one of the most violent criminal organizations in the united states. this is an incredible story of courage.
no justice? no peace! no justice? no peace! and if we don t get no justice, there ain t going to be no damn peace. that s the bottom line. there is a level of mental illness that has been inflicted upon our society that can no longer stand. and it didn t just start today, but it is at a critical point. when you get too far away from your history, then you re unable to understand the moment we re in and the direction that we can continue to go in if we don t stop. lynching became a tool used by both white citizenry as well as law enforcement to control and oppress black people.
While there appeared to be progress, we had the reminders of racialized violence, of murder, of lynching, and we see it most clearly with the murder of michael donald. my uncle thomas figures and my father, michael figures, they worked incredibly, incredibly hard to ensure that justice was served in the criminal case. they both knew that that was not going to be enough. the klan was just as much of a threat as it was before the criminal case. and that s when my father teamed up with the morris dees. after law school in 1960, when i got to practice in law, there were a lot of violent acts that we saw in the united states. the beating of the freedom riders in birmingham, the violent deaths around mississippi and georgia and alabama and other places, the killing of viola liuzzo committed by what people
Down one of the longest-standing white supremacist domestic terrorist organizations that existed in the nation. think about this. this is a black woman who s just lost her son to lynching, finds the strength to move forward in a civil suit against the klan in alabama. it s almost unimaginable .