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Spectrum literary arts magazine: Fall 2009.
Spectrum literary arts magazine: Fall 2009.
Spectrum literary arts magazine
Spectrum literary arts magazine
Fall 2009
Fall 2009
Fall 2009 issue of student-run publication at Northeastern University
Northeastern University
Northeastern University
2009-12
2009-12
2009-12
2009-12
literary magazine
arts magazine
poetry
prose
fine arts
Northeastern University
student publication
literary magazine
arts magazine
poetry
prose
fine arts
Northeastern University
student publication
http://hdl.handle.net/2047/d20002481
http://hdl.handle.net/2047/d20002481
literary magazine
arts magazine
poetry
prose
fine arts
Northeastern University
student publication
Spectrum literary arts magazine
Spectrum literary arts magazine: Fall 2009.
spectrum literary arts magazine fall 002009
http://issuu.com/northeastern_libraries/docs/spectrum_fall_2009?e=2827135/4316674
2009/12/01
Spectrum literary arts magazine
2009-12
literary magazine
arts magazine
poetry
prose
fine arts
Northeastern University
student publication
info:fedora/afmodel:CoreFile
info:fedora/neu:rx9143905
Spectrum literary arts magazine: Fall 2009 Spec trum L iterary Arts Magazine Fall 2009 Spectr um Literary Arts Magazine Fa l l2009 Spectrum Literary Arts Ma gaz ine Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine, Fall 2009 edition. Copyright © Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine and respective authors. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the permission of Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine and/or respective authors. Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine reserves the right to edit submissions for layout, grammar, spelling, and punctuation unless explicitly instructed by the author/artist. Any references to people living or dead are purely coincidental, except in the cases of a public figure. The views and opinions represented in this medium do not necessarily reflect those of Northeastern University or the staff of Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine. Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine showcases the talents of the writers and artists at Northeastern University. All members of the Northeastern community are encouraged to submit works of original poetry, prose, and visual art. For more information, please visit www.spectrum.neu.edu. Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine is printed by Special thanks to Phil Cara Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine spectrum.magazine@gmail.com www.spectrum.neu.edu 234 Curry Student Center Mailbox: 434 Curry Student Center www.uni-graphic.com Cover and theme art adapted from “Feet” by Ryan Tucker and “Individual, Indivisible” by Sierra Smith, found within this issue of Spectrum. Executive Staff General Staff Editor in Chief Josh Olejarz Layout and Design David Nadeau Financial Manager Miriam Laufer Advertising Manager Lucia Allen Secretary Diana Mai Assistant Editor Michelle Alexander Alyssa Sullivan Aylish O’Sullivan MacKenzie Cockerill Peter Tran Layout CommitteeMichelle Buchman Mark Calley Andrea Hampel Nick DeSimone Matt Kline Kelsey Ragsdale Miranda Paquet Mick Thibodeau Magdalena Szalowski Amanda Pratti Anna Westendorf David Wong Taryn Sadauskas Courtney Stefanik From the Editor You’re not reading the coolest version of this issue. Driven by an odd obsession with feet and floor imagery, we printed this issue with two different covers. Both of feet. Both provocative. And the other one's better. e artwork in the following pages is themed around the textures of floors, car- pets, and surfaces—the things we walk on and by every day. We aren’t sure why or how this happened, or even what it means. All we know is that we like it. And we hope you will too. anks for reading, Josh Olejarz “Red Brick Anonymity” by Natalie Schack 12 “The Yellow Line” by Jason Jedrusiak “Tailor Made” by J.M. Olejarz “Isolation Intensifies Everything” by Abby Zorbaugh “Iris” by Jessica O’Neill 2 “Feet” by Ryan Tuck 4 “Hustle and Bustle” by Gina Bollenback “The Reason for the Season” by J.M. Olejarz 8 “Central Perk” by Natasha Mbabazi 6 “Nonchalance is His Allure” by Abby Zorbaugh 10 “Water Works” by Natasha Mbabazi “Columbus Ave.” by Miriam Laufer “Hunted” by Carolyn Meers “Train” by Ryan Tuck “Well It’s About Time” by Magdalena Szalowski 14 “Leaving Ground” by Lauren Chapman “Flight” by Ryan Tuck 18 “The Clash” by Jessica Moog “Looking Through” by C. Benedix 24 “Portrait” by Cait Madden 22 “Stain of Blackness” by James Cucchi 16 “Seagull” by Anna Westendorf “On the Farm” by Jake Stains “dear dr. Anxiety, dance” by Jason Jedrusiak 20 “Trainwreck” by Addya Bhowmick 26 “Grass Impressions” by Timothy Strange “Wedding Day” by Natasha Mbabazi to Dawn” by Carolyn Meers 45 “Individual, Indivisible” by Sierra Smith 32 “The Art Professor” by Ana Roth “Dawn Looks to Dusk Looks 36 “Thought I’d See You One “working title” by Caroline Steuernagel “Life Doesn’t Fit in a Spreadsheet” by Rebecca Payne “Let it Rest” by Cait Madden 28 “Land on Me” by Carolyn Meers “Papyrus” by Natalie Schack 34 “Aubade” by Timothy Strange 40 “Jesus and White Dresses” by Natalie Schack 42 “Wonderland” by Rachel Zarrell 38 “Orient Point” Athulya Aravind More Time” by Gina Bollenback “Specula” by Carolyn Meers 30 “Shatter” by Jason Jedrusiak 44 “15 Drive” by Megan Varanyak In this issue: “She Thinks Her Middle Name is Danger” by Abby Zorbaugh “Incognitus” by Tara P. Vilk “Feet” by Ryan Tuck Isolation Intensifies Everythi Isolation intensifies everything. I often go for aimless walks, inventing fictive destinations just to get outside and breathe my thoughts, inner monologue audible without chatter. Cooking alone, I savor the sharp knife slicing squash crisp and even. I heat meat various ways, the grill sizzles and sputters, or I stir-fry up a storm, and bake things to warm the very heart of me with taste. I soap the fridge interior, sponging dirt no one else thought to look for, checking jellies’ dates; it’s a strange victory when I discover rancid food. But I eventually need to again bask in the presence of people and try to live out my daydreams. ingAbby Zorbaugh I wish all love was limitless and every day the aroma of it saturated the air and emanated from every person's pores to float up forming molecules of love and cloud the skies, to rain down upon burning cities, burning with the fires of love— burning, burning flames engulfing structures built with love— and the tears of love tearing apart freckled cheeks would fall to the loving black asphault to be loved by the soles of filthy shoes, the souls of filthy men, to be loved by fearless women whose perpetual love would fill the burning buildings with fuel for the fire... unstoppable fuel, never to be staunched by earthly water, only by the rain and tears of that love emanating from those pores— those poor, fragile hearts broken. Iris Jessica O’Neill 2 4 the most wonderful time of the year is December, our month-long submersion in xmas, the mass waterboarding of the population with a torrent of holiday cheer. goodwill is converted into truckloads of snowflake and gingerbread garbage that gets littered, inches thick, around the country. it snows not weather, but white and red potpourri, as if the plumbing burst in the xmas factory, spewing candy cane vomit and reindeer guts up against the walls and all across the floors. it’s wrapped up, then, and shipped out worldwide— gifted to children who learn to love the yearly boxes of soggy goo that puddle beneath the sludge-choked tree. carolers sing, slogging through the stuffed santa claus dolls that clog the gutters, and parents shopping for presents kick and wade through knee-high grinning elves in hats green like dollar bills. the country becomes a boggy swampland, a hazardous scumpond of predators quick to cash in on the people mucking through it. and when the calendar strikes January, the whole mire is sucked up and stored in monstrous large vats somewhere— lurking, scheming, licking chops waiting for its inevitable release next year. The Reason for the SeasonJ.M. Olejarz “Hustle and Bustle” by Gina Bollenback Party boy makes me breakfast omelettes after sleeping sweaty and naked. I pad around the messy room in his plaid pajama pants, not wanting to retrieve my discarded (now pot-scented) jeans from his floor. He’s a hippie in the worst way, bragging nonstop about musicfests; passionate he loses himself as the bass throbs. His shit-eating grin says he usually gets what he wants. A friend writes his paper, freeing his time for god knows what. Connecticut-bred politeness tempered with “dude” and “yo.” Though less ambitious than I wish, I can’t resist: he sure knows how to have fun. His hands are golden, strumming me guitarlike, foreplay unforgotten. Drunk me begs like never before: words women coo into phones only when paid by the minute. I crack when he calls me sexy; I’m well aware I’m not: cute maybe, sexy never. This rebellious mystery might be lying, but I enjoy every minute. onchalanceis HisAllureNAbby Zorba ugh 6 “Hunted” by Carolyn Meers Columbus Ave. “Hey, baby, wanna save the polar bears?” does- n’t even merit a reaction these days. Two sec- onds later I’ve usually got a snazzy line about how I’d be a fan of global warming on Face- book if I could.Attention-whoring bicycles are getting blasé, and I am heartless in regard to a certain family of seven. I’ll admit to some slight curiosity about what the mustachioed Hispanic man on the bicycle insults me with every morning, but I’ve never stopped to in- quire. I’ve never met the one-arm push-up man, but, after the stories, I doubt he could surprise me. She was a true original. She blended in with the crowd in an urban-professional outfit and meticulous makeup. One wouldn’t suspect her of designs of accosting innocent strangers. She may have noticed my slight hesitation, as I couldn’t help but notice her slightly-above- ordinary beauty. She took advantage. “Excuse me.” Her tone was beguiling, and I was vulnerable in an early-morning daze. “I know this is kind of random, but do you read the Bible?” e first get-out-of-jail-free card that occurred to my hazy mind was, “I’m Jewish.” at may have daunted her a bit, but she recovered quickly. “Well, Jews have the Bible, too, right? I’m talking about the OldTestament,” she clar- ified. Darn, I thought, as everybody else on the side- walk swarmed to either side of us, abandoning me to my predicament. “Genesis 1:27. It says He created them in his Image; male and female he created them. What do you think that says about the origi- nal?” It took me a moment to pick apart her words. She knows what verse she’s quoting from—the fanatic! Or did she just stay up all night read- Miriam Laufer “Central Perk” by Natasha Mbabazi ing it? It triggered something in my memory, a thought I had once about humans created in the Image of God, male and female….but what about the original…what? I hoped my expression conveyed my confusion accurately and we could just nod and move on with our lives. She was persistent. (Aren’t those types always?) She repeated her question: “What do you think it says about the original?” at memory was back. A memory from a person who used to take God and his Word se- riously. I knew the answer she wanted. “at the original…must be both male and fe- male.” I felt the relief like when a professor smiles and nods heartily to let you know you’re on the same wavelength. is woman was searching not for an ultimate truth, but for a similarity of thought with another human. She nodded emphatically. “That’s what I was thinking,” she added in a (dramatized?) tone of deep reflection, “thank you.”And,with that, she finally glided out of my life. I couldn’t stop thinking about her all the way home and all that day. I found the exact verse on the internet; her eerie precision was a strike against her. Her face, though, the earnestness of her brown eyes, the fact that she was walk- ing just like everybody else—she only stopped for me—made me wonder. I’ll never know what motivated that woman to ask me that question. Whether it was a ran- dom thought that occurred to her in an instant, another moment in a lifelong search for a God that looked like her, or an outreach of feminist evangelism, does it matter? A stranger affected my day, and isn’t that the goal of all those peo- ple out there? Maybe an ambiguous difference, like an androgynous God, is something to hope for. 8 “W at er Wo rk s” by Na ta sh a M ba ba zi 10 “T ra in ” by Ry an Tu ck e city is red brick gardens with streetlight trees, enveloping the pedestrian in sheets of intimacy. e ivy walls are closeness, pressing firm, like swaddlings, cool like absentminded breezes coming off a faraway shore, filtered through someone's woods. Cupping the bay in one hand and arching her back to the vastness of the west, she cradles the lives and lives twisted around each other in the crannies of her bosom, in the unending apartment buildings. In the city, my fingers are entwined around everyone else's, my feet jostle for space with everyone else's, my eyes hold conversations with a thousand everyone elses. ere is no prairie of low-lying sun-bleached homes that stretch themselves flat and exposed, revealing you as their blemish, their child and stranger, the uncertain paint spatter on it—faultless white canvas— as you pivot and slide directionless: either a coy modernist expression, or an artist's clumsy mistake. Red Brick Anonymity Natalie Schack Tailor Made full orange at sunset are the colors of a common autumn— it drapes silken from the sky, and velvet down the city walls like a curtain, like too much fabric left to bunch in circling, pillowed folds —it slowly turns the leaves to match— oranges by default, yellows that haven't quite yet, deep reds that drift from trees to river, land and floating on the surface. they join the sunset's sparkling waterlights—an embroidered sapphire tapestry of diamonds and opals, all set gleaming in the intricate nautical arrangement; all raw materials waiting to be used. a small sailboat drifts lazily, gently nudging a path between the gems like an indiscriminate jeweler picking through his vast collection —jib and main raise casual claim to the surrounding riches— the mate and captain recline on deck, lifejackets for cushions, surveying and appraising the surrounding natural showroom. they gather in the bolts of fabric, reach down and scoop handfuls of liquid thread, to pencil mark the dimensions of the skyline, to fashion their own existence: craftsmen, they are, who take the varied textures of the season, and snip trim stitch them into something somehow personal, a chance individual fit. craftsmen, both, they are innate tailors, born to the task, who can cut the living world to suit them. J.M. Olejarz 12 “The Yellow Line” by Jason Jedrusiak “Leaving Ground” by Lauren Chapman ey laughed when I died. I told them they would. I jumped out naked, so shield your eyes and giggle. I forgot my parachute, or ripped it out when no one was watching, I can’t remember which. But the fall was clear as day and no accident. I fell and fell and fell and fell some more, And reached the grounds of the Barbary lions. ey’re still alive, I swear! But I’m not, for they mauled me. e whole scenario was an act, Read through but never rehearsed. Razzle-dazzle, hula hoops, and even circus lions! Oh how spectacular the show was, And for the grand finale I spewed blood Like communist communist communist confetti, And still in the nude. I had some pearls but Sylvia Plath stole them. ey were mine first, honest. I don’t want them anymore. ey say she got ‘em all sticky… …Skank. Anyway it was like the echo in a grand ballroom made by a mute— e laughter, e humor found in death, e entertainment provided by the black plague, e sold-out shows for the holocaust. I was still somewhat of a star when my curtain closed— Less than thirty, more than ten— Not old enough, just like I promised. I went out without a wrinkle, For most bow looking like those cute Shar Peis. I’m not a dog. e personality of a female, perhaps, But human as far as the eye can see, And I died young and glamorous. I’m dead now and past lovers leave tears at my grave— Tears of joy, silly! At my funeral, the orchestra played “Barnum and Bailey’s Favorite,” And the parlor had more vibrancy than a San Franciscan gay pride parade. But my splendid crowd smirked and smiled, hollered and hooted, clapped and cheered and roared and giggled and… Laughed. Oh how they laughed! Well It’s About TimeMagdalena Szalowski 14 I know this road. I have driven it countless times with you—windows down, music up. Casual California summers always seemed so fresh, so new—so alive... Time is fluid as memories rush over me. I feel them flooding the car and I am overwhelmed as stagnant nostalgia is replaced by an understanding of this new world I must adapt to. I know this road. But I have not turned down that side street, taking the slow curves, anxiety building as I round the last one. I have not be- fore seen this peaceful and eerie expanse of grass stretching before me in the parking lot. I glance up at the clear blue sky and silently curse the cruelty of a beautiful day in March. I sit in my car for what seems like hours (or per- haps only a fleeting second) before I realize I must get up (pick myself up again, move on). I catch my reflection in the window and swear I can see my heart nearly beating out of my chest. I feel the sun warming my bare shoulders as I reach for my jacket. I narrate my motions in my head. Inhale, exhale. Close the door. Deep breath...release. Repeat. One, two steps. Hesitate. Here lies a truth I am not prepared to face. Whispering to myself to the rhythm of my slow, painful footsteps—why, why, why... I am not surprised by how loved you are. I rec- ognize the faces, but do not process their pres- ence. I feel alone in a mind-numbingly silent world. Everything is a surreal dreamland, and I am floating. I can feel myself choking as I reach you too soon. Now taking slow, shaking breaths, I look at you for the last time. I become dizzy with the reality I can no longer ignore.Lightheaded, I slowly step away from you, each tear a moment, a memory. I try to remember to breathe (I wish I could for you) and voices hover in the static air, fading in and out of my consciousness. ey close the lid. I close my eyes. I am aware of someone holding me, but I have to struggle to feel something other than this unfamiliar heaviness in my chest. I take a flower. It is so bright...the way you had been.With an unsteady hand I reach out to drop it. I let go of the stem, but can't seem to convince myself to let go of you. I remember one chilly December night on a friend's back porch: a few friends, a few drags off a clove, a few drinks. I remember your arm around me, keeping me warm as my head rested on your shoulder. I remember I settled into the comfortable and familiar happiness that comes with being home (home will never be the same), letting the laughter and chatter wash over me. I remember. I will always remember. It’s late—you need to go home. Another ciga- rette, another hug, and you're gone. You're gone. Anna WestendorfSeagull “Flight” by Ryan Tuck 16 And the way the girl moves— A hippie dreamer, Peace believer, Dancing naked —Reborn; free. Oh how her hair— Strands of gold honey, Sticky with sweat —Flies through the heavy air. And the feet— With ten long toes, Covered in brown —Stomp to the rhythm Of seven brass horns. While the band grooves and sways— Beats from the soul Pull marionette strings —Eyes follow that girl. But now the song’s over— Brass band offstage Leaves thick silence, Hanging —And the dancer is gone. OntheFarmJake Stains & always remember the time we burned sugar. you said “squeeze the flame & Bite Your Tongue.” oh! that dark aroma playfully explores the body of my throat; its sweet lust clutches blood thy Mood looks past the turquoise gray clouds & bathes in the candied bouquet of Envy the garden whispers: taste taste taste I listen. paradise we howl at A waxing moon Of fire thorns of pleasure fever thou skin I escape Again until morning devours our delicious sordid Fancy? deardr.Anxiety,dance Jason Jedrusiak 18 “The Clash” by Jessica Moog How many times Can the pieces be put Back together Before the seams refuse to heal? Is it better, then, To run screaming, Scared, In the direction from which you came? Away from what could be either your Salvation or Undoing? Or quite possibly, As it always is, ey are two faces to the same coin. So let's flip— Heads, You stay, You love, You win. Tails, You run Before you can shatter. So why cut and run When you've never been more happy, When you have not felt so light In so long? Because in the pit of your stomach Sinks a stone of doubt and truth at will never allow you to float too high And will always, Always, Keep you down. TrainwreckAddya Bhowmick 20 “Looking Through” by C. Benedix Sirens whirred by outside as omas Jackson lay on his bed He just lay there, silently watch- ing the blades of a cheap ceiling fan slowly go round and round. It had been a rough day, he thought, raising his hands and staring at the blackness that stained them. is blackness, he reflected, had ruined his life and dashed his hopes. e empty white plaster walls, decaying carpet, and wobbly table were the least of his worries. If he could change one thing in his life it would be the blackness. As the wail of the sirens passed nearby,omas turned on his MP3 player and thought back on how the black stain had affected his life that very night. It all started on Columbus Avenue. omas was trudging