9. DoJ

A Klansman has been convicted to three lifesentences for the murder of two black teenagers in Mississippi. Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charlie Eddie Moore, both 19, where hitchhiking when they where abducted, beaten, tied up and drowned. This happened in 1964. 72 year old former deputy-sheriff James Ford Seale was finally found guilty after a new witness gave testimony.

This is the third conviction for murder in a case connected to the civil rights struggle that has recently been reopened by the federal Department of Justice. The train crossed wide farmlands as I read this, just at the time Nina Simone started singing on my mp3-player.

Strange Fruit - Nina Simone
(Lewis Allen, Sonny White)

Seven trees
Bearin' strange fruit
Blood on the leaves
And blood at the roots
Black bodies
Swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin'
From the poplar trees
Pastoral scene
Of the gallant south
Them big bulging eyes
And the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolia
Clean and fresh
Then the sudden smell
Of burnin' flesh
Here is a fruit
For the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather
For the wind to suck
For the sun to rot
For the leaves to drop
Here is
Strange and bitter crop