White Widow, Samantha Lewthwaite

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Actually, Al Sharpton in his old age has been self-regulating with his commentary ever since having run for president years ago, and now having his own show on MSNBC. And Jesse Jackson has probably never really been as bad as people imagined him.
And while there have been those who have collectively slammed all whites, that should not be confused with the condemnation of past wrongs.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer[/quote]

Are we talking about the same Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson who fomented the Saint Trayvon mess? Again, what have they done that is good for white people?

As far as "past wrongs" go, could you be a little more specific?

Al Sharpton has realized, albeit it took years, that he was conned by a fifteen-year-old girl......Tawana Brawley.

He presented her as a victim, a martyr, he demanded publicity, he named names, he became the famous 'hero' all over America, not allowing a horrible crime to be covered up, and all along, she lied.

Made him look foolish.


She has become a Muslim, lives in the Midwest, and works as a Nurses' Aide.


Sylkat

I knew an older lady that had a developmental disorder,her family had her sterilized when she was young,it was not right.She was a sweet person and would have been a good mom.She and her husband were perfectly capable,they had their own house,did their own shopping,payed their bills,with no help from family.They could have raised a child.

Bill Kraichgauer, regarding injustices committed against blacks by whites, it would be remarkable if such things had never happened. The question is how common those injustices were, and what was done about them when they were discovered.

The following is from a Wikipedia entry on Delphine Lalaurie, a wealthy New Orleans socialite and sadistic slaveholder. It illustrates that when injustices against blacks were discovered, they were dealth with swiftly and harshly. What's more, this was the rule rather than the exception:

The LaLauries, in the style of their social class at the time, maintained several black slaves in slave quarters attached to the Royal Street mansion. Accounts of Delphine LaLaurie's treatments of her slaves between 1831 and 1834 are mixed. Harriet Martineau, writing in 1838 and recounting tales told to her by New Orleans residents during her 1836 visit, claimed LaLaurie's slaves were observed to be "singularly haggard and wretched"; however, in public appearances LaLaurie was seen to be generally polite to black people and solicitous of her slaves' health,[8] and court records of the time showed that LaLaurie emancipated two of her own slaves (Jean Louis in 1819 and Devince in 1832).[10] Nevertheless, Martineau reported that public rumors about LaLaurie's mistreatment of her slaves were sufficiently widespread that a local lawyer was dispatched to Royal Street to remind LaLaurie of the laws relevant to the upkeep of slaves. During this visit the lawyer found no evidence of wrongdoing or mistreatment of slaves by LaLaurie.[11]

Martineau also recounted other tales of LaLaurie's cruelty that were current among New Orleans residents in about 1836. She claimed that, subsequent to the visit of the local lawyer, one of LaLaurie's neighbors saw one of the LaLaurie's slaves, a twelve-year-old girl named Lia (or Leah), fall to her death from the roof of the Royal Street mansion while trying to avoid punishment from a whip-wielding Delphine LaLaurie. Lia had been brushing Delphine's hair when she hit a snag, causing Delphine to grab a whip and chase her. The body was subsequently buried on the mansion grounds. According to Martineau, this incident led to an investigation of the LaLauries, in which they were found guilty of illegal cruelty and forced to forfeit nine slaves. These nine slaves were then bought back by the LaLauries through the intermediary of one of their relatives, and returned to the Royal Street residences.[12] Similarly, Martineau reported stories that LaLaurie kept her cook chained to the kitchen stove, and beat her daughters when they attempted to feed the slaves.[13]

On April 10, 1834, a fire broke out in the LaLaurie residence on Royal Street, starting in the kitchen. When the police and fire marshals got there, they found a seventy-year-old woman, the cook, chained to the stove by her ankle. She later confessed to them that she had set the fire as a suicide attempt for fear of her punishment, being taken to the uppermost room, because she said that anyone who had been taken there never came back. As reported in the New Orleans Bee of April 11, 1834, bystanders responding to the fire attempted to enter the slave quarters to ensure that everyone had been evacuated. Upon being refused the keys by the LaLauries, the bystanders broke down the doors to the slave quarters and found "seven slaves, more or less horribly mutilated ... suspended by the neck, with their limbs apparently stretched and torn from one extremity to the other", who claimed to have been imprisoned there for some months.[14]