home after a day trying to eke out a living. He was currently subsiding on welfare checks, but they couldn’t always make ends meet. A man like him couldn’t get a job, even in the city of Boston—people took one look and had seen enough. He couldn’t keep track of the times he’d heard the phrase, “I’m sorry, these are tough times,” or, “We don’t think you would fit in here.” ey sounded considerate and made sure to come up with a likely story, but it was all lies—he knew the real reason they didn’t hire him. A yellow school bus rumbled by, full of youths coming home from the suburbs. Music blared out of the windows and a cacophony of rowdy voices echoed loudly as the brakes brought the bus to a screeching stop at a red light. If only he could be one of those kids again, omas thought, and go back to a time when he didn’t have a care in the world and had not yet been jaded from years of menial jobs and unfulfilled dreams. As the bus drove onward,omas walked past windows plastered with advertisements for Coca-Cola and Marlboro cigarettes and en- tered a small convenience store. As he pulled the door open with a ring, the stench of smoke smacked him in the face. He noticed the source almost immediately—the Italian pro- prietor, Giuseppe,was stocking packs of chew- ing gum and other assorted candies into the racks behind the stained wooden counter, and smoking a large cigar. He did not look up as omas came in. “Giuseppe’s” was a neighborhood institution. omas remembered a diverse array of kids flocking to the store in droves during the sum- mertime to take advantage of the dusty old air conditioner in the back window and a variety of hand-scooped Italian ice—lemon, cherry, or blue raspberry. Likewise, an older crowd, all Italians, congregated near the meat counter along one wall. ey sat there talking and ad- miring the marbled salamis, bolognas, and even a whole smoked codfish hanging from the ceiling. At this hour, though, the store was empty. omas wandered down the middle aisle, care- ful to avoid knocking over a teetering maga- zine rack with his coat. Although he had walked past the store countless times over the past month and a half since moving into the neighborhood, omas had only gone inside once or twice. Tonight his legs were too tired for the walk down to the supermarket after the Stain ofBlacknessJames Cucchi day’s hectic events, and he was in need of a quick dinner. In the back of the store, amid racks of potato chips and cheese snacks a month out of date, he noticed several stale- looking sub sandwiches beneath a sign that read “Made Freshis Morning.” Finding one that seemed edible, omas brought it up to the counter. Stooped over behind the counter, Giuseppe was busy placing fresh rolls of lottery tickets into the dispensers lining the back wall. A gruff voice emanated from an old black-and- white television in the corner, telling of a dar- ing bank heist that had taken place only hours earlier in a nearby neighborhood. Giuseppe did not even look up as omas placed his meal on the counter with a loud thud. “One second, one second,”Giuseppe called out as he slid the last roll of tickets into the holder. e thick Italian accent fit the man so well that omas couldn’t help but smile to himself. He doubted that he could find someone more Ital- ian in any part of the city, including the North End. Giuseppe’s large, pointed nose, which gave him a somewhat patrician air reminiscent of Caesar or a wealthy Medici, leaped out at omas as the man rose to serve him. “at’ll be three-fifty,” said Giuseppe as he reached for the register to ring in the purchase, still not looking at omas. As omas placed the money on the counter, Giuseppe glanced up at him and froze. His eyes locked on omas’s hands, slowly made their way over his jacket, and finally settled on his face. Giuseppe’s mouth opened, but no words came out. As redness crept into his face he stammered, “Get out...get out of my store.” “Hey, I’m just trying to buy some supper, chill out,” replied omas, taken aback. “No, people like you ruined this neighbor- hood!” roared Giuseppe, now once again in possession of his faculties as he reached under the wooden counter. Seeing Giuseppe’s movement,omas grabbed the sub and ran for the door. Once outside, he sneaked a glance back and saw Giuseppe standing in the window with a short wooden club in hand. omas dashed around the cor- ner, wiping sweat off his forehead, and jogged a block or so until his heart finally stopped rac- ing. omas couldn’t keep his mind quiet. oughts of “What does this mean?” and “What should I do next?”popped into his head as he replayed the incident over and over. Once he looked back and thought he saw the old Italian following him from afar, but when he looked again the figure had turned down another street. His mind was playing tricks on him. Clearly, omas thought, he couldn’t continue living in this city that he just recently had begun to call home. He couldn’t stay, and he had to get out as soon as possible. He made his mind up on the spot to leave the very next morning. His aching back and legs, sore from a long day,were the only things preventing him from leaving that night. e move would be nothing new:omas felt more at home on the road than he did anywhere else. He silently slipped into his building’s laundry room through the back door and creakily as- 22 cended the stairs to his room. He flung his backpack into the corner,went to the sink, and began scrubbing his hands. “Why won’t this blackness just come out?” he thought to him- self, almost sobbing. He held up his hands to the mirror and stared at the darkness that would not budge no matter how hard he scrubbed. omas threw himself down onto his bed as the sound of sirens a few blocks away reached his ears. A little sleep might do some good, clear the mind, he thought as he closed his eyes. When he awoke, the beam light from the street lamp was shining against his wall, pro- jecting the gnarled shadow of a black tree branch against the pale plaster wall. omas sighed, turned on his music, and lay pondering his future. e skyscrapers of New York City, which towered over anything Boston had to offer, seemed to be beckoning him to new heights, new dreams of grandeur. In New York nobody knew him—he would blend in with the multitudes of people, get a job, disappear into society, and maybe even live a normal life—one that he could not live in Boston. e sirens had by now come to a halt, and omas heard doors slamming on the street below. Removing his headphones and peering out the window, he saw four squad cars parked on the street and about a dozen officers dis- embarking onto the sidewalk. His blood froze. omas leaped out of bed, knocking his new cellular phone to the floor, and ran to the sink. He stared at his face in the old mirror—it was as pale as a ghost. He attacked his hands again, scrubbing futilely at the black ink. As foot- steps thudded up the stairs,omas dashed to his backpack and opened it, frantically ripping out bundles of ink-stained bills and stuffing them under his mattress. He had almost fin- ished by the time the door was smashed in. e End “Portrait” by Cait Madden I hear about her face before I see it; his punches must have been painful. Was this a mere mosh pit casualty, or did her belligerence spark concertgoers’ violence? Not till midafternoon does she amble out squinting and groaning, brown bathrobe hanging limply from her naked frame, dead-eyed. Her curly hair reaches new heights: it’s matted and tangled like Edward Scissorhands— near the movie’s end, when he stops trying to fit in. e lock clicks on the bathroom door. We count the minutes she showers, afraid she’ll pass out in there again. Leaving our apartment would require explanations, so she doesn’t. I hear her lie on the phone, saying she’s fine but worries she has a concussion. I have places to be, but feel guilty leaving: her immaturity makes me protective. She meets inquiries with one-word responses or teen angst, depending on her mood. A volatile mess, she’s not the first I’ve wanted to fix. I’ve got to stop clutching fireworks. She inks HerMiddle Name isDangerAbby Zorbaugh 24 Because of the warm sun and the evening air we held class outside on the dew-damp grass, my students’ books and bags transversed by little insects intent on the completion of insistent secret tasks— e wet grass seemed to grow beneath stained denim and wet cotton, heavy limbs making strange beds of the green fibrous blades, which pointed in all directions and sometimes down to earth where under grass and sod lay a cemetery of children long asleep beneath the living— Grass And when they went back to tiny rooms and cots, leaving behind strange impressions in the green-bladed yard like monstrous, deformed grass angels, ghosts of their hour spent there, all I could think was how nice to go home and sit in half-light, drinking coffee while the sun disappears, holding back the trickle of terror that has welled up into the cellar of my brain while that field of grass, emblazoned with the impressions made by unwary youths, holds down the rising stones of children’s graves underground. Tonight I recall the sounds of uncorrelated words my students shared in that grassy twilight Babel while for 200 miles down gravestones of lost children rose in mournful clusters of marble and forgotten words, the voices of the children murmuring in dark graves of the searing sweetness of waking on summer mornings to the din and delight of a thousand thousand hours wasted joyfully while supple hands turned into cold stones— Impressions26Timothy Strange “Land on Me” by Carolyn Meers Coils of light reflect back, slithering along pavement ordained with gum and broken patches of concrete filled with green life. Home for so long, the past stretches and arches its back; the dips and valleys flow like sound waves. Future is voracious, and I without a shield fail to find clarity in a blurry sky. Growls from below hunger for motion as snakes turn to shadows. Weather waivers as my moods, dictated by Climate’s schedule, vacillate, minute lightning bolts which spear, spewing stars from Midnight’s belly. Why return for answers that will not be? Why wait for resolution that will not come? ese diamond freckles offer no value but to enhance the beauty of the face they lie upon. e outlook, ever evasive, is observable only after its creation. As a loyal dog follows its owner, so does our history follow us. Tara P. VilkIncognitus 28 “Shatter” by Jason Jedrusiak working title Caroline Ste u ernagel Rebecca Payne LifeDoesn’t Fitin aSpreadsheet e little self-worth that I have has been shattered. Who do I think I am? I can read a poem. I can write a paper. I can watch a bird dip and dive through a cloud- less sky and know the true meaning behind it, or at least relate it to something of substance. I have optic nerves and opposable thumbs. I am not a writer. I am a human who can see, think, feel and articulate. I am not saving children in Darfur or creating means of sustainable energy. I am simply watching evolution day after day and putting it to paper. Anyone can look out their own window and see a girl bicycling or a vagabond begging for change. Anyone can feel the reactions to these images. Anyone can pick up a pen, write them down, add a date and call it poetry. Where do I go from here? life doesn't fit in a spreadsheet every aspect quantized minutia-ized to the nth decimal place. there's never enough time to gather data consider options; choices are forced. rolling deadlines leave estimates in vital variables and some can never be filled at all ( is love on a scale of one to ten? what is the square root of family ties? ) a haphazard experiment: no control group no multiple independent trials; impartiality's fiction—each run built on the bias before trying to offset these influences with methods and protocols that define interactions, from holding a fork to searching the net from courtship to stages of grief, is an effort at standardization of the inherently unstable process: an ultimately failed attempt to subdivide knowable parts from an infinite whole 30 I planted your thoughts in my burial plot in the memorial park under the sign that says “Curb your dog; keep off the grass.” I drew you a map out of my forgotten notes,my drafts,my dreams and research, and my favorite book that you can’t remember. It’s been so long since the last time I followed you now and sent a pan- ther to look for you in a desperate way that you live on the tenth floor and it couldn’t fit in the elevator. I saw your lights, I found out your in- spiration wasn’t anything more than a busy street full of rich people and overpriced mer- chandise, and your music selection for the soundtrack of your failures was something you illegally downloaded from the discount rack next to the register and the can of pins on sale for a dollar that tell you to “Fuck off ” and “That’s what she said.” Your people-watching skills aren’t enough to pay the rent on your ex- pensive hole-in-the-wall so you pick up a pen- cil and pass it on and hope someone cares, but when someone does you don’t know what to do with yourself. In a way, it’s the saddest thing that’s ever hap- pened to you that your mother didn’t buy you from a department store with the money she saved from her private enterprise to put to good use her knowledge of what privilege buys from the right people. Someday you’ll meet the right person and think that you wish you were young again because now you are too old and your canvases are starting to shrink. In the cav- ern of your inspiration you’ll wrap up nice and neat and tidy the thoughts you were too afraid to live for and pretend that they don’t exist, it didn’t happen, and in the end you’ll know, I’ll know, he she it they we all will know what you really meant to do with your time. You keep a box of paints as a pet and know you never re- ally did anything too risky but you’re better off than anyone who did because at least you’re happy, you tell yourself, because you knew from the start that it was all just a bunch of bullshit, you tell yourself, and you needed something to distract yourself so you bought a book, you took a class, you spent a little too much time alone with yourself and smoked a little too much of something you couldn’t afford and waste not want not.Dig a hole in your father’s trust fund and get comfortable because it’s gonna be a long winter, baby. I remember that you had a plastic tree in your overpriced apart- ment and it matched your cheap shoes that you owned and bought and paid for and you could- n’t remember what you were doing so you did something else. I hope you did enough to keep yourself satisfied. Someday you’re gonna find the one and say, “Baby, you’re the one, let’s get married, let’s start our lives because these last few decades were only a practice run. Let’s tie our lives to- gether, let’s spend all the time in the world, baby, the world is gonna end and it’s gonna be too soon.Let’s go on a honeymoon, let’s go on a cruise. Let’s have kids, let’s settle down, let’s live in the suburbs, let’s remember what it’s like ProfessoreArt Ana Roth to be young and in love while we do nothing like it. Baby, I love you, you’re the only one for me.” In your exotic island of faraway plans and joint checking accounts and matching the drapes with the rugs and picking out your faucets to clean the dishes that pile up at your Hanukkah dinners and pretending not to notice how your world is shrinking you will stop and look around and say, “Baby, nothing’s wrong.”I hope your new corporate job supports you enough, buys you a new car to park in that garage paid for with your money and freedom and inde- pendence you worked for so hard and these past few decades were just a practice run.Don’t forget to put your ring back on, check your face in the rear-view mirror for lipstick that she left when you left her and when you left yourself back in the city all these years ago when I knew you inside a single building and you gave me more than I asked for and you didn’t know what to do with yourself. Your inspiration was a busy street with rich people and expensive stores and you paid too much rent for your tiny apartment and you lived with your sister and you worked your freelance and goddamn you had your freedom and your integrity and the world was a big bright place full of opportuni- ties to come knocking on your bolted chained door you decorated with sketches and stickers from bad shows you saw in college with ugly girls and drunk guys because you didn’t want to do your homework.Your heart, your house was full of your paintings and your favorite people you saw on your busy expensive street. Their faces bought you your house in the suburbs, your new shiny car, your kids’ college education and the hotel rooms you used to cheat on your wife and your electric toothbrush and the way you say good-bye in the morning with a smile and a kiss and maybe the hope that things will get better because, God knows, they can’t get worse.Crack open a cheap beer and fire up the grill and kiss the cook because your reign of mediocrity is just beginning and, baby, it’s gonna be a long summer. Remember your honeymoon and remember that cruise your momma’s money bought you next to the flatware and the blenders and the monogrammed towels and the tacky albums and the thousands of signatures and photos and memories of varying degrees of pain, and your wife got sick from the all-you-can-eat buffet on the main deck and your boat hit an iceberg and your cabin filled with water and you couldn’t find a lifeboat, and here you are all these decades later from the second honey- moon you find yourself stranded in Sweden with a casket and a story to tell your kids over ice cream from the drive-through, and they’ll cry but you can’t find the room in your soul overcrowded with the memories of your pro- fessional people-watching and illegal down- loads and expensive streets and bad paints and old canvases and fake plants and dirty sneakers and worn backpacks and bad coffee and the af- ternoon you spent in the park dreaming that life would be better than everything it turned out to be when you turned around and said, “Baby, you’re the one for me.” 32 A Saturday morning, spring, 1977, I awoke to the music of swingset chains before the sunrise— Katie Earnest was up before the light, launching herself again and again on rusty chains into the purple air— (What was she doing out there so early?)— For no reason at all I was sad, thinking of her waking before dawn, cold and sleepy and descending the stairs, moving into the yard across the field from the muddy Red River, sitting on the white plastic seat, launching herself, launching herself at nothing. Aubade The colors are beautiful, visceral. Gold hurled against orange, in a motion like a murderous fist crushing an object of hate, blending flesh with bone, bone with blood: an ecstasy of color and texture. Its delicate rice paper is kept crumpled to artistic tenderness, filmy edges torn for avant-garde appeal flutter posthumously, exposed fibers waving softly from the AC—deadcold, robot air— while pasted-on glitter plunges painfully to the floor. All up for sale: another whore on the block. Papyrus Tim ot hy Str an ge Natalie Schack 34 “Let it Rest” by Cait Madden 36 “Thought I’d See You One More Time” by Gina Bollenback Dear N______, as if by some nameless god’s command, I’ve remained shackled here for some time. Mother calls me Bertha, some crazy lady in the attic, The self-sentenced prisoner. Only you know (don’t you?) that the thoughts Of you have rendered me immobile. Do you remember (tell me you do!) The night at Orient Point? We played trespassers on someone else’s Intimate haven, feigning abandon we never possessed. A starless sky, the roof over our heads, We coveted the miniature block houses Scattered like Lego pieces across the field. Some distant church bell strikes eight, The sun beating on my face, my night has just begun. You must be sprinting up the subway stairs, Your face flustered with concern at That coffee spill on your tie. The creases on your forehead deepen. You are quite the serious man these days. Darling N______, I am a mere shade, My tiny grey particles bonded By the memories of your scent. I think Of Orient Point, muster the strength to think some more. The way the universe, the silent spectator, hushed its spirits, The way you stared, fixedly, at nothing—and I, at you— As you slowly buttoned your shirt. Thoughts swirl about my shadow brain like Whirlpools of cream in black coffee. And in these thoughts I see your face, Grains of sand, your five o’clock shadow, Prickle my fingers as I trace them along your chin, Across your chest, around your navel; With the contours of my name I draw myself a path. You’ve been busy, but I wish you’d write. Don’t you remember, N______, don’t you, don’t you Remember, I used to lie beside you. Maybe I have become just a blip on your mind-map. Yet I write, even if the recipient is some elusive space, even If my words are swallowed by some harshly indifferent vacuum, I write to you. Or ien tP oin tAthul ya Ar av ind 38 “Specula” by Carolyn Meers In the back of my closet is a dress that has hung there motionless for half a decade. It’s too sweet, too small, and too white for me.Yet it stays there and I cling to it the way people cling to the past and to the future and to the slightest possibility of talent. I wore it once, in an ecstasy of childish delight and excitement, wearing white in a gray world.We were clean, clean white slates, white as our clothes, which were new and bought especial for the occasion. Being Catholic used to mean church and cookies on Sundays. It meant seeing my cousins and listening to stories and laughing with Father Mack. It wasn’t sacrifice and it wasn’t love. It wasn’t religion.Then again,what was, when I was seven? The church is circular, not rectangular like most chapels.The worshippers radiate around the altar, and suspended from the ceiling is Jesus himself, hovering on his cross in midair, halfway between the pinnacled ceiling and the floor. Sometimes I would contemplate him while the priest was speaking of sinners being punished.Up there always, forever attached to that block of wood, with his ribs jutting out awfully from his abdomen, so much so that if you laid him horizontally and poured water on him, he’d have little tide pools in his tummy. I can imagine him watching us try it, as curious as we are about the outcome, and then laugh- ing with delight at the little pools and fishes, his own aquarium right in his tummy. When he laughs his eyes are closed, and when he opens them you can see the melancholy that clouds the back of every expression: the eternal sadness even when he is laughing at tide pools in his tummy. I’m confused at this paradox of emotion in his eyes.He accepts that there will always be wood attached to his back, that he died to save the world and people are still murdering their wives and raping children and waging cru- sades. I can imagine that if I were him, hang- ing from the ceiling from a clear thread (to look like he was floating), I would feel as if I had given up. He always looked so haggard. I wonder if he thought it would change every- thing when he died, that he was saving us from ourselves. Now, 2000 years older and wiser, he can only plead with sad eyes, resisting the de- spair that centuries of horror have sown in him. On the day of my communion, he hung there as usual and no one noticed. How many times had no one noticed? How many days did he sit there quietly, how many nights after the door was locked so thieves couldn’t steal any more of the Stations of the Cross did he hover in the dark, motionless, waiting for the next batch of sinners? esusandJ Natalie SchackWhite Dresses We were a river of flowing, chattering, white- clothed girls and boys with hakus and ti leaf leis and no idea what we were doing, no idea what we were committing ourselves to.No idea that our soul was at stake, no idea that we were pretending to have learned, in a few years, something it takes a lifetime to know for sure. And like obedient little souls we marched marched marched up to the priest and had wine (“...ugh...”) and the flat bread with the flavor I just can’t put my finger on. Our eyes were fresh and our minds were as fresh and pure as that dress in my closet. Our white dresses gleamed all the way down to the altar, like a bride,marrying herself blindly to a belief. I remember pride at having the prettiest, finest communion banner, with a silk Sacred Heart and floral cross and roses and gold braid. I re- member not wanting to say anything about it because church is just not the right place to brag. And I remember the red punch after, al- ways, motivation to be a good girl. Now the dress is stowed in the back, along with black and white and along with child- hood and along with Sunday School. It keeps company with playing outside and having birthday parties with piñatas and it goes to sleep with ballet and karate and my other childhood memories, my other experiments. I’ll never fit it again, and it will never mean the same thing to me.But I can’t throw it away and I don’t know why. “Wedding Day” by Natasha Mbabazi“Wedding Day” by Natasha Mbabazi 40 on de rla nd W Sprawled out on my dirty, sheetless mattress in white denim shorts and a bra, through my windows hot light reaches spindly towards my body as the mice squeak and sputter, racing across linoleum tiles. Summer. I am sprinting downhill to Jimmy’s apartment on Darling Street. Jimmy doesn’t believe in phones, or keys, (or bank accounts) so I shout his name from the parking lot below his window until he steps onto his balcony and looks down at me, smiling, a wine glass clasped tight in his hand. Jimmy loves boys like I do, but since he knows what they want like I never can, and since he is 21 and I am 18, I know I would do absolutely anything for him, and probably have, so I break into his building with my credit card and run upstairs. During the nighttime I waste away on Newbury Street, serving overpriced pizza to rich tourists from Italy, or Paris, or Hong Kong, with their boxy, expensive purses and fingers that point to the things they want. after, my hair rich with garlic, I’ll collapse from the steep uphill walk into my shoddy apartment, six hundred a month but I somehow plead my dad into paying half. He doesn’t know I live with six tall boys and an empty fridge, the scummy white plastered with German magnetic poetry left by the tenants before us that we push together into foreign nonsense phrases then look up late at night on the internet. we have known each other all of two weeks, my new friends and I, and so are infatuated with the heady restlessness of being attached, of how easy it is. we count and coddle the days that stretch out before us, each one lazy and sticky, like candy. one night all of us crowd into a dirty bi-level, wedged behind a Burger King. Eli takes my hand as we walk through the drive-thru, and I peel a stamp off our shared fries that says we won fifty dollars, which he pockets and promises to mail and split with me when I get back in the Fall. (I never hear about it again.) and I overhear him, later, talking sloshily about liking me, which I try to ignore and he forgets entirely by noon the next day. but, despite myself, I can feel that I Iove him already; all of them, painfully, an aching only boys can inflict, wanting to hold them or mend, when all I can do is Ra ch el Za rr ell make pasta at 2 am, or let them spin me, earnestly, while we ballroom dance drunk in a living room. and it’s three or four in the morning now. we’re all fuzzy-headed and cold, walking to a Chinese restaurant someone swears is only one more block, one more block, and Jimmy yells into my phone at his best friend home in Georgia, or else he’s singing showtunes in the restaurant at dawn, uncaring to the dirty looks and snapping when I try to tell him, and Eli probably hums to himself or smiles at me; and I hide my grin and think how we’ll be neighbors in the fall, but it’s too far away to wrap my head around. and in the moment I think, falsely, how nice it will be to see each other all the time, and even let that thought slide me into a deep sleep, too many warm nights to count. but it’s still Summer. I am leaving in one week to be a camp counselor for cynical 13-year-old girls. I get fired from the pizza place so I retreat to Wonderland every morning instead, a sad little beach that skirts the poorer areas of the city. on the T the tan men stare at my brown bikini straps, sometimes asking me foreign questions in smooth, coalescing Portuguese. once there, I swirl white vanilla ice cream onto my tongue, then pose as there’s a flash of the five of us, our arms around each other’s waists, ankle-deep in the foamy yellow surf that’s crowded with pollen. We drink too much, always, and get restless, so at midnight, my last night, we hike to the park up the hill, up past the tire swings and the glinting metal slide. while the boys talk quietly on the boulders about things only boys know and I never will, their voices muffled just out of my reach, I stargaze alone and collapse into long, cool grass, content and not caring, like I should, that this will all end soon, how coats and scarves will bring with them the disconnect, the anxious, hasty meetings in the dark, aimless attempts to get back to this place we had, and then the truth: about all of us, about how being alive is just easier in the summertime, how the buzz of warmth will peel away and leave only hurt, even if I spend the whole season denying it to myself: none of us will remember how to love people like that by the time the cold sets in. 42 Jarett, coarse hair, wide smile, and those cowboy boots. He likes to say: “Hello.” The time, the place—it doesn’t matter. Walks up to the counter at the corner store and always says: “Hello.” Tuesday nights we meet. Holding clippings in my left hand, one large Starbucks coffee in his right. Right across the table he will catch my glimpse. Crossed-legged, a sitting Indian chief. Orders the tuna and California roll to share at Bonzai—he likes sushi.Tries to use the chopsticks, but his fingers can never seem to grip. Stumble between their structures.Tries twice. It works. Resort to a fork? No, not him. Jarett is always inspired.The stars of last night’s meteor shower, soaring from some unforeseen destination, he would say, changed his life. Replay that song.Track 5, with the soft melody: So what if now is all we have? Live as if you never knew what it was to lose. Grinning, Jarett will claim he has been enlightened from lyrical prose. Capture the world is what he does through a lens. Blends the chemicals in the dark with the scarce light being one small bulb overhead. It is almost as if he is lost in the dark of night, only the hanging moon illuminating his path. Lost. Well does anyone ever know where they are going? he asked me one warm night. No, I said. No. But it is good to have plans, make plans. No, just live, simply enjoy, he said. Into the city one August day, we took the metro downtown. It was rainy, miserable. A summer day when the heat sticks to your skin. Pushed up against strangers, I grimaced. Unplanned. Jarett, with his coarse hair and wide smile, held my hand. He looked forward, met the eyes of an unknown man: “Hello.” The businessman, stiff, eased: We need more friendly faces on a day like this one. The stop was reached. Jarett’s cowboy boots clicked off the subway. You don’t know, that just made my life, he said. His stare was deep. I sware, you don’t know. M eg an Va ra ny ak 44 “Dawn Looks to Dusk Looks to Dawn” by Carolyn Meers “In di vid ua l, In di vis ib le” by Si er ra Sm ith For moreartwork by: Gina Bollenback www.bollenback-g.smugmug.com Natasha Mbabazi community.webshots.com/user/tas319 Carolyn Meers www.flickr.com/photos/lynny_lou/ Sierra Smith nodyourwarlock.deviantart.com Spectr um Literary Arts Magazine Fa l l2009
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Spectrum literary arts magazine: Fall 2009.
Spectrum literary arts magazine: Fall 2009.
Spectrum literary arts magazine
Spectrum literary arts magazine
Fall 2009
Fall 2009
Fall 2009 issue of student-run publication at Northeastern University
Northeastern University
Northeastern University
2009-12
2009-12
2009-12
2009-12
literary magazine
arts magazine
poetry
prose
fine arts
Northeastern University
student publication
literary magazine
arts magazine
poetry
prose
fine arts
Northeastern University
student publication
http://hdl.handle.net/2047/d20002481
http://hdl.handle.net/2047/d20002481
literary magazine
arts magazine
poetry
prose
fine arts
Northeastern University
student publication
Spectrum literary arts magazine
Spectrum literary arts magazine: Fall 2009.
spectrum literary arts magazine fall 002009
http://issuu.com/northeastern_libraries/docs/spectrum_fall_2009?e=2827135/4316674
2009/12/01
Spectrum literary arts magazine
2009-12
literary magazine
arts magazine
poetry
prose
fine arts
Northeastern University
student publication
info:fedora/afmodel:CoreFile
info:fedora/neu:rx9143905
Spectrum literary arts magazine: Fall 2009 Spec trum L iterary Arts Magazine Fall 2009 Spectr um Literary Arts Magazine Fa l l2009 Spectrum Literary Arts Ma gaz ine Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine, Fall 2009 edition. Copyright © Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine and respective authors. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the permission of Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine and/or respective authors. Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine reserves the right to edit submissions for layout, grammar, spelling, and punctuation unless explicitly instructed by the author/artist. Any references to people living or dead are purely coincidental, except in the cases of a public figure. The views and opinions represented in this medium do not necessarily reflect those of Northeastern University or the staff of Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine. Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine showcases the talents of the writers and artists at Northeastern University. All members of the Northeastern community are encouraged to submit works of original poetry, prose, and visual art. For more information, please visit www.spectrum.neu.edu. Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine is printed by Special thanks to Phil Cara Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine spectrum.magazine@gmail.com www.spectrum.neu.edu 234 Curry Student Center Mailbox: 434 Curry Student Center www.uni-graphic.com Cover and theme art adapted from “Feet” by Ryan Tucker and “Individual, Indivisible” by Sierra Smith, found within this issue of Spectrum. Executive Staff General Staff Editor in Chief Josh Olejarz Layout and Design David Nadeau Financial Manager Miriam Laufer Advertising Manager Lucia Allen Secretary Diana Mai Assistant Editor Michelle Alexander Alyssa Sullivan Aylish O’Sullivan MacKenzie Cockerill Peter Tran Layout CommitteeMichelle Buchman Mark Calley Andrea Hampel Nick DeSimone Matt Kline Kelsey Ragsdale Miranda Paquet Mick Thibodeau Magdalena Szalowski Amanda Pratti Anna Westendorf David Wong Taryn Sadauskas Courtney Stefanik From the Editor You’re not reading the coolest version of this issue. Driven by an odd obsession with feet and floor imagery, we printed this issue with two different covers. Both of feet. Both provocative. And the other one's better. e artwork in the following pages is themed around the textures of floors, car- pets, and surfaces—the things we walk on and by every day. We aren’t sure why or how this happened, or even what it means. All we know is that we like it. And we hope you will too. anks for reading, Josh Olejarz “Red Brick Anonymity” by Natalie Schack 12 “The Yellow Line” by Jason Jedrusiak “Tailor Made” by J.M. Olejarz “Isolation Intensifies Everything” by Abby Zorbaugh “Iris” by Jessica O’Neill 2 “Feet” by Ryan Tuck 4 “Hustle and Bustle” by Gina Bollenback “The Reason for the Season” by J.M. Olejarz 8 “Central Perk” by Natasha Mbabazi 6 “Nonchalance is His Allure” by Abby Zorbaugh 10 “Water Works” by Natasha Mbabazi “Columbus Ave.” by Miriam Laufer “Hunted” by Carolyn Meers “Train” by Ryan Tuck “Well It’s About Time” by Magdalena Szalowski 14 “Leaving Ground” by Lauren Chapman “Flight” by Ryan Tuck 18 “The Clash” by Jessica Moog “Looking Through” by C. Benedix 24 “Portrait” by Cait Madden 22 “Stain of Blackness” by James Cucchi 16 “Seagull” by Anna Westendorf “On the Farm” by Jake Stains “dear dr. Anxiety, dance” by Jason Jedrusiak 20 “Trainwreck” by Addya Bhowmick 26 “Grass Impressions” by Timothy Strange “Wedding Day” by Natasha Mbabazi to Dawn” by Carolyn Meers 45 “Individual, Indivisible” by Sierra Smith 32 “The Art Professor” by Ana Roth “Dawn Looks to Dusk Looks 36 “Thought I’d See You One “working title” by Caroline Steuernagel “Life Doesn’t Fit in a Spreadsheet” by Rebecca Payne “Let it Rest” by Cait Madden 28 “Land on Me” by Carolyn Meers “Papyrus” by Natalie Schack 34 “Aubade” by Timothy Strange 40 “Jesus and White Dresses” by Natalie Schack 42 “Wonderland” by Rachel Zarrell 38 “Orient Point” Athulya Aravind More Time” by Gina Bollenback “Specula” by Carolyn Meers 30 “Shatter” by Jason Jedrusiak 44 “15 Drive” by Megan Varanyak In this issue: “She Thinks Her Middle Name is Danger” by Abby Zorbaugh “Incognitus” by Tara P. Vilk “Feet” by Ryan Tuck Isolation Intensifies Everythi Isolation intensifies everything. I often go for aimless walks, inventing fictive destinations just to get outside and breathe my thoughts, inner monologue audible without chatter. Cooking alone, I savor the sharp knife slicing squash crisp and even. I heat meat various ways, the grill sizzles and sputters, or I stir-fry up a storm, and bake things to warm the very heart of me with taste. I soap the fridge interior, sponging dirt no one else thought to look for, checking jellies’ dates; it’s a strange victory when I discover rancid food. But I eventually need to again bask in the presence of people and try to live out my daydreams. ingAbby Zorbaugh I wish all love was limitless and every day the aroma of it saturated the air and emanated from every person's pores to float up forming molecules of love and cloud the skies, to rain down upon burning cities, burning with the fires of love— burning, burning flames engulfing structures built with love— and the tears of love tearing apart freckled cheeks would fall to the loving black asphault to be loved by the soles of filthy shoes, the souls of filthy men, to be loved by fearless women whose perpetual love would fill the burning buildings with fuel for the fire... unstoppable fuel, never to be staunched by earthly water, only by the rain and tears of that love emanating from those pores— those poor, fragile hearts broken. Iris Jessica O’Neill 2 4 the most wonderful time of the year is December, our month-long submersion in xmas, the mass waterboarding of the population with a torrent of holiday cheer. goodwill is converted into truckloads of snowflake and gingerbread garbage that gets littered, inches thick, around the country. it snows not weather, but white and red potpourri, as if the plumbing burst in the xmas factory, spewing candy cane vomit and reindeer guts up against the walls and all across the floors. it’s wrapped up, then, and shipped out worldwide— gifted to children who learn to love the yearly boxes of soggy goo that puddle beneath the sludge-choked tree. carolers sing, slogging through the stuffed santa claus dolls that clog the gutters, and parents shopping for presents kick and wade through knee-high grinning elves in hats green like dollar bills. the country becomes a boggy swampland, a hazardous scumpond of predators quick to cash in on the people mucking through it. and when the calendar strikes January, the whole mire is sucked up and stored in monstrous large vats somewhere— lurking, scheming, licking chops waiting for its inevitable release next year. The Reason for the SeasonJ.M. Olejarz “Hustle and Bustle” by Gina Bollenback Party boy makes me breakfast omelettes after sleeping sweaty and naked. I pad around the messy room in his plaid pajama pants, not wanting to retrieve my discarded (now pot-scented) jeans from his floor. He’s a hippie in the worst way, bragging nonstop about musicfests; passionate he loses himself as the bass throbs. His shit-eating grin says he usually gets what he wants. A friend writes his paper, freeing his time for god knows what. Connecticut-bred politeness tempered with “dude” and “yo.” Though less ambitious than I wish, I can’t resist: he sure knows how to have fun. His hands are golden, strumming me guitarlike, foreplay unforgotten. Drunk me begs like never before: words women coo into phones only when paid by the minute. I crack when he calls me sexy; I’m well aware I’m not: cute maybe, sexy never. This rebellious mystery might be lying, but I enjoy every minute. onchalanceis HisAllureNAbby Zorba ugh 6 “Hunted” by Carolyn Meers Columbus Ave. “Hey, baby, wanna save the polar bears?” does- n’t even merit a reaction these days. Two sec- onds later I’ve usually got a snazzy line about how I’d be a fan of global warming on Face- book if I could.Attention-whoring bicycles are getting blasé, and I am heartless in regard to a certain family of seven. I’ll admit to some slight curiosity about what the mustachioed Hispanic man on the bicycle insults me with every morning, but I’ve never stopped to in- quire. I’ve never met the one-arm push-up man, but, after the stories, I doubt he could surprise me. She was a true original. She blended in with the crowd in an urban-professional outfit and meticulous makeup. One wouldn’t suspect her of designs of accosting innocent strangers. She may have noticed my slight hesitation, as I couldn’t help but notice her slightly-above- ordinary beauty. She took advantage. “Excuse me.” Her tone was beguiling, and I was vulnerable in an early-morning daze. “I know this is kind of random, but do you read the Bible?” e first get-out-of-jail-free card that occurred to my hazy mind was, “I’m Jewish.” at may have daunted her a bit, but she recovered quickly. “Well, Jews have the Bible, too, right? I’m talking about the OldTestament,” she clar- ified. Darn, I thought, as everybody else on the side- walk swarmed to either side of us, abandoning me to my predicament. “Genesis 1:27. It says He created them in his Image; male and female he created them. What do you think that says about the origi- nal?” It took me a moment to pick apart her words. She knows what verse she’s quoting from—the fanatic! Or did she just stay up all night read- Miriam Laufer “Central Perk” by Natasha Mbabazi ing it? It triggered something in my memory, a thought I had once about humans created in the Image of God, male and female….but what about the original…what? I hoped my expression conveyed my confusion accurately and we could just nod and move on with our lives. She was persistent. (Aren’t those types always?) She repeated her question: “What do you think it says about the original?” at memory was back. A memory from a person who used to take God and his Word se- riously. I knew the answer she wanted. “at