Jackson Free Press

Long-time Jacksonian Dorothy Triplett sent us this letter earlier today. It is reprinted verbtim:

I supported Mayor Johnson in the primary, and was disappointed that the voters (only 30 percent of the eligible voters) chose not to send him into the runoff. Once I pushed that disappointment down and asked myself for whom I would vote in the runoff, I began my ongoing struggle.

I know and respect both candidates. Both have distinct strengths and weaknesses, as do we all. I have talked with both, attended numerous forums/debates/political accountability sessions and found myself wavering back and forth between them. I've seen/heard the nastiness and the subtle advertising, and my stomach has turned with dismay at the way they (the ads and phone calls, not the individual candidates) played on the fears of citizens, and divided them racially and economically and by neighborhood. I listened to dear friends in both camps tell me why I should vote for one and not the other. I respect their views, and honor their commitment to their candidates.

When I cast my ballot—and I do believe each vote counts—I will do so prayerfully and without fear, and with the knowledge that, ultimately, it's not up to whomever we elect as mayor, but up to US—each and every one of us—to lead this great city into the future.

We will have to give our new mayor our support and put aside our angst and anger, our fear and foreboding, and have the faith that we can do great things, and continue the already-begun journey of changing the negatives of old, crumbling neighborhoods, absentee landlords, long-neglected infrastructure, results of our recent economic downturn (now thankfully moving upward), etc., etc., etc.

We will be better served by focusing on the positives and building on the vision of what CAN be. We will have to band together across this city with people we know and those we have yet to meet and work TOGETHER to make our city shine. And perhaps, if we do that with genuine purpose and resolve, with honesty and intentionality, and with the knowledge that we ALL have value, good ideas and skills, and richness of experience, we will find out more about ourselves and each other.

Dorothy Triplett Jackson

Whatever the result of the election, and I think we will all be up late tonight, my observation is that regardless of who wins, Jackson will be setting a new course, much different from the one Mayor Johnson had charted during his terms. The old center has not held, and the voters have already expressed their eagerness to forge a new one. The tectonic plates, having ground against each other for these many years, are shifting, and by tomorrow morning we shall read in the results which one is ascendant and which is descendant.

As we approach the mayoral runoff, which will most surely decide Jackson's next mayor, the rumors are flying fast and furious. One we heard yesterday is that Chokwe Lumumba "killed an FBI agent and got away with it." This is a false assertion. But it surely morphed out of his history as a young organizer with the Republic of New Afrika (RNA), based in Jackson in the early 1970s. As we explain in this article in 2005, the then-racist police department essentially had an angry stand-off with the militant Republic of New Afrika, headed by Imari Obadele, that culminated in an early-morning Waco-esque raid on the group's heavily armed headquarters in west Jackson. (JPD even brought the Thompson tank.)

The resulting gunfight left a police officer dead and an FBI officer injured. The legal battle that followed was complicated, in no small part because Obadele was not present, but local authorities wanted him punished for the crime. There were also state-federal jurisdictional hurdles to scale, but ultimately eight of the "RNA 11" ultimately served time, ironically because lawyers used the precedent set in the federal trial of Klansmen in Neshoba County who conspired to kill three civil rights workers. In the 1960s, a state court wouldn't convict them, but several went to prison for a time under a federal civil-rights conspiracy charge.

RNA member Chokwe Lumumba was not present, did not shoot anyone and did not serve time.

Read Obadele's 2010 obituary here.