One of those who entered the premises was Judge Jean-Francois Canonge, who subsequently deposed to having found in the LaLaurie mansion, among others, a "negress ... wearing an iron collar" and "an old negro woman who had received a very deep wound on her head [who was] too weak to be able to walk". Canonge claimed that when he questioned Madame LaLaurie's husband about the slaves, he was told in an insolent manner that "some people had better stay at home rather than come to others' houses to dictate laws and meddle with other people's business".[15]

A version of this story circulating in 1836, recounted by Martineau, added that the slaves were emaciated, showed signs of being flayed with a whip, were bound in restrictive postures, and wore spiked iron collars which kept their heads in static positions.[13]

When the discovery of the tortured slaves became widely known, a mob of local citizens attacked the LaLaurie residence and "demolished and destroyed everything upon which they could lay their hands".[14] A sheriff and his officers were called upon to disperse the crowd, but by the time the mob left, the Royal Street property had sustained major damage, with "scarcely any thing [remaining] but the walls".[16] The tortured slaves were taken to a local jail, where they were available for public viewing. The New Orleans Bee reported that by April 12 up to 4,000 people had attended to view the tortured slaves "to convince themselves of their sufferings".[16]

The Pittsfield Sun, citing the New Orleans Advertiser and writing several weeks after the evacuation of LaLaurie's slave quarters, claimed that two of the slaves found in the LaLaurie mansion had died since their rescue, and added: "We understand ... that in digging the yard, bodies have been disinterred, and the condemned well [in the grounds of the mansion] having been uncovered, others, particularly that of a child, were found."[17] These claims were repeated by Martineau in her 1838 book Retrospect of Western Travel, where she placed the number of unearthed bodies at two, including the child.[13]
Later life and death
Black and white image of copper plate, bearing text reading "Madame LaLaurie, née Marie Delphine Macarty, décédée à Paris, le 7 Décembre, 1842, à l'âge de 6--."
Copper plate found in Saint Louis Cemetery #1, which claims that LaLaurie died in Paris in 1842

LaLaurie's life after the 1834 fire is not well documented. Martineau wrote in 1838 that LaLaurie fled New Orleans during the mob violence that followed the fire, taking a coach to the waterfront and travelling by schooner from there to Mobile, Alabama and then on to Paris.[18] Certainly by the time Martineau personally visited the Royal Street mansion in 1836 it was still unoccupied and badly damaged, with "gaping windows and empty walls".[19]

The circumstances of Delphine LaLaurie's death are also unclear. George Washington Cable recounted in 1888 a then-popular but unsubstantiated story that LaLaurie had died in France in a boar-hunting accident.[20] Whatever the truth, in the late 1930s, Eugene Backes, who served as sexton to St. Louis Cemetery #1 until 1924, discovered an old cracked, copper plate in Alley 4 of the cemetery. The inscription on the plate read: "Madame LaLaurie, née Marie Delphine Macarty, décédée à Paris, le 7 Décembre, 1842, à l'âge de 6--."[21]

Librarian -

Sharpton and Jackson had come to the public aid of Trayvon's parents, as the police had been content not to charge the shooter of an unarmed teenage boy. Sure, Zimmerman had been acquitted, but without Reverends Sharpton and Jackson, he would never have seen the inside of a courtroom. I had listened to the case fairly closely, I think, and never once had I heard any real white bashing - just how blacks have been given the short end of the stick regarding justice.

As for past wrongs against blacks - that would include having been enslaved at all, regardless if their masters were kind or cruel. Following that, Jim Crow laws that had ensured a separate, inferior status for black Americans. While that is of course in the past, the legacy of inequality forced upon blacks still lives on to this day, with high unemployment and poor education in predominant black areas. Not to mention how blacks still get the short end of the stick in the criminal justice system. Case in point - blacks and whites use drugs in equal proportions, and yet it's blacks who are sent to prison in greater numbers for drug offenses, and their neighborhoods are occupied by the police as if they were a foreign army (name one white suburb where that is the case). I could go on and on - but I won't.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Ann, all Zimmerman was doing was his civic duty in trying to keep his neighborhood safe; it had been experiencing a lot of problems with young blacks. At least Zimmerman was willing to get involved. As far as Saint Trayvon goes, he should've answered Zimmerman's questions and been on his way. I did. I wish I had a dollar for every time I was asked what I was doing someplace when I was younger. I only had one woman push things too far, and I wound up calling the police on her--I was working on a surveying job. So, even if Zimmerman were unreasonably harassing Trayvon, Trayvon should've called the police rather than let his fists do the talking. Trayvon got what he had coming to him.