the original…must be both male and fe- male.” I felt the relief like when a professor smiles and nods heartily to let you know you’re on the same wavelength. is woman was searching not for an ultimate truth, but for a similarity of thought with another human. She nodded emphatically. “That’s what I was thinking,” she added in a (dramatized?) tone of deep reflection, “thank you.”And,with that, she finally glided out of my life. I couldn’t stop thinking about her all the way home and all that day. I found the exact verse on the internet; her eerie precision was a strike against her. Her face, though, the earnestness of her brown eyes, the fact that she was walk- ing just like everybody else—she only stopped for me—made me wonder. I’ll never know what motivated that woman to ask me that question. Whether it was a ran- dom thought that occurred to her in an instant, another moment in a lifelong search for a God that looked like her, or an outreach of feminist evangelism, does it matter? A stranger affected my day, and isn’t that the goal of all those peo- ple out there? Maybe an ambiguous difference, like an androgynous God, is something to hope for. 8 “W at er Wo rk s” by Na ta sh a M ba ba zi 10 “T ra in ” by Ry an Tu ck e city is red brick gardens with streetlight trees, enveloping the pedestrian in sheets of intimacy. e ivy walls are closeness, pressing firm, like swaddlings, cool like absentminded breezes coming off a faraway shore, filtered through someone's woods. Cupping the bay in one hand and arching her back to the vastness of the west, she cradles the lives and lives twisted around each other in the crannies of her bosom, in the unending apartment buildings. In the city, my fingers are entwined around everyone else's, my feet jostle for space with everyone else's, my eyes hold conversations with a thousand everyone elses. ere is no prairie of low-lying sun-bleached homes that stretch themselves flat and exposed, revealing you as their blemish, their child and stranger, the uncertain paint spatter on it—faultless white canvas— as you pivot and slide directionless: either a coy modernist expression, or an artist's clumsy mistake. Red Brick Anonymity Natalie Schack Tailor Made full orange at sunset are the colors of a common autumn— it drapes silken from the sky, and velvet down the city walls like a curtain, like too much fabric left to bunch in circling, pillowed folds —it slowly turns the leaves to match— oranges by default, yellows that haven't quite yet, deep reds that drift from trees to river, land and floating on the surface. they join the sunset's sparkling waterlights—an embroidered sapphire tapestry of diamonds and opals, all set gleaming in the intricate nautical arrangement; all raw materials waiting to be used. a small sailboat drifts lazily, gently nudging a path between the gems like an indiscriminate jeweler picking through his vast collection —jib and main raise casual claim to the surrounding riches— the mate and captain recline on deck, lifejackets for cushions, surveying and appraising the surrounding natural showroom. they gather in the bolts of fabric, reach down and scoop handfuls of liquid thread, to pencil mark the dimensions of the skyline, to fashion their own existence: craftsmen, they are, who take the varied textures of the season, and snip trim stitch them into something somehow personal, a chance individual fit. craftsmen, both, they are innate tailors, born to the task, who can cut the living world to suit them. J.M. Olejarz 12 “The Yellow Line” by Jason Jedrusiak “Leaving Ground” by Lauren Chapman ey laughed when I died. I told them they would. I jumped out naked, so shield your eyes and giggle. I forgot my parachute, or ripped it out when no one was watching, I can’t remember which. But the fall was clear as day and no accident. I fell and fell and fell and fell some more, And reached the grounds of the Barbary lions. ey’re still alive, I swear! But I’m not, for they mauled me. e whole scenario was an act, Read through but never rehearsed. Razzle-dazzle, hula hoops, and even circus lions! Oh how spectacular the show was, And for the grand finale I spewed blood Like communist communist communist confetti, And still in the nude. I had some pearls but Sylvia Plath stole them. ey were mine first, honest. I don’t want them anymore. ey say she got ‘em all sticky… …Skank. Anyway it was like the echo in a grand ballroom made by a mute— e laughter, e humor found in death, e entertainment provided by the black plague, e sold-out shows for the holocaust. I was still somewhat of a star when my curtain closed— Less than thirty, more than ten— Not old enough, just like I promised. I went out without a wrinkle, For most bow looking like those cute Shar Peis. I’m not a dog. e personality of a female, perhaps, But human as far as the eye can see, And I died young and glamorous. I’m dead now and past lovers leave tears at my grave— Tears of joy, silly! At my funeral, the orchestra played “Barnum and Bailey’s Favorite,” And the parlor had more vibrancy than a San Franciscan gay pride parade. But my splendid crowd smirked and smiled, hollered and hooted, clapped and cheered and roared and giggled and… Laughed. Oh how they laughed! Well It’s About TimeMagdalena Szalowski 14 I know this road. I have driven it countless times with you—windows down, music up. Casual California summers always seemed so fresh, so new—so alive... Time is fluid as memories rush over me. I feel them flooding the car and I am overwhelmed as stagnant nostalgia is replaced by an understanding of this new world I must adapt to. I know this road. But I have not turned down that side street, taking the slow curves, anxiety building as I round the last one. I have not be- fore seen this peaceful and eerie expanse of grass stretching before me in the parking lot. I glance up at the clear blue sky and silently curse the cruelty of a beautiful day in March. I sit in my car for what seems like hours (or per- haps only a fleeting second) before I realize I must get up (pick myself up again, move on). I catch my reflection in the window and swear I can see my heart nearly beating out of my chest. I feel the sun warming my bare shoulders as I reach for my jacket. I narrate my motions in my head. Inhale, exhale. Close the door. Deep breath...release. Repeat. One, two steps. Hesitate. Here lies a truth I am not prepared to face. Whispering to myself to the rhythm of my slow, painful footsteps—why, why, why... I am not surprised by how loved you are. I rec- ognize the faces, but do not process their pres- ence. I feel alone in a mind-numbingly silent world. Everything is a surreal dreamland, and I am floating. I can feel myself choking as I reach you too soon. Now taking slow, shaking breaths, I look at you for the last time. I become dizzy with the reality I can no longer ignore.Lightheaded, I slowly step away from you, each tear a moment, a memory. I try to remember to breathe (I wish I could for you) and voices hover in the static air, fading in and out of my consciousness. ey close the lid. I close my eyes. I am aware of someone holding me, but I have to struggle to feel something other than this unfamiliar heaviness in my chest. I take a flower. It is so bright...the way you had been.With an unsteady hand I reach out to drop it. I let go of the stem, but can't seem to convince myself to let go of you. I remember one chilly December night on a friend's back porch: a few friends, a few drags off a clove, a few drinks. I remember your arm around me, keeping me warm as my head rested on your shoulder. I remember I settled into the comfortable and familiar happiness that comes with being home (home will never be the same), letting the laughter and chatter wash over me. I remember. I will always remember. It’s late—you need to go home. Another ciga- rette, another hug, and you're gone. You're gone. Anna WestendorfSeagull “Flight” by Ryan Tuck 16 And the way the girl moves— A hippie dreamer, Peace believer, Dancing naked —Reborn; free. Oh how her hair— Strands of gold honey, Sticky with sweat —Flies through the heavy air. And the feet— With ten long toes, Covered in brown —Stomp to the rhythm Of seven brass horns. While the band grooves and sways— Beats from the soul Pull marionette strings —Eyes follow that girl. But now the song’s over— Brass band offstage Leaves thick silence, Hanging —And the dancer is gone. OntheFarmJake Stains & always remember the time we burned sugar. you said “squeeze the flame & Bite Your Tongue.” oh! that dark aroma playfully explores the body of my throat; its sweet lust clutches blood thy Mood looks past the turquoise gray clouds & bathes in the candied bouquet of Envy the garden whispers: taste taste taste I listen. paradise we howl at A waxing moon Of fire thorns of pleasure fever thou skin I escape Again until morning devours our delicious sordid Fancy? deardr.Anxiety,dance Jason Jedrusiak 18 “The Clash” by Jessica Moog How many times Can the pieces be put Back together Before the seams refuse to heal? Is it better, then, To run screaming, Scared, In the direction from which you came? Away from what could be either your Salvation or Undoing? Or quite possibly, As it always is, ey are two faces to the same coin. So let's flip— Heads, You stay, You love, You win. Tails, You run Before you can shatter. So why cut and run When you've never been more happy, When you have not felt so light In so long? Because in the pit of your stomach Sinks a stone of doubt and truth at will never allow you to float too high And will always, Always, Keep you down. TrainwreckAddya Bhowmick 20 “Looking Through” by C. Benedix Sirens whirred by outside as omas Jackson lay on his bed He just lay there, silently watch- ing the blades of a cheap ceiling fan slowly go round and round. It had been a rough day, he thought, raising his hands and staring at the blackness that stained them. is blackness, he reflected, had ruined his life and dashed his hopes. e empty white plaster walls, decaying carpet, and wobbly table were the least of his worries. If he could change one thing in his life it would be the blackness. As the wail of the sirens passed nearby,omas turned on his MP3 player and thought back on how the black stain had affected his life that very night. It all started on Columbus Avenue. omas was trudging home after a day trying to eke out a living. He was currently subsiding on welfare checks, but they couldn’t always make ends meet. A man like him couldn’t get a job, even in the city of Boston—people took one look and had seen enough. He couldn’t keep track of the times he’d heard the phrase, “I’m sorry, these are tough times,” or, “We don’t think you would fit in here.” ey sounded considerate and made sure to come up with a likely story, but it was all lies—he knew the real reason they didn’t hire him. A yellow school bus rumbled by, full of youths coming home from the suburbs. Music blared out of the windows and a cacophony of rowdy voices echoed loudly as the brakes brought the bus to a screeching stop at a red light. If only he could be one of those kids again, omas thought, and go back to a time when he didn’t have a care in the world and had not yet been jaded from years of menial jobs and unfulfilled dreams. As the bus drove onward,omas walked past windows plastered with advertisements for Coca-Cola and Marlboro cigarettes and en- tered a small convenience store. As he pulled the door open with a ring, the stench of smoke smacked him in the face. He noticed the source almost immediately—the Italian pro- prietor, Giuseppe,was stocking packs of chew- ing gum and other assorted candies into the racks behind the stained wooden counter, and smoking a large cigar. He did not look up as omas came in. “Giuseppe’s” was a neighborhood institution. omas remembered a diverse array of kids flocking to the store in droves during the sum- mertime to take advantage of the dusty old air conditioner in the back window and a variety of hand-scooped Italian ice—lemon, cherry, or blue raspberry. Likewise, an older crowd, all Italians, congregated near the meat counter along one wall. ey sat there talking and ad- miring the marbled salamis, bolognas, and even a whole smoked codfish hanging from the ceiling. At this hour, though, the store was empty. omas wandered down the middle aisle, care- ful to avoid knocking over a teetering maga- zine rack with his coat. Although he had walked past the store countless times over the past month and a half since moving into the neighborhood, omas had only gone inside once or twice. Tonight his legs were too tired for the walk down to the supermarket after the Stain ofBlacknessJames Cucchi day’s hectic events, and he was in need of a quick dinner. In the back of the store, amid racks of potato chips and cheese snacks a month out of date, he noticed several stale- looking sub sandwiches beneath a sign that read “Made Freshis Morning.” Finding one that seemed edible, omas brought it up to the counter. Stooped over behind the counter, Giuseppe was busy placing fresh rolls of lottery tickets into the dispensers lining the back wall. A gruff voice emanated from an old black-and- white television in the corner, telling of a dar- ing bank heist that had taken place only hours earlier in a nearby neighborhood. Giuseppe did not even look up as omas placed his meal on the counter with a loud thud. “One second, one second,”Giuseppe called out as he slid the last roll of tickets into the holder. e thick Italian accent fit the man so well that omas couldn’t help but smile to himself. He doubted that he could find someone more Ital- ian in any part of the city, including the North End. Giuseppe’s large, pointed nose, which gave him a somewhat patrician air reminiscent of Caesar or a wealthy Medici, leaped out at omas as the man rose to serve him. “at’ll be three-fifty,” said Giuseppe as he reached for the register to ring in the purchase, still not looking at omas. As omas placed the money on the counter, Giuseppe glanced up at him and froze. His eyes locked on omas’s hands, slowly made their way over his jacket, and finally settled on his face. Giuseppe’s mouth opened, but no words came out. As redness crept into his face he stammered, “Get out...get out of my store.” “Hey, I’m just trying to buy some supper, chill out,” replied omas, taken aback. “No, people like you ruined this neighbor- hood!” roared Giuseppe, now once again in possession of his faculties as he reached under the wooden counter. Seeing Giuseppe’s movement,omas grabbed the sub and ran for the door. Once outside, he sneaked a glance back and saw Giuseppe standing in the window with a short wooden club in hand. omas dashed around the cor- ner, wiping sweat off his forehead, and jogged a block or so until his heart finally stopped rac- ing. omas couldn’t keep his mind quiet. oughts of “What does this mean?” and “What should I do next?”popped into his head as he replayed the incident over and over. Once he looked back and thought he saw the old Italian following him from afar, but when he looked again the figure had turned down another street. His mind was playing tricks on him. Clearly, omas thought, he couldn’t continue living in this city that he just recently had begun to call home. He couldn’t stay, and he had to get out as soon as possible. He made his mind up on the spot to leave the very next morning. His aching back and legs, sore from a long day,were the only things preventing him from leaving that night. e move would be nothing new:omas felt more at home on the road than he did anywhere else. He silently slipped into his building’s laundry room through the back door and creakily as- 22 cended the stairs to his room. He flung his backpack into the corner,went to the sink, and began scrubbing his hands. “Why won’t this blackness just come out?” he thought to him- self, almost sobbing. He held up his hands to the mirror and stared at the darkness that would not budge no matter how hard he scrubbed. omas threw himself down onto his bed as the sound of sirens a few blocks away reached his ears. A little sleep might do some good, clear the mind, he thought as he closed his eyes. When he awoke, the beam light from the street lamp was shining against his wall, pro- jecting the gnarled shadow of a black tree branch against the pale plaster wall. omas sighed, turned on his music, and lay pondering his future. e skyscrapers of New York City, which towered over anything Boston had to offer, seemed to be beckoning him to new heights, new dreams of grandeur. In New York nobody knew him—he would blend in with the multitudes of people, get a job, disappear into society, and maybe even live a normal life—one that he could not live in Boston. e sirens had by now come to a halt, and omas heard doors slamming on the street below. Removing his headphones and peering out the window, he saw four squad cars parked on the street and about a dozen officers dis- embarking onto the sidewalk. His blood froze. omas leaped out of bed, knocking his new cellular phone to the floor, and ran to the sink. He stared at his face in the old mirror—it was as pale as a ghost. He attacked his hands again, scrubbing futilely at the black ink. As foot- steps thudded up the stairs,omas dashed to his backpack and opened it, frantically ripping out bundles of ink-stained bills and stuffing them under his mattress. He had almost fin- ished by the time the door was smashed in. e End “Portrait” by Cait Madden I hear about her face before I see it; his punches must have been painful. Was this a mere mosh pit casualty, or did her belligerence spark concertgoers’ violence? Not till midafternoon does she amble out squinting and groaning, brown bathrobe hanging limply from her naked frame, dead-eyed. Her curly hair reaches new heights: it’s matted and tangled like Edward Scissorhands— near the movie’s end, when he stops trying to fit in. e lock clicks on the bathroom door. We count the minutes she showers, afraid she’ll pass out in there again. Leaving our apartment would require explanations, so she doesn’t. I hear her lie on the phone, saying she’s fine but worries she has a concussion. I have places to be, but feel guilty leaving: her immaturity makes me protective. She meets inquiries with one-word responses or teen angst, depending on her mood. A volatile mess, she’s not the first I’ve wanted to fix. I’ve got to stop clutching fireworks. She inks HerMiddle Name isDangerAbby Zorbaugh 24 Because of the warm sun and the evening air we held class outside on the dew-damp grass, my students’ books and bags transversed by little insects intent on the completion of insistent secret tasks— e wet grass seemed to grow beneath stained denim and wet cotton, heavy limbs making strange beds of the green fibrous blades, which pointed in all directions and sometimes down to earth where under grass and sod lay a cemetery of children long asleep beneath the living— Grass And when they went back to tiny rooms and cots, leaving behind strange impressions in the green-bladed yard like monstrous, deformed grass angels, ghosts of their hour spent there, all I could think was how nice to go home and sit in half-light, drinking coffee while the sun disappears, holding back the trickle of terror that has welled up into the cellar of my brain while that field of grass, emblazoned with the impressions made by unwary youths, holds down the rising stones of children’s graves underground. Tonight I recall the sounds of uncorrelated words my students shared in that grassy twilight Babel while for 200 miles down gravestones of lost children rose in mournful clusters of marble and forgotten words, the voices of the children murmuring in dark graves of the searing sweetness of waking on summer mornings to the din and delight of a thousand thousand hours wasted joyfully while supple hands turned into cold stones— Impressions26Timothy Strange “Land on Me” by Carolyn Meers Coils of light reflect back, slithering along pavement ordained with gum and broken patches of concrete filled with green life. Home for so long, the past stretches and arches its back; the dips and valleys flow like sound waves. Future is voracious, and I without a shield fail to find clarity in a blurry sky. Growls from below hunger for motion as snakes turn to shadows. Weather waivers as my moods, dictated by Climate’s schedule, vacillate, minute lightning bolts which spear, spewing stars from Midnight’s belly. Why return for answers that will not be? Why wait for resolution that will not come? ese diamond freckles offer no value but to enhance the beauty of the face they lie upon. e outlook, ever evasive, is observable only after its creation. As a loyal dog follows its owner, so does our history follow us. Tara P. VilkIncognitus 28 “Shatter” by Jason Jedrusiak working title Caroline Ste u ernagel Rebecca Payne LifeDoesn’t Fitin aSpreadsheet e little self-worth that I have has been shattered. Who do I think I am? I can read a poem. I can write a paper. I can watch a bird dip and dive through a cloud- less sky and know the true meaning behind it, or at least relate it to something of substance. I have optic nerves and opposable thumbs. I am not a writer. I am a human who can see, think, feel and articulate. I am not saving children in Darfur or creating means of sustainable energy. I am simply watching evolution day after day and putting it to paper. Anyone can look out their own window and see a girl bicycling or a vagabond begging for change. Anyone can feel the reactions to these images. Anyone can pick up a pen, write them down, add a date and call it poetry. Where do I go from here? life doesn't fit in a spreadsheet every aspect quantized minutia-ized to the nth decimal place. there's never enough time to gather data consider options; choices are forced. rolling deadlines leave estimates in vital variables and some can never be filled at all ( is love on a scale of one to ten? what is the square root of family ties? ) a haphazard experiment: no control group no multiple independent trials; impartiality's fiction—each run built on the bias before trying to offset these influences with methods and protocols that define interactions, from holding a fork to searching the net from courtship to stages of grief, is an effort at standardization of the inherently unstable process: an ultimately failed attempt to subdivide knowable parts from an infinite whole 30 I planted your thoughts in my burial plot in the memorial park under the sign that says “Curb your dog; keep off the grass.” I drew you a map out of my forgotten notes,my drafts,my dreams and research, and my favorite book that you can’t remember. It’s been so long since the last time I followed you now and sent a pan- ther to look for you in a desperate way that you live on the tenth floor and it couldn’t fit in the elevator. I saw your lights, I found out your in- spiration wasn’t anything more than a busy street full of rich people and overpriced mer- chandise, and your music selection for the soundtrack of your failures was something you illegally downloaded from the discount rack next to the register and the can of pins on sale for a dollar that tell you to “Fuck off ” and “That’s what she said.” Your people-watching skills aren’t enough to pay the rent on your ex- pensive hole-in-the-wall so you pick up a pen- cil and pass it on and hope someone cares, but when someone does you don’t know what to do with yourself. In a way, it’s the saddest thing that’s ever hap- pened to you that your mother didn’t buy you from a department store with the money she saved from her private enterprise to put to good use her knowledge of what privilege buys from the right people. Someday you’ll meet the right person and think that you wish you were young again because now you are too old and your canvases are starting to shrink. In the cav- ern of your inspiration you’ll wrap up nice and neat and tidy the thoughts you were too afraid to live for and pretend that they don’t exist, it didn’t happen, and in the end you’ll know, I’ll know, he she it they we all will know what you really meant to do with your time. You keep a box of paints as a pet and know you never re- ally did anything too risky but you’re better off than anyone who did because at least you’re happy, you tell yourself, because you knew from the start that it was all just a bunch of bullshit, you tell yourself, and you needed something to distract yourself so you bought a book, you took a class, you spent a little too much time alone with yourself and smoked a little too much of something you couldn’t afford and waste not want not.Dig a hole in your father’s trust fund and get comfortable because it’s gonna be a long winter, baby. I remember that you had a plastic tree in your overpriced apart- ment and it matched your cheap shoes that you owned and bought and paid for and you could- n’t remember what you were doing so you did something else. I hope you did enough to keep yourself satisfied. Someday you’re gonna find the one and say, “Baby, you’re the one, let’s get married, let’s start our lives because these last few decades were only a practice run. Let’s tie our lives to- gether, let’s spend all the time in the world, baby, the world is gonna end and it’s gonna be too soon.Let’s go on a honeymoon, let’s go on a cruise. Let’s have kids, let’s settle down, let’s live in the suburbs, let’s remember what it’s like ProfessoreArt Ana Roth to be young and in love while we do nothing like it. Baby, I love you, you’re the only one for me.” In your exotic island of faraway plans and joint checking accounts and matching the drapes with the rugs and picking out your faucets to clean the dishes that pile up at your Hanukkah dinners and pretending not to notice how your world is shrinking you will stop and look around and say, “Baby, nothing’s wrong.”I hope your new corporate job supports you enough, buys you a new car to park in that garage paid for with your money and freedom and inde- pendence you worked for so hard and these past few decades were just a practice run.Don’t forget to put your ring back on, check your face in the rear-view mirror for lipstick that she left when you left her and when you left yourself back in the city all these years ago when I knew you inside a single building and you gave me more than I asked for and you didn’t know what to do with yourself. Your inspiration was a busy street with rich people and expensive stores and you paid too much rent for your tiny apartment and you lived with your sister and you worked your freelance and goddamn you had your freedom and your integrity and the world was a big bright place full of opportuni- ties to come knocking on your bolted chained door you decorated with sketches and stickers from bad shows you saw in college with ugly girls and drunk guys because you didn’t want to do your homework.Your heart, your house was full of your paintings and your favorite people you saw on your busy expensive street. Their faces bought you your house in the suburbs, your new shiny car, your kids’ college education and the hotel rooms you used to cheat on your wife and your electric toothbrush and the way you say good-bye in the morning with a smile and a kiss and maybe the hope that things will get better because, God knows, they can’t get worse.Crack open a cheap beer and fire up the grill and kiss the cook because your reign of mediocrity is just beginning and, baby, it’s gonna be a long summer. Remember your honeymoon and remember that cruise your momma’s money bought you next to the flatware and the blenders and the monogrammed towels and the tacky albums and the thousands of signatures and photos and memories of varying degrees of pain, and your wife got sick from the all-you-can-eat buffet on the main deck and your boat hit an iceberg and your cabin filled with water and you couldn’t find a lifeboat, and here you are all these decades later from the second honey- moon you find yourself stranded in Sweden with a casket and a story to tell your kids over ice cream from the drive-through, and they’ll cry but you can’t find the room in your soul overcrowded with the memories of your pro- fessional people-watching and illegal down- loads and expensive streets and bad paints and old canvases and fake plants and dirty sneakers and worn backpacks and bad coffee and the af- ternoon you spent in the park dreaming that life would be better than everything it turned out to be when you turned around and said, “Baby, you’re the one for me.” 32 A Saturday morning, spring, 1977, I awoke to the music of swingset chains before the sunrise— Katie Earnest was up before the light, launching herself again and again on rusty chains into the purple air— (What was she doing out there so early?)— For no reason at all I was sad, thinking of her waking before dawn, cold and sleepy and descending the stairs, moving into the yard across the field from the muddy Red River, sitting on the white plastic seat, launching herself, launching herself at nothing. Aubade The colors are beautiful, visceral. Gold hurled against orange, in a motion like a murderous fist crushing an object of hate, blending flesh with bone, bone with blood: an ecstasy of color and texture. Its delicate rice paper is kept crumpled to artistic tenderness, filmy edges torn for avant-garde appeal flutter posthumously, exposed fibers waving softly from the AC—deadcold, robot air— while pasted-on glitter plunges painfully to the floor. All up for sale: another whore on the block. Papyrus Tim ot hy Str an ge Natalie Schack 34 “Let it Rest” by Cait Madden 36 “Thought I’d See You One More Time” by Gina Bollenback Dear N______, as if by some nameless god’s command, I’ve remained shackled here for some time. Mother calls me Bertha, some crazy lady in the attic, The self-sentenced prisoner. Only you know (don’t you?) that the thoughts Of you have rendered me immobile. Do you remember (tell me you do!) The night at Orient Point? We played trespassers on someone else’s Intimate haven, feigning abandon we never possessed. A starless sky, the roof over our heads, We coveted the miniature block houses Scattered like Lego pieces across the field. Some distant church bell strikes eight, The sun beating on my face, my night has just begun. You must be sprinting up the subway stairs, Your face flustered with concern at That coffee spill on your tie. The creases on your forehead deepen. You are quite the serious man these days. Darling N______, I am a mere shade, My tiny grey particles bonded By the memories of your scent. I think Of Orient Point, muster the strength to think some more. The way the universe, the silent spectator, hushed its spirits, The way you stared, fixedly, at nothing—and I, at you— As you slowly buttoned your shirt. Thoughts swirl about my shadow brain like Whirlpools of cream in black coffee. And in these thoughts I see your face, Grains of sand, your five o’clock shadow, Prickle my fingers as I trace them along your chin, Across your chest, around your navel; With the contours of my name I draw myself a path. You’ve been busy, but I wish you’d write. Don’t you remember, N______, don’t you, don’t you Remember, I used to lie beside you. Maybe I have become just a blip on your mind-map. Yet I write, even if the recipient is some elusive space, even If my words are swallowed by some harshly indifferent vacuum, I write to you. Or ien tP oin tAthul ya Ar av ind 38 “Specula” by Carolyn Meers In the back of my closet is a dress that has hung there motionless for half a decade. It’s too sweet, too small, and too white for me.Yet it stays there and I cling to it the way people cling to the past and to the future and to the slightest possibility of talent. I wore it once, in an ecstasy of childish delight and excitement, wearing white in a gray world.We were clean, clean white slates, white as our clothes, which were new and bought especial for the occasion. Being Catholic used to mean church and cookies on Sundays. It meant seeing my cousins and listening to stories and laughing with Father Mack. It wasn’t sacrifice and it wasn’t love. It wasn’t religion.Then again,what was, when I was seven? The church is circular, not rectangular like most chapels.The worshippers radiate around the altar, and suspended from the ceiling is Jesus himself, hovering on his cross in midair, halfway between the pinnacled ceiling and the floor. Sometimes I would contemplate him while the priest was speaking of sinners being punished.Up there always, forever attached to that block of wood, with his ribs jutting out awfully from his abdomen, so much so that if you laid him horizontally and poured water on him, he’d have little tide pools in his tummy. I can imagine him watching us try it, as curious as we are about the outcome, and then laugh- ing with delight at the little pools and fishes, his own aquarium right in his tummy. When he laughs his eyes are closed, and when he opens them you can see the melancholy that clouds the back of every expression: the eternal sadness even when he is laughing at tide pools in his tummy. I’m confused at this paradox of emotion in his eyes.He accepts that there will always be wood attached to his back, that he died to save the world and people are still murdering their wives and raping children and waging cru- sades. I can imagine that if I were him, hang- ing from the ceiling from a clear thread (to look like he was floating), I would feel as if I had given up. He always looked so haggard. I wonder if he thought it would change every- thing when he died, that he was saving us from ourselves. Now, 2000 years older and wiser, he can only plead with sad eyes, resisting the de- spair that centuries of horror have sown in him. On the day of my communion, he hung there as usual and no one noticed. How many times had no one noticed? How many days did he sit there quietly, how many nights after the door was locked so thieves couldn’t steal any more of the Stations of the Cross did he hover in the dark, motionless, waiting for the next batch of sinners? esusandJ Natalie SchackWhite Dresses We were a river of flowing, chattering, white- clothed girls and boys with hakus and ti leaf leis and no idea what we were doing, no idea what we were committing ourselves to.No idea that our soul was at stake, no idea that we were pretending to have learned, in a few years, something it takes a lifetime to know for sure. And like obedient little souls we marched marched marched up to the priest and had wine (“...ugh...”) and the flat bread with the flavor I just can’t put my finger on. Our eyes were fresh and our minds were as fresh and pure as that dress in my closet. Our white dresses gleamed all the way down to the altar, like a bride,marrying herself blindly to a belief. I remember pride at having the prettiest, finest communion banner, with a silk Sacred Heart and floral cross and roses and gold braid. I re- member not wanting to say anything about it because church is just not the right place to brag. And I remember the red punch after, al- ways, motivation to be a good girl. Now the dress is stowed in the back, along with black and white and along with child- hood and along with Sunday School. It keeps company with playing outside and having birthday parties with piñatas and it goes to sleep with ballet and karate and my other childhood memories, my other experiments. I’ll never fit it again, and it will never mean the same thing to me.But I can’t throw it away and I don’t know why. “Wedding Day” by Natasha Mbabazi“Wedding Day” by Natasha Mbabazi 40 on de rla nd W Sprawled out on my dirty, sheetless mattress in white denim shorts and a bra, through my windows hot light reaches spindly towards my body as the mice squeak and sputter, racing across linoleum tiles. Summer. I am sprinting downhill to Jimmy’s apartment on Darling Street. Jimmy doesn’t believe in phones, or keys, (or bank accounts) so I shout his name from the parking lot below his window until he steps onto his balcony and looks down at me, smiling, a wine glass clasped tight in his hand. Jimmy loves boys like I do, but since he knows what they want like I never can, and since he is 21 and I am 18, I know I would do absolutely anything for him, and probably have, so I break into his building with my credit card and run upstairs. During the nighttime I waste away on Newbury Street, serving overpriced pizza to rich tourists from Italy, or Paris, or Hong Kong, with their boxy, expensive purses and fingers that point to the things they want. after, my hair rich with garlic, I’ll collapse from the steep uphill walk into my shoddy apartment, six hundred a month but I somehow plead my dad into paying half. He doesn’t know I live with six tall boys and an empty fridge, the scummy white plastered with German magnetic poetry left by the tenants before us that we push together into foreign nonsense phrases then look up late at night on the internet. we have known each other all of two weeks, my new friends and I, and so are infatuated with the heady restlessness of being attached, of how easy it is. we count and coddle the days that stretch out before us, each one lazy and sticky, like candy. one night all of us crowd into a dirty bi-level, wedged behind a Burger King. Eli takes my hand as we walk through the drive-thru, and I peel a stamp off our shared fries that says we won fifty dollars, which he pockets and promises to mail and split with me when I get back in the Fall. (I never hear about it again.) and I overhear him, later, talking sloshily about liking me, which I try to ignore and he forgets entirely by noon the next day. but, despite myself, I can feel that I Iove him already; all of them, painfully, an aching only boys can inflict, wanting to hold them or mend, when all I can do is Ra ch el Za rr ell make pasta at 2 am, or let them spin me, earnestly, while we ballroom dance drunk in a living room. and it’s three or four in the morning now. we’re all fuzzy-headed and cold, walking to a Chinese restaurant someone swears is only one more block, one more block, and Jimmy yells into my phone at his best friend home in Georgia, or else he’s singing showtunes in the restaurant at dawn, uncaring to the dirty looks and snapping when I try to tell him, and Eli probably hums to himself or smiles at me; and I hide my grin and think how we’ll be neighbors in the fall, but it’s too far away to wrap my head around. and in the moment I think, falsely, how nice it will be to see each other all the time, and even let that thought slide me into a deep sleep, too many warm nights to count. but it’s still Summer. I am leaving in one week to be a camp counselor for cynical 13-year-old girls. I get fired from the pizza place so I retreat to Wonderland every morning instead, a sad little beach that skirts the poorer areas of the city. on the T the tan men stare at my brown bikini straps, sometimes asking me foreign questions in smooth, coalescing Portuguese. once there, I swirl white vanilla ice cream onto my tongue, then pose as there’s a flash of the five of us, our arms around each other’s waists, ankle-deep in the foamy yellow surf that’s crowded with pollen. We drink too much, always, and get restless, so at midnight, my last night, we hike to the park up the hill, up past the tire swings and the glinting metal slide. while the boys talk quietly on the boulders about things only boys know and I never will, their voices muffled just out of my reach, I stargaze alone and collapse into long, cool grass, content and not caring, like I should, that this will all end soon, how coats and scarves will bring with them the disconnect, the anxious, hasty meetings in the dark, aimless attempts to get back to this place we had, and then the truth: about all of us, about how being alive is just easier in the summertime, how the buzz of warmth will peel away and leave only hurt, even if I spend the whole season denying it to myself: none of us will remember how to love people like that by the time the cold sets in. 42 Jarett, coarse hair, wide smile, and those cowboy boots. He likes to say: “Hello.” The time, the place—it doesn’t matter. Walks up to the counter at the corner store and always says: “Hello.” Tuesday nights we meet. Holding clippings in my left hand, one large Starbucks coffee in his right. Right across the table he will catch my glimpse. Crossed-legged, a sitting Indian chief. Orders the tuna and California roll to share at Bonzai—he likes sushi.Tries to use the chopsticks, but his fingers can never seem to grip. Stumble between their structures.Tries twice. It works. Resort to a fork? No, not him. Jarett is always inspired.The stars of last night’s meteor shower, soaring from some unforeseen destination, he would say, changed his life. Replay that song.Track 5, with the soft melody: So what if now is all we have? Live as if you never knew what it was to lose. Grinning, Jarett will claim he has been enlightened from lyrical prose. Capture the world is what he does through a lens. Blends the chemicals in the dark with the scarce light being one small bulb overhead. It is almost as if he is lost in the dark of night, only the hanging moon illuminating his path. Lost. Well does anyone ever know where they are going? he asked me one warm night. No, I said. No. But it is good to have plans, make plans. No, just live, simply enjoy, he said. Into the city one August day, we took the metro downtown. It was rainy, miserable. A summer day when the heat sticks to your skin. Pushed up against strangers, I grimaced. Unplanned. Jarett, with his coarse hair and wide smile, held my hand. He looked forward, met the eyes of an unknown man: “Hello.” The businessman, stiff, eased: We need more friendly faces on a day like this one. The stop was reached. Jarett’s cowboy boots clicked off the subway. You don’t know, that just made my life, he said. His stare was deep. I sware, you don’t know. M eg an Va ra ny ak 44 “Dawn Looks to Dusk Looks to Dawn” by Carolyn Meers “In di vid ua l, In di vis ib le” by Si er ra Sm ith For moreartwork by: Gina Bollenback www.bollenback-g.smugmug.com Natasha Mbabazi community.webshots.com/user/tas319 Carolyn Meers www.flickr.com/photos/lynny_lou/ Sierra Smith nodyourwarlock.deviantart.com Spectr um Literary Arts Magazine Fa l l2009
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2013 CRRJ Year-End Report
2013 CRRJ Year-End Report
2013 CRRJ Year-End Report
2013 CRRJ Year-End Report
The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) at Northeastern University School of Law
The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) at Northeastern University School of Law
2013
2013
crrj
year-end report
2013
crrj
year-end report
2013
http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20213662
http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20213662
crrj
year-end report
2013
2013 CRRJ Year-End Report
2013 CRRJ Year-End Report
2013 crrj yearend report
2013/01/01
2013 CRRJ Year-End Report
2013
crrj
Burnham, Margaret
Burnham, Margaret
The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) at Northeastern University School of Law
Burnham, Margaret
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Microsoft Word - Year End Report 2013 final.docx CIVIL RIGHTS AND RESTORATIVE JUSTICE PROJECT NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW YEAR END REPORT 2013 The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) at Northeastern University School works with lawmakers, lawyers, the families of victims of racial homicides, activists, researchers, and journalists to redress the failures of the criminal justice system in the mid-twentieth century. We pursue scholarly research and remedial measures, including memorialization projects, truth commissions, and law reform. We maintain the most comprehensive archive on racial homicides in the country, with files that include the records of law enforcement agencies and civil rights organizations, court documents, witness statements, photographs, and oral history. In 2014 we opened files in thirty racial killings from the 1940s. We completed our work on the little-known murder of a voting rights martyr in Georgia, and pursued remedies in two Louisiana lynchings. We hosted a legislative workshop in Birmingham, and we met with scholars, archivists and civic leaders in Mobile, Montgomery, Fairfield, Atlanta, Labadieville, Hattiesburg, Natchez, Nacogdoches, and Wilson, NC. We initiated promising and exciting new programs. In one such program, we are expanding our mission to address the current civil rights crisis facing ex-offenders and other persons with criminal histories. We are collaborating with the HIRE Network (Helping Individuals with criminal records Reenter through Employment) to support and encourage legislators and other regulators to eliminate unfair barriers to employment. Another new program, to be launched this month, engages high school students in cold-case investigations using our methodology. Our events calendar for the past year featured Toni Morrison, who addressed a University-wide audience at our annual Martin Luther King commemoration in January, and Angela Davis, who, in September, brought our program to a West Coast audience on the fiftieth anniversary of the Birmingham Church bombing. Case Watch From the Docket The Alabama Docket In 2013, CRRJ took on twelve new cases from the state of Alabama. John Jackson, 30 years old, was killed by a police officer, Hubert Alexander, in Fairfield in 1941. Jackson was standing in line with a girlfriend waiting to enter a movie theatre when the officer approached and asked why he was laughing. 2 Jackson replied that he had not laughed, at which point Alexander arrested him for “disorderly conduct” and shot him four times. Walter Gunn was beaten to death by a deputy sheriff in Macon County in 1942. Henry Williams, a private in the armed services, was, in 1942, shot to death by a bus driver, Grover Chandler, in Mobile as Williams headed back to his base at Brookley Field. Williams had asked the driver to move along so that he could make a curfew. Prentiss McCann, a 23-‐year-‐old father of three and a veteran, was killed on a street in Mobile in 1945. McCann had gone to the grocery store. The police, investigating a nearby dice game, shot into the group, and Mobile Officer Melvin Porter killed McCann. William “Willie” Daniels, a 21-‐year-‐old veteran and coal miner, was shot and killed in Westfield in December 1946. Daniels and his new wife were Christmas shopping in the company store when a white sales clerk accused him of bumping her. He denied it, but was nevertheless accosted and then shot to death by John W. Vanderforth, a private guard for the store. Sam Watson, Jr. was slain in Selma in 1946 by a city police officer named Powell. Watson was 41 and married with one daughter. The police were called because Watson’s car had run out of gas. One of the officers sought to start the car, whereupon Watson asked him not to run his battery down. He was arrested, shot and killed. Mary Noyes, a 22-‐year-‐old pregnant mother of three, was killed in Camp Hill, Tallapoosa by one Albert O. Huey, a private citizen, in 1947. Noyes was at a café when Huey started shooting up the town because of a dispute he had with an African American soldier. As she was pregnant, Noyes could not run away from the gunfire in the café and was killed. CRRJ is seeking to locate relatives of Mary Noyes. Amos Starr was shot in the back and killed in Tallassee 1947 by Cecil Thrash, a police officer who suspected him of having committed a misdemeanor. Thrash was prosecuted in federal court for violating Starr’s civil rights, but the jury, after deliberating 22 minutes acquitted the officer. Samuel Lee Williams, 34 years old, was shot and killed by a streetcar conductor, M.A. Weeks in 1949 in Birmingham, because he refused to ride Jim Crow. Willie Carlisle, 19, was alleged to have been part of a group of teenagers who let the air out of the tires on a police car in Lafayette in 1949. He was arrested and beaten to death in jail. Officer James Clark were tried and acquitted in state court. In a subsequent federal proceeding Clark was convicted of a civil rights violation and sentenced to ten months. Hilliard Brooks was shot and killed by Montgomery police officer M.E. Mills in 1950. Brooks refused to follow the operator’s instructions to enter the bus from the rear door after he had paid his fare at the front door. The driver called on Officer Mills, who was nearby, and who pulled Brooks off the bus and fired at him, killing Brooks and wounding two passersby. Bodell Williamson, 24 years old, was found dead in Wilcox County in 1967. Sheriff “Lummie” Jenkins claimed the young man drowned, but some said he was killed. The Georgia Docket CRRJ undertook five new investigations in Georgia in 2013. Willie Davis, a 26-‐year-‐old soldier on leave in Summit, was shot by police chief James Bohannon without provocation at a roadhouse on the outskirts of town. Davis’ mother moved to New York City after her son’s death to obtain legal assistance from the NAACP, but the case went nowhere. CRRJ is currently searching for relatives of Willie Davis. Madison Harris, a 21 year old veteran, was shot on a sidewalk as he sought to board a streetcar in Atlanta by the Alabama Courthouse Records 3 driver, T.H. Purl, in 1946. Harris was shot in the temple. At the initial hearing in Recorder’s Court, Judge Calloway ruled the killing justifiable, and the case never went to trial. CRRJ is seeking to locate relatives of Madison Harris. Walter Lee Johnson, a 22-‐year-‐old veteran, was also shot on the sidewalk next to a streetcar in Atlanta in 1946. Johnson had shouted out to a friend “stay straight and fly right,” and the operator, W.D. Lee, thought he was being disrespected. He asked Johnson to repeat what he had said and then shot him in the abdomen. Judge Calloway of the Recorder’s Court once again ruled the killing to be a justifiable homicide. The Louisiana Docket CRRJ added three Louisiana cases to its docket, including a 1933 lynching and near lynching in Labadieville. Freddie Moore, 16, was arrested and charged with the murder of a white teenaged girl who lived near him. He was turned over to a mob that tortured and then hung him from a bridge in town. The mob attempted to lynch a second youth, Norman Thibodaux, in connection with the girl’s death, but he was cut down when someone in the crowd vouched that he had not been in town when the murder occurred. The teenager’s stepfather allegedly confessed to killing her sometime after the lynching. Moore’s parents successfully sued the sheriff in federal court for releasing their son to the mob. CRRJ is working with the family to clear Fred Moore’s name. Raymond Carr, a military police officer, was killed by Louisiana state trooper Dalton McCollum in November 1942. On duty in Alexandria, Carr was investigating a disturbance caused by a quarreling couple when state troopers approached and told him to go back to his base. Carr and his partner explained to the officers they were forbidden by army regulations from abandoning their post, at which point the troopers chased after Carr and shot him in the abdomen. McCollum was returned to the job after a one-‐day suspension. Edward Green, an army private in transit, was killed by Odell Lachnette, a streetcar operator in Alexandria in 1944. The driver ordered Green to move to the Negro section of the bus. Green hesitated or refused to give up his seat in the front, at which point the driver drew his revolver and told Green to get off the vehicle. The soldier disembarked, with Lachnette following on his heels. While forty witnesses looked on from the bus, the driver shot and killed Green. No action was taken against Lachnette, who went back to work after a brief detention. The Mississippi Docket CRRJ investigated four cases from Mississippi this year. George Andrews, a 24-‐year-‐old Army private and resident of Hattiesburg, was stationed at Camp Shelby when he was killed in 1944. Andrews had returned to Hattiesburg to look after his pregnant wife and two small children. As he prepared to board a city bus to return to base, the driver, B.F. Williams, shot him on the steps, then chased into the buses and shot him again. His defense was that he thought Andrews’ handkerchief was a gun. The same bus-‐ driver shot Joseph T. Daley of New York, a black sergeant on duty, on the same bus-‐line just a year after Andrews’ death. The driver remained on the Hattiesburg line for years after these incidents. CRRJ is Professors Burnham and Nobles with the DeBardelaben family, Atlanta 4 working with Andrews’ family and seeking to locate the relatives of Joseph Daley. Samuel Mason Bacon, 59 years old, was killed in 1948 by Fayette Town Marshal Stanton D. Coleman. Bacon was traveling from Akron, Ohio back to his home in Natchez. When the bus pulled into Port Gibson Bacon was ordered to give up his seat and refused to do so. He was arrested and found shot to death in his cell the next morning. The Town Marshal claimed Bacon came at him with an ax when he went to look in on him in the cell where he had been detained overnight on a charge of “disturbing the peace.” Tom Jones, 24 years old, was shot by a Woodville police officer at a Greyhound Bus stop in 1945. Jones was traveling home to Wilkinson County from New Orleans, where he was working as a longshoreman. When the bus arrived in Woodville, he asked the driver, Buddy Dawson, for his luggage. The driver chastised him for not saying, “yes sir” and told him he was “not in New Orleans” anymore. Dawson struck Jones with a flashlight and Jones hit him back. Woodville Police Officer David McDonald was called to the scene and shot Jones at point-‐blank range three times in the chest. Jones died with his hands in the air. No charges were ever brought. CRRJ is working with the Jones family. Matt J. McWilliams, 68 years old, was killed in 1947 by Kemper County sheriff Arnold Harbor. Harbor sought to evict McWilliams from his prosperous timber farm. The North Carolina Docket CRRJ add three new North Carolina cases to its docket this year. J.C. Farmer was shot to death in Wilson by the police in his front yard as his mother watched from the porch. The incident occurred in 1946. Farmer had defended himself against Fes Bissette, a constable who was beating him up. The constable’s gun discharged and hit him in the hand. A posse of law enforcement men and private citizens immediately hunted Farmer down and killed him. Dan Carter Sanders was shot and killed by a 16 year old, Bobby Johnson, in 1946 in Johnston County. Sanders had stolen some hound dogs belonging to Johnson’s father. A group of men, led by the teenager, hunted Sanders down and shot him to death in a field. The shooter is believed to still be alive. CRRJ has referred the case to the FBI under the Emmitt Till Act. Otis Newsome, a veteran and father of three young children, was killed by gas station operator U.C. Strickland in 1948 in Wilson. Newsome and a friend stopped at a gas station for brake fluid, and asked Strickland to assist them in putting the fuel in the car. The attendant refused. Newsome asserted that service was included in the price he had paid for the gas, at which point Strickland shot him in the stomach. Strickland was charged with first-‐degree murder. A jury acquitted him. CRRJ is working with the families and communities in these North Carolina cases Tom Jones' brother, niece and K. Blume ’15, Wilkinson Cty M. Campbell ‘15, Johnston Cty Cthouse, NC 5 The Texas Docket CRRJ pursued one new Texas case in 2013. Ellis Hutson, Sr., was killed in Nacogdoches in 1948. He was 50 years old. Hutson’s son, Ellis, Jr. had been beaten and arrested. When Hutson came to the county courthouse to bail his son out of jail, the arresting officer, Constable Travis Helpenstill, became enraged that Ellis, Jr. had refused to plead guilty. Helpenstill shot Hutson, Sr. three times in a corridor in the courthouse, killing him instantly. A state jury acquitted Helpenstill of murder. At a subsequent federal criminal trial, he entered a nolo contendere plea and was sentenced to 90 days, suspended. CRRJ is working with the Hutson family. ±±±±±±±± L to R: Otis Newsome (Wilson, NC), Ellis Hutson, Sr. (Nacogdoches, TX), Tom Jones (Woodville, MS), Samuel Bacon (Fayette,MS) The Japanese-‐Latin-‐American Internment Case While it is universally known that the United States rounded up and interned 120,000 persons of Japanese descent during World War II, what is less well known is that persons from South American states were sent to the United States for internment under the same military program. Over 2,000 persons of Japanese descent from 12 countries in Latin America were forcibly arrested, deported and interned in camps in the United States for the duration of World War II. Some of these former detainees are pursuing legal action to obtain reparations for the harms they suffered. The claimants, the Hutson's relatives, G. Vogel Rosen'15, I. Koleosho ’12, Nacogdoches, TX 6 Shibayama brothers who were deported from Peru, assert they were not adequately covered by the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which provided reparation for the survivors and family members of the internment of Japanese nationals and citizens living in the United States, but offered smaller amounts to the Japanese Latin-‐Americans. In 2013 Laura Misumi ’13 provided legal assistance to advocates on issues relating to the suit, which is pending before the Inter-‐American Commission on Human Rights. FROM THE DOCKET: THREE CASE REPORTS Freddie Moore 1933 Assumption Parish, Louisiana The thin, teenaged body of Freddie Moore hung from the truss of a bridge over Bayou Lafourche in the middle of Labadieville for a day or so before his relatives could remove it. A two-‐foot board tied to the lynch victim’s foot warned anyone who might have wanted to give him a decent burial. “Niggers, Let this be an Example” proclaimed the bold handwriting, “Do Not Touch For 24 Hrs. Mean It.” The elegant St. Philomena Church, which received its first parishioners from the town of Labadie and its surrounds in 1848, stood right across the street from the corpse, which was naked from the chest up, bound at the hands, and positioned precisely parallel to the vertical frame of the bridge closest to the sky-‐bound church steeple. Townspeople passed by with their children, snapped pictures of Moore, and later, it was reported at the time, sold the cards to raise funds for a church mortgage. Freddie’s family, meanwhile, fled the parish for safer ground. Freddie was sixteen-‐years-‐old and a farmhand when he was killed in October 1933. One Saturday morning he had been seen chatting with a white neighborhood girl about his age. She was later found dead in a field, and Freddie, because he had talked to the girl, was detained in connection with her murder. A mob of men from Assumption and nearby parishes wrested the keys from a deputy at the parish jail and kidnapped Freddie. They dropped a noose around his neck and took him back to the field where the young woman was found. There they tortured him, and then dragged him through the streets of town until they reached Labadieville Bridge, where he was hung. Townspeople later said the stepfather of the girl Freddie was accused of murdering admitted on his deathbed that it was he who had killed her. That night at Bayou Lafourche the mobsters nearly lynched another teenager whom they suspected of involvement in the murder. They hunted down Norman Thibodaux, threw a noose around his neck and hung him next to Freddie. But a man in the crowd hollered out that he knew Thibodaux had not been in the parish when the girl was killed. Spared by seconds from death by noose, Thibodaux was quickly shoved into a sheriff’s vehicle, taken to a nearby cane field, and shot at, allegedly by the deputy who led the lynch mob, Fernand Richard. Thibodaux fell among the canes and feigned death until he could make his escape. He hid in a corncrib overnight, then walked twenty-‐two miles until he could get a train back to New Orleans. The nineteen-‐ year-‐old would later travel to New York to share his story at an anti-‐lynching meeting in Harlem sponsored by the International Labor Defense. Norman Thibodaux in New York City Janet Johnson, Freddie Moore's cousin, had researched his lynching without success before CRRJ contacted her 7 No one was ever prosecuted for the crimes against Freddie Moore and Norman Thibodaux. Moore’s parents did, however, successfully pursue a federal civil action for damages, winning a jury award against the parish sheriff in the amount of $2,500. Despite the paucity of the award, the case represented a rare victory in the campaign against lynching. Robert Black, ’13, was the first researcher to relate the full story of the lynching of Freddie Moore and the near-‐lynching of Norman Thibodaux, including legal developments in state and federal court. Professor Burnham visited Assumption Parish to retrace the events, and following up on Black’s work, investigative journalist David Mitchell wrote an article about the case for the Baton Rouge Advocate. Mitchell located a cousin of Freddie Moore, Janet Hébert Johnson, who had been pursuing the case on her own. In interviews with CRRJ, Johnson recalled that her grandfather went to Labadieville to cut down his nephew’s body and to rescue his family. CRRJ is working with Johnson to clear the name of Freddie Moore. Prentiss McCann 1945 Mobile, Alabama Born in Choctaw, Alabama, Prentiss McCann followed the footsteps of thousands of southerners who left the cotton and timber farms during World War II to take advantage of the boom economies in the seacoast cities. Mobile, New Orleans, Alexandria – these port towns almost doubled in population as the shipbuilding industry expanded to keep pace with the Navy’s needs. McCann had himself enlisted in the military, but in 1943 he was discharged from Camp Shelby because he had flat feet. He moved his young wife and three small children to Mobile, settled down in the historic Maysville neighborhood, and took a job as a truck driver at the Brookley Field Army Air Depot. On a Saturday evening in July 1945, McCann left his wife home with their infant twins and toddler, and headed to a nearby market to buy eggs. On the way to the store, he stopped outside of the Midway Club, where some fellows were playing dice. Moments later, Mobile police drove by to disrupt the fun and arrest the gamers. Most of the crowd, players and onlookers alike, ran off when the police pulled up, but McCann did not move and remained talking with a friend. Officer Melvin Porter, seated in his police car, shot McCann twice in the head, felling him instantly. The officer was alleged to have said, moments later, “I’m sorry it happened. The gun got caught up in the door.” The NAACP, led by Mobile’s John LeFlore, gathered affidavits and waged an unsuccessful campaign to get the Civil Rights Section of the Department of Justice to prosecute Porter and his partner. Despite clear evidence that Porter’s self-‐defense claim was fabricated, the Department closed the case because, it contended, that it would be difficult to overcome the officers’ version of the events. Hannah Adams, ’15 took up the McCann case in this year’s clinic. She worked closely with librarians and historians in Mobile and met McCann’s children and wife in Georgia and other relatives in Alabama. Bit by bit, she recovered the pieces of the story, bringing some sense of closure to the family, and H. Adams ’15 with the relatives of Prentiss McCann, Georgia 8 particularly to McCann’s daughter, Claudine, who had been searching for the truth about her father’s death. CRRJ is working with the McCann family and civic leaders in Mobile to memorialize his life. Samuel Bacon 1948 Fayette, Mississippi Samuel Mason Bacon grew to adulthood in Adams County where he was a farmer and a Natchez community leader. While he was relatively content in his hometown, his wife, restless during the war years when money was to be made in the cities, left Mississippi for Fairfield, Alabama, and one of the Bacons’ three daughters moved to Akron, Ohio. Eventually Bacon closed down his farm and joined his daughter in Akron, where he took a job at the Firestone Rubber Company. He appreciated the steady work and good hourly wages at Firestone, but Bacon found himself missing the rhythms of the farm, the smells, sounds and gossip of St. Catherine Street on a Saturday afternoon, the resplendent view from the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi river, and his home church. Pining to see his family and homestead in Natchez once again, Bacon planned a trip back to the South. He also thought he might be able to persuade his wife, Fannie, to reunite with him, and hoped to visit her in Fairfield with that purpose in mind. And so in March 1948 Samuel Bacon boarded a southbound Greyhound bus headed for Natchez. It was a long but fairly comfortable ride for Bacon until the bus reached Vicksburg, whereupon the Greyhound passengers traveling further on into Mississippi transferred to a Tristate bus. The fifty-‐nine year old Bacon was handsomely attired and traveling with his bankbook and some cash, which he would need for his visit in Natchez and his journey to Alabama. When the bus arrived at the small town of Port Gibson, forty-‐two miles from his destination, the bus driver told Bacon to give his seat to a white man and stand in the crowded colored section at the rear. With white seats still available, Bacon said he would not do so. At the next stop, Fayette, about a half-‐hour from Natchez, the bus-‐driver, James H. Minninger, threw the dignified, upright man off the bus and had him arrested for “creating a disturbance.” Held overnight in the Fayette jail on charges that have never been revealed, on the morning of March 15, just three days after he had left Ohio, Bacon lay dead in his cell. Stanton Coleman, the Fayette town marshal, had shot him at close range in his cell, once in the belly and once in the chest. Bacon’s family waited in vain for him at the Natchez bus station. When they finally learned their relative was being held at the Fayette jail, he was indeed there but he was already dead. Bits and pieces of the story gradually emerged as black riders who had witnessed the arrest found the courage to relate the events. Protests ensued, but all for naught. Bacon’s three daughters wrote repeatedly to the Justice Department, as did scores of citizens, incensed by the marshal’s incredulous claim of self-‐defense. Bacon’s daughters, one of whom is still alive in Akron and another of whom worked for the Southern Negro Youth Congress in Birmingham at the time of the slaying, described their beloved father as a pious, hardworking person. “He did not drink, nor use profanity, and he had never been arrested in his life,” they wrote to the Justice Department’s attorneys. M. Nguyen’14 with relatives of Samuel Bacon, Natchez, MS 9 While the Mississippi authorities cleared the marshal in a sham grand jury proceeding, the Federal Bureau of Investigation assigned its agent, George Gunther, to pursue the matter. Gunther would, in the 1960s, earn an infamous reputation among civil rights activists in southwest Mississippi. In 1961, he once threatened the civil rights leader Robert P. Moses with bodily harm when Moses, who had been badly beaten, questioned whether the agent had sent a false report about the assault on him to Washington. Leaving no room to doubt his loyalties, Gunther, on retiring from the FBI, signed on as an informant for the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, whose mission it was to obliterate the state’s civil rights movement. Back In 1948, George Gunther reported to the FBI and DOJ in Washington that Bacon had been “disruptive” on the bus and that he had “behaved as a wild person” at the jail, attempting to strike the town marshal with a pick ax that had been in his cell. Armed with Gunther’s report that Bacon had brought trouble on himself, the Justice Department closed the case. This past year Mary Nguyen, ‘14, met with Bacon’s surviving relatives in New York and Natchez. For them, and for history, she pieced together the fullest account there is of how and why Samuel Mason Bacon died. She searched the archives of the Southern Negro Youth Congress at Howard’s Spingarn Library, the Justice Department at the National Archives in College Park, and the NAACP at Harvard’s Lamont Library. She looked for court records in Mississippi and found there were none. She interviewed family members and historians of Natchez. For the family, Nguyen resolved the painful, long-‐ lingering question of how a decent fifty-‐ nine year old man could die a miserable and invisible death. She gathered with them around Bacon’s gravestone in Natchez, at his hometown church, and, with them, bid him farewell once again. UPDATES Commemorating the Life of Isaiah Nixon, Voting Rights Martyr Isaiah Nixon was killed in September 1948 in Alston because he voted in Georgia’s democratic primary. A farmer and turpentine worker, Nixon returned home to his wife and children after casting his vote in Montgomery County. Later that day, two men who at the polling place had warned Nixon against voting showed up on his front steps. As he came out of his house, they shot him dead. The men, brothers, were tried in a Georgia court and acquitted of the murder. Christopher Bridges, ’12, recovered new archival material in the Nixon matter. His meticulous research led to a joint project among CRRJ, and the UNESCO Transatlantic Slave Trade Project, and the Rosewood Heritage Foundation to commemorate the life of Isaiah Nixon in Alston, Georgia, where he lived and died. Nixon’s wife, Sallie Zimon, fled to Florida from Georgia with the couple’s children immediately after her husband was slain. For many of Nixon’s family members, the commemoration on November 14, 2013 was their first trip to Alston. Bridges, who is currently the Racial Justice Fellow at the ACLU of Northern California, joined Sally Zimon and other family members, officials from UNESCO, and civic leaders at the event. Bridges planted a M.Nguyen '14, M. Wells (CRRJ Fellow), Mason's grandson, New York 10 magnolia bush and helped to install a cemetery bench in honor of Isaiah Nixon. This event marked the first public recognition of Isaiah Nixon’s sacrifice in the name of democracy since his death in 1948. Seeking Apology for 1946 Lynching of John C. Jones In June 2013, with legal assistance from CRRJ, Webster Parish NAACP President Kenneth Wallace petitioned the Parish Police Jury to issue an apology for the 1946 lynching of John C. Jones near Minden. Together with his 19 year old cousin, Jones, a World War II veteran, was accused of peeping into the window of a home of a white woman. The two men were locked up in the Minden jail and released by the sheriff into the hands of six white men who took them to a creek and beat them. Jones died in his cousin’s arms. The Justice Department pursued charges against several of the lynchers; all were acquitted. On behalf of the family members of the victims and the local NAACP, Wallace sought to have the parish acknowledge its role in the crimes. “You have a Confederate Memorial right up in the square,” Wallace told the parish officials, “And if we’re honest, Confederate ideology is what killed John C. Jones.” He also pointed out in Minden that there was a memorial shrine marking the location of where “the first white child in the Minden area” was buried. One of the officials acknowledged the other memorials and then explained that the men accused of Jones’ lynching had been acquitted of the lynching. That, he said, should be the end of the matter. Reverend Wallace is determined to bring the case again before the parish officials in 2013. Seeking Apology for 1940 Lynching of Elbert Williams In September Dr. Dorothy Granberry led a group of Tennessee citizens in seeking an apology from the office of Attorney General Eric Holder in connection with the 1940 lynching of Elbert Williams and the banishment of NAACP voting rights advocate Elisha Davis. Granberry, assisted by Andrew Cohen ’14, had appealed for an apology unsuccessfully to the Tennessee United States Attorney, who informed her that his office could not comment on past cases. Other avenues are being pursued. Webster Parish NAACP leader Kenneth Wallace seeks apology Jones Case Sallie (Nixon) Zimon, Family and Friends, November 2013, Alston, GA 11 George Stinney Case Goes to Court Armed with CRRJ’s Archival Research When he was sent to the electric chair in South Carolina in 1944, George Stinney, 14 years old, was the youngest child to have been killed by the state in the twentieth century. In recent years the case has gained notoriety, and efforts have been made to redress this travesty. Clayton Adams ’13 began research on the case in 2011, drafting memorandums for South Carolina lawyer Steven McKenzie, and providing him with evidentiary material. The Stinney family is now seeking to obtain a review of the conviction in Columbia, and evidence uncovered by CRRJ is at the center of these legal efforts. CRRJ dug up letters in the South Carolina Department of Archives and History from the South Carolina Governor Olin Johnston in 1944, that cast doubt on the police investigation that led to the boy’s conviction. RUBEN SALAZAR FILM PREMIERES The film Rescuing Ruben Salazar: Visions and Voices premiered in Los Angeles in September. Salazar, a well-‐known journalist who chronicled the radical Chicano movement, was mysteriously killed in 1970 during a Los Angeles demonstration against the Vietnam War. CRRJ assisted filmmaker Philip Rodriguez obtain and analyze government documents relating to Salazar’s public life and violent death. The documentary premiered in September in Los Angeles SPECIAL PROJECTS RESTORATIVE JUSTICE FOR PERSONS WITH CRIMINAL HISTORIES CRRJ has initiated a pilot project on a current criminal justice issue: barriers to employment facing persons with criminal histories. Thanks to input from Professor Michael Meltsner, CRRJ is collaborating with the Legal Action Center’s H.I.R.E. Project to address the collateral effects of convictions in the area of employment rights for former prisoners and others with criminal records. CRRJ assisted in the drafting of a “ban the box” bill in New Hampshire, which would prohibit employers from asking an applicant about his or her criminal history until a conditional offer of employment has been made. Hearings on the Bill in the state Legislative Assembly will begin in January 2014, and CRRJ will be preparing the briefing papers for the Committee hearings. CRRJ is serving as the Faculty Advisor for one of the Law School’s first year law offices in the Legal Skills in Social Context program, which is producing a national tool kit for legislators, activists and policy-‐makers on the issues associated with post-‐ conviction employment barriers. Professor Rose Zoltek-‐Jick, who is now Associate Director of CRRJ, is leading this initiative. In the coming year, CRRJ intends to pursue other avenues together with the LAC to further public education and policy-‐making on the “ban the box” movement and other impediments to prisoner re-‐entry. COLLABORATION WITH NU SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM In 2013, CRRJ began a collaboration with the faculty from the NU School of Journalism offering students interdisciplinary research projects on cold cases. Sponsored by Professors Laurel Leff and Walter Robinson from Journalism, CRRJ has worked with their graduate students to share and compare investigative methods, interviewing and writing techniques, and ethical modalities. In the Summer 2013 Clinic, a journalism student, now a professor at the University of New Hampshire, examined the history of the World War II internment of Latin American citizens of Japanese descent by the US Military in the United States. In the Fall semester, two journalism students researched 1940s-‐era cold homicide cases from Atlanta and are now working with Alexander Cherup '14, who did the original archival work on 12 these cases. ALABAMA LEGISLATIVE INITIATIVE CRRJ convened a briefing session with Alabama public officials at the Birmingham Town Hall. Professor Melissa Nobles, MIT Political Science and advisory board member of CRRJ, and Margaret Burnham presented their research and discussed opportunities for official inquiries by legislative and executive bodies into historic racial violence in Alabama. Nobles and Burnham provided the state legislators, city officials, law enforcement officials, and academics in attendance with a comprehensive dossier of Alabama cases. CRRJ is working closely with civic leaders across the state who are exploring the creation of a standing commission. CAMBRIDGE HIGH SCHOOL CIVIL RIGHTS PROJECT CRRJ is collaborating with a community-‐based group in Cambridge, Massachusetts and educators at the Cambridge-‐Rindge and Latin High School to introduce students to our case method. At CRLS the Kimbrough Scholars Program is designed to create exciting hands-‐on opportunities for students to work and study in the field of racial justice. The students, under the supervision of their teachers, members of the community group, and CRRJ staff, are examining American history, restorative justice, and law through the lens of a cold case on our Mississippi docket. The young victim, a World War II veteran, was killed in 1945 because he wanted to leave a white man’s farm and go to work for his father-‐in-‐law. The students plan to travel to Mississippi to interview persons with knowledge of the events. Professors Nobles and Burnham, H. Adams ’15, M. Newman ’15, Birmingham, Alabama legislative briefing 13 FIELD RESEARCH Hannah Adams ’15 and Michelle Newman ’15 were in Cecil, GA meeting the family of Prentiss McCann, and in Birmingham, AL researching the murder of Willie Daniels. Adams also traveled to Mobile to meet with historians, librarians and family members on the McCann case. Molly Campbell and Rosie Nevins travelled to Wilson and Johnston counties, North Carolina to research the murders of Otis Newsome, J.C. Farmer and Dan Sanders. Georgi Rosen Vogel ’15 and Ibinabo Koleosho ’12 went to Nacogdoches, TX to investigate the Hutson matter. Mary Nguyen ’14, Kirsten Blume ’15 and Michele Wells investigated the Tom Jones case in Wilkinson County, MS., Natchez, and Long Island, NY. Melissa Nobles and Margaret Burnham met with members of the DeBardelaben family in Atlanta, and Burnham and Koleosho interviewed witnesses and family members of Hattie DeBardelaben in Detroit. Burnham investigated the murder of Freddie Moore in Assumption Parish, LA. FELLOWSHIPS AND SCHOLARSHIP Michele Wells was CRRJ’s Summer 2013 Fellow. Wells, currently a graduate student at the University of London, holds bachelors’ degrees from Brooklyn and Spelman. She is interested in how black communities have used the dramatic arts to portray history. She wrote the play, The War At Home, during her fellowship. The play, which is based on CRRJ’s cases, was work-‐shopped at the law school in August, and it is Wells’ graduate project at the University of London. Bayliss Fiddiman is the 2013-‐2014 Fellow for CRRJ. Fiddiman graduated from the Law School in May 2013 and has been working with CRRJ since 2011. Her work is featured in our video, The Trouble I’ve Seen. Andrew Cohen ’14 researched the lynching case of James Scales in the Summer 2012 clinic. His Note, The Lynching of James Scales: How the FBI, the Department of Justice and State Authorities “Whitewashed” Racial Violence in Bledsoe County, Tennessee will be published in the Spring 2014 issue of the Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights. In April Melissa Nobles, Head, MIT Department of Political Science and Margaret Burnham discussed their work on racial violence between 1935-‐1955 at Emory University and at the Southern Center for Human Rights, where they were joined by Emory University Professor of Journalism Hank Klibanoff. M. Campbell ’15 interviews Howard Jones, Smithfield, NC R. Nevins ’15, M. Campbell ’15 present CRRJ cases, Wilson, NC 14 In November Margaret Burnham presented a work-‐in-‐progress titled Soldiers and Southern Buses: Jim Crow Transportation, the Double V Campaign, and Restorative Justice at the Northeastern Humanities Center, and in March she presented her work at the Center for Social Justice and Public Service at Santa Clara Law School. EVENTS NO WELCOME HOME: REMEMBERING HARMS AND RESTORING JUSTICE Commemorating the Lives Lost in the Birmingham Bombing September 15, 2013 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church. CRRJ’s California supporters, organized by Kaylie Simon ’11, hosted an Oakland event to commemorate the lives of the six young people who lost their lives that day. Angela Davis, the keynote speaker, recounted her memories of the bombing, shared what it was like growing up in Jim Crow Birmingham in the 1950s, and reminded the audience that terrorism has long been a defining element of American history. The program also featured the Vukani Mawethu Choir and spoken word artist Dante Clark. On January 18, 2013 CRRJ hosted its annual event in commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Titled No Welcome Home: Remembering Harms and Restoring Justice, and attracting an audience of 1,000, the event featured Toni Morrison, who read from the novel Home and addressed the relationship between past racial harms and present understandings of race in the United States. CRRJ premiered its award-‐winning documentary, The Trouble I’ve Seen at the event. Narrated by Julian Bond, the documentary features CRRJ’s investigations of three harrowing civil rights cold cases. Victims’ family members from Texas, Alabama, Illinois, Maryland and California attended the event. The three families featured in The Trouble I’ve Seen were able to share their stories with a large audience for the first time. The documentary can be seen here: http://www.northeastern.edu/law/news/multimedia/videos/crrj-‐trouble-‐seen.html Burnham, Davis, and Kaylie Simon '12 (student of Angela, then Margaret, CRRJ board member and Contra Costa County Public Defender) 15 IN THE NEWS On January 21 Margaret Burnham wrote for Cognoscenti about President Obama’s responsibility to redress past racial harms. You can read the piece here: http://cognoscenti.wbur.org/2013/01/21/obama-‐mlk-‐inauguration-‐margaret-‐burnham On February 18 CRRJ was featured on WVCB’s Cityline. Karen Holmes interviewed Rebecca Miller, director and producer of the CRRJ documentary, The Trouble I’ve Seen. The interview can be seen here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsQRdEvYRCI . On July 16 Margaret Burnham contributed an article to Cognoscenti on the Trayvon Martin verdict. The article can be read here http://cognoscenti.wbur.org/2013/07/16/george-‐zimmerman-‐verdict-‐margaret-‐ burnham . She also wrote for Cognoscenti about the 50th Anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights March and blogged about the Alabama Legislature’s pardon in the Scottsboro case, http://nuslblogs.org/category/faculty/margaret-‐burnham/. On September 12 the San Jose Mercury News reported on CRRJ’s 50th Anniversary Commemoration of the Birmingham Bombing. The article can be found here http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-‐ news/ci_24078761/angela-‐davis-‐commemorates-‐50th-‐anniversary-‐alabama-‐church-‐bombing. Democracy Now also covered the event: http://www.democracynow.org/2013/9/16/terrorism_is_part_of_our_history. On October 23 the Baton Rouge Advocate published an article by investigative journalist David Mitchell on the case of Freddie Moore. Freddie Moore, 16, was lynched after accusations that he killed his next-‐ door neighbor. CRRJ is working with the family to try to clear Freddie Moore’s name. The article can be found here http://theadvocate.com/news/7274951-‐123/labadieville-‐lynching-‐in-‐1933-‐receiving. On November 15 CRRJ was invited to participate in a presentation of the University’s most innovative projects at its Empowerfest Campaign. An interview with Margaret Burnham at Empowerfest may be found here: http://vimeopro.com/empowernortheastern/empowerfest/video/81638644. AWARDS The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Circle of Excellence conferred on CRRJ an award for the documentary, The Trouble I’ve Seen. CASE promotes educational material. CRRJ received the Gold Award for News and Research Videos. H. Adams '15, Burnham, Law School Dean Jeremy Paul, Empowerfest 2013 16 ABOUT US CRRJ Staff and Boards Margaret Burnham, Director Rose Zoltek-‐Jick, Associate Director Bayliss Fiddiman, 2013 Fellow Rick Doyon, Administrator Honorary Advisors: Rita Bender, Julian Bond, David Dennis, Robert P. Moses, Charles Ogletree, Ruby Sales, Hollis Watkins NU Faculty Advisors: Karl Klare, Hope Lewis, Daniel Medwed, Michael Meltsner, James Rowan, Lucy Williams Board of Advisors: Ifetayo Belle, Janeen Blake, Tasmin Din, Geraldine Hines, Bonnie Kanter, Nancy Madden, Melissa Nobles, Rashida Richardson, James Rowan, Kaylie Simon Research Collaborators: Alfred L. Brophy, David Cunningham, Daniel T. Kryder, Leslie McLemore, Melissa Nobles, Margaret Russell, Geoff Ward, Jason Morgan Ward CRRJ IN OAKLAND, SEPTEMBER 2013 17 CONTRIBUTE TO CRRJ CRRJ relies on individual support to cover litigation expenses, student travel, and its reconciliation and restorative justice projects. Please make a donation to help us pursue our work, training tomorrow’s civil rights lawyers and filling the gaps in American history. Visit https://securelb.imodules.com/s/1386/giving.aspx?sid=1386&gid=1&pgid=846&cid=1907, then check the box marked “Other” and write in “Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Program” in the special instructions. Your full donation will benefit CRRJ. OR Mail your check (made out to “NUSL-‐ CRRJ”) to Northeastern University School of Law; Civil Rights and Restorative Justice; 140 DK; 400 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115. 400 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115 │ Email: crrj@neu.edu │ Tel. (617) 373-‐8243 │ http://www.northeastern.edu/civilrights/ September 2014, Alston, GA. Sallie Zimon commemorates the sacrifice of her husband, Isaiah Nixon. The couple’s two daughters are behind her. Nixon was murdered because he voted in the September 1948 Georgia gubernatorial election. CRRJ recovered the story of his life and death in 2012.
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2013 CRRJ Year-End Report
2013 CRRJ Year-End Report
2013 CRRJ Year-End Report
2013 CRRJ Year-End Report
The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) at Northeastern University School of Law
The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) at Northeastern University School of Law
2013
2013
crrj
year-end report
2013
crrj
year-end report
2013
http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20213662
http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20213662
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year-end report
2013
2013 CRRJ Year-End Report
2013 CRRJ Year-End Report
2013 crrj yearend report
2013/01/01
2013 CRRJ Year-End Report
2013
crrj
Burnham, Margaret
Burnham, Margaret
The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) at Northeastern University School of Law
Burnham, Margaret
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Microsoft Word - Year End Report 2013 final.docx CIVIL RIGHTS AND RESTORATIVE JUSTICE PROJECT NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW YEAR END REPORT 2013 The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) at Northeastern University School works with lawmakers, lawyers, the families of victims of racial homicides, activists, researchers, and journalists to redress the failures of the criminal justice system in the mid-twentieth century. We pursue scholarly research and remedial measures, including memorialization projects, truth commissions, and law reform. We maintain the most comprehensive archive on racial homicides in the country, with files that include the records of law enforcement agencies and civil rights organizations, court documents, witness statements, photographs, and oral history. In 2014 we opened files in thirty racial killings from the 1940s. We completed our work on the little-known murder of a voting rights martyr in Georgia, and pursued remedies in two Louisiana lynchings. We hosted a legislative workshop in Birmingham, and we met with scholars, archivists and civic leaders in Mobile, Montgomery, Fairfield, Atlanta, Labadieville, Hattiesburg, Natchez, Nacogdoches, and Wilson, NC. We initiated promising and exciting new programs. In one such program, we are expanding our mission to address the current civil rights crisis facing ex-offenders and other persons with criminal histories. We are collaborating with the HIRE Network (Helping Individuals with criminal records Reenter through Employment) to support and encourage legislators and other regulators to eliminate unfair barriers to employment. Another new program, to be launched this month, engages high school students in cold-case investigations using our methodology. Our events calendar for the past year featured Toni Morrison, who addressed a University-wide audience at our annual Martin Luther King commemoration in January, and Angela Davis, who, in September, brought our program to a West Coast audience on the fiftieth anniversary of the Birmingham Church bombing. Case Watch From the Docket The Alabama Docket In 2013, CRRJ took on twelve new cases from the state of Alabama. John Jackson, 30 years old, was killed by a police officer, Hubert Alexander, in Fairfield in 1941. Jackson was standing in line with a girlfriend waiting to enter a movie theatre when the officer approached and asked why he was laughing. 2 Jackson replied that he had not laughed, at which point Alexander arrested him for “disorderly conduct” and shot him four times. Walter Gunn was beaten to death by a deputy sheriff in Macon County in 1942. Henry Williams, a private in the armed services, was, in 1942, shot to death by a bus driver, Grover Chandler, in Mobile as Williams headed back to his base at Brookley Field. Williams had asked the driver to move along so that he could make a curfew. Prentiss McCann, a 23-‐year-‐old father of three and a veteran, was killed on a street in Mobile in 1945. McCann had gone to the grocery store. The police, investigating a nearby dice game, shot into the group, and Mobile Officer Melvin Porter killed McCann. William “Willie” Daniels, a 21-‐year-‐old veteran and coal miner, was shot and killed in Westfield in December 1946. Daniels and his new wife were Christmas shopping in the company store when a white sales clerk accused him of bumping her. He denied it, but was nevertheless accosted and then shot to death by John W. Vanderforth, a private guard for the store. Sam Watson, Jr. was slain in Selma in 1946 by a city police officer named Powell. Watson was 41 and married with one daughter. The police were called because Watson’s car had run out of gas. One of the officers sought to start the car, whereupon Watson asked him not to run his battery down. He was arrested, shot and killed. Mary Noyes, a 22-‐year-‐old pregnant mother of three, was killed in Camp Hill, Tallapoosa by one Albert O. Huey, a private citizen, in 1947. Noyes was at a café when Huey started shooting up the town because of a dispute he had with an African American soldier. As she was pregnant, Noyes could not run away from the gunfire in the café and was killed. CRRJ is seeking to locate relatives of Mary Noyes. Amos Starr was shot in the back and killed in Tallassee 1947 by Cecil Thrash, a police officer who suspected him of having committed a misdemeanor. Thrash was prosecuted in federal court for violating Starr’s civil rights, but the jury, after deliberating 22 minutes acquitted the officer. Samuel Lee Williams, 34 years old, was shot and killed by a streetcar conductor, M.A. Weeks in 1949 in Birmingham, because he refused to ride Jim Crow. Willie Carlisle, 19, was alleged to have been part of a group of teenagers who let the air out of the tires on a police car in Lafayette in 1949. He was arrested and beaten to death in jail. Officer James Clark were tried and acquitted in state court. In a subsequent federal proceeding Clark was convicted of a civil rights violation and sentenced to ten months. Hilliard Brooks was shot and killed by Montgomery police officer M.E. Mills in 1950. Brooks refused to follow the operator’s instructions to enter the bus from the rear door after he had paid his fare at the front door. The driver called on Officer Mills, who was nearby, and who pulled Brooks off the bus and fired at him, killing Brooks and wounding two passersby. Bodell Williamson, 24 years old, was found dead in Wilcox County in 1967. Sheriff “Lummie” Jenkins claimed the young man drowned, but some said he was killed. The Georgia Docket CRRJ undertook five new investigations in Georgia in 2013. Willie Davis, a 26-‐year-‐old soldier on leave in Summit, was shot by police chief James Bohannon without provocation at a roadhouse on the outskirts of town. Davis’ mother moved to New York City after her son’s death to obtain legal assistance from the NAACP, but the case went nowhere. CRRJ is currently searching for relatives of Willie Davis. Madison Harris, a 21 year old veteran, was shot on a sidewalk as he sought to board a streetcar in Atlanta by the Alabama Courthouse Records 3 driver, T.H. Purl, in 1946. Harris was shot in the temple. At the initial hearing in Recorder’s Court, Judge Calloway ruled the killing justifiable, and the case never went to trial. CRRJ is seeking to locate relatives of Madison Harris. Walter Lee Johnson, a 22-‐year-‐old veteran, was also shot on the sidewalk next to a streetcar in Atlanta in 1946. Johnson had shouted out to a friend “stay straight and fly right,” and the operator, W.D. Lee, thought he was being disrespected. He asked Johnson to repeat what he had said and then shot him in the abdomen. Judge Calloway of the Recorder’s Court once again ruled the killing to be a justifiable homicide. The Louisiana Docket CRRJ added three Louisiana cases to its docket, including a 1933 lynching and near lynching in Labadieville. Freddie Moore, 16, was arrested and charged with the murder of a white teenaged girl who lived near him. He was turned over to a mob that tortured and then hung him from a bridge in town. The mob attempted to lynch a second youth, Norman Thibodaux, in connection with the girl’s death, but he was cut down when someone in the crowd vouched that he had not been in town when the murder occurred. The teenager’s stepfather allegedly confessed to killing her sometime after the lynching. Moore’s parents successfully sued the sheriff in federal court for releasing their son to the mob. CRRJ is working with the family to clear Fred Moore’s name. Raymond Carr, a military police officer, was killed by Louisiana state trooper Dalton McCollum in November 1942. On duty in Alexandria, Carr was investigating a disturbance caused by a quarreling couple when state troopers approached and told him to go back to his base. Carr and his partner explained to the officers they were forbidden by army regulations from abandoning their post, at which point the troopers chased after Carr and shot him in the abdomen. McCollum was returned to the job after a one-‐day suspension. Edward Green, an army private in transit, was killed by Odell Lachnette, a streetcar operator in Alexandria in 1944. The driver ordered Green to move to the Negro section of the bus. Green hesitated or refused to give up his seat in the front, at which point the driver drew his revolver and told Green to get off the vehicle. The soldier disembarked, with Lachnette following on his heels. While forty witnesses looked on from the bus, the driver shot and killed Green. No action was taken against Lachnette, who went back to work after a brief detention. The Mississippi Docket CRRJ investigated four cases from Mississippi this year. George Andrews, a 24-‐year-‐old Army private and resident of Hattiesburg, was stationed at Camp Shelby when he was killed in 1944. Andrews had returned to Hattiesburg to look after his pregnant wife and two small children. As he prepared to board a city bus to return to base, the driver, B.F. Williams, shot him on the steps, then chased into the buses and shot him again. His defense was that he thought Andrews’ handkerchief was a gun. The same bus-‐ driver shot Joseph T. Daley of New York, a black sergeant on duty, on the same bus-‐line just a year after Andrews’ death. The driver remained on the Hattiesburg line for years after these incidents. CRRJ is Professors Burnham and Nobles with the DeBardelaben family, Atlanta 4 working with Andrews’ family and seeking to locate the relatives of Joseph Daley. Samuel Mason Bacon, 59 years old, was killed in 1948 by Fayette Town Marshal Stanton D. Coleman. Bacon was traveling from Akron, Ohio back to his home in Natchez. When the bus pulled into Port Gibson Bacon was ordered to give up his seat and refused to do so. He was arrested and found shot to death in his cell the next morning. The Town Marshal claimed Bacon came at him with an ax when he went to look in on him in the cell where he had been detained overnight on a charge of “disturbing the peace.” Tom Jones, 24 years old, was shot by a Woodville police officer at a Greyhound Bus stop in 1945. Jones was traveling home to Wilkinson County from New Orleans, where he was working as a longshoreman. When the bus arrived in Woodville, he asked the driver, Buddy Dawson, for his luggage. The driver chastised him for not saying, “yes sir” and told him he was “not in New Orleans” anymore. Dawson struck Jones with a flashlight and Jones hit him back. Woodville Police Officer David McDonald was called to the scene and shot Jones at point-‐blank range three times in the chest. Jones died with his hands in the air. No charges were ever brought. CRRJ is working with the Jones family. Matt J. McWilliams, 68 years old, was killed in 1947 by Kemper County sheriff Arnold Harbor. Harbor sought to evict McWilliams from his prosperous timber farm. The North Carolina Docket CRRJ add three new North Carolina cases to its docket this year. J.C. Farmer was shot to death in Wilson by the police in his front yard as his mother watched from the porch. The incident occurred in 1946. Farmer had defended himself against Fes Bissette, a constable who was beating him up. The constable’s gun discharged and hit him in the hand. A posse of law enforcement men and private citizens immediately hunted Farmer down and killed him. Dan Carter Sanders was shot and killed by a 16 year old, Bobby Johnson, in 1946 in Johnston County. Sanders had stolen some hound dogs belonging to Johnson’s father. A group of men, led by the teenager, hunted Sanders down and shot him to death in a field. The shooter is believed to still be alive. CRRJ has referred the case to the FBI under the Emmitt Till Act. Otis Newsome, a veteran and father of three young children, was killed by gas station operator U.C. Strickland in 1948 in Wilson. Newsome and a friend stopped at a gas station for brake fluid, and asked Strickland to assist them in putting the fuel in the car. The attendant refused. Newsome asserted that service was included in the price he had paid for the gas, at which point Strickland shot him in the stomach. Strickland was charged with first-‐degree murder. A jury acquitted him. CRRJ is working with the families and communities in these North Carolina cases Tom Jones' brother, niece and K. Blume ’15, Wilkinson Cty M. Campbell ‘15, Johnston Cty Cthouse, NC 5 The Texas Docket CRRJ pursued one new Texas case in 2013. Ellis Hutson, Sr., was killed in Nacogdoches in 1948. He was 50 years old. Hutson’s son, Ellis, Jr. had been beaten and arrested. When Hutson came to the county courthouse to bail his son out of jail, the arresting officer, Constable Travis Helpenstill, became enraged that Ellis, Jr. had refused to plead guilty. Helpenstill shot Hutson, Sr. three times in a corridor in the courthouse, killing him instantly. A state jury acquitted Helpenstill of murder. At a subsequent federal criminal trial, he entered a nolo contendere plea and was sentenced to 90 days, suspended. CRRJ is working with the Hutson family. ±±±±±±±± L to R: Otis Newsome (Wilson, NC), Ellis Hutson, Sr. (Nacogdoches, TX), Tom Jones (Woodville, MS), Samuel Bacon (Fayette,MS) The Japanese-‐Latin-‐American Internment Case While it is universally known that the United States rounded up and interned 120,000 persons of Japanese descent during World War II, what is less well known is that persons from South American states were sent to the United States for internment under the same military program. Over 2,000 persons of Japanese descent from 12 countries in Latin America were forcibly arrested, deported and interned in camps in the United States for the duration of World War II. Some of these former detainees are pursuing legal action to obtain reparations for the harms they suffered. The claimants, the Hutson's relatives, G. Vogel Rosen'15, I. Koleosho ’12, Nacogdoches, TX 6 Shibayama brothers who were deported from Peru, assert they were not adequately covered by the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which provided reparation for the survivors and family members of the internment of Japanese nationals and citizens living in the United States, but offered smaller amounts to the Japanese Latin-‐Americans. In 2013 Laura Misumi ’13 provided legal assistance to advocates on issues relating to the suit, which is pending before the Inter-‐American Commission on Human Rights. FROM THE DOCKET: THREE CASE REPORTS Freddie Moore 1933 Assumption Parish, Louisiana The thin, teenaged body of Freddie Moore hung from the truss of a bridge over Bayou Lafourche in the middle of Labadieville for a day or so before his relatives could remove it. A two-‐foot board tied to the lynch victim’s foot warned anyone who might have wanted to give him a decent burial. “Niggers, Let this be an Example” proclaimed the bold handwriting, “Do Not Touch For 24 Hrs. Mean It.” The elegant St. Philomena Church, which received its first parishioners from the town of Labadie and its surrounds in 1848, stood right across the street from the corpse, which was naked from the chest up, bound at the hands, and positioned precisely parallel to the vertical frame of the bridge closest to the sky-‐bound church steeple. Townspeople passed by with their children, snapped pictures of Moore, and later, it was reported at the time, sold the cards to raise funds for a church mortgage. Freddie’s family, meanwhile, fled the parish for safer ground. Freddie was sixteen-‐years-‐old and a farmhand when he was killed in October 1933. One Saturday morning he had been seen chatting with a white neighborhood girl about his age. She was later found dead in a field, and Freddie, because he had talked to the girl, was detained in connection with her murder. A mob of men from Assumption and nearby parishes wrested the keys from a deputy at the parish jail and kidnapped Freddie. They dropped a noose around his neck and took him back to the field where the young woman was found. There they tortured him, and then dragged him through the streets of town until they reached Labadieville Bridge, where he was hung. Townspeople later said the stepfather of the girl Freddie was accused of murdering admitted on his deathbed that it was he who had killed her. That night at Bayou Lafourche the mobsters nearly lynched another teenager whom they suspected of involvement in the murder. They hunted down Norman Thibodaux, threw a noose around his neck and hung him next to Freddie. But a man in the crowd hollered out that he knew Thibodaux had not been in the parish when the girl was killed. Spared by seconds from death by noose, Thibodaux was quickly shoved into a sheriff’s vehicle, taken to a nearby cane field, and shot at, allegedly by the deputy who led the lynch mob, Fernand Richard. Thibodaux fell among the canes and feigned death until he could make his escape. He hid in a corncrib overnight, then walked twenty-‐two miles until he could get a train back to New Orleans. The nineteen-‐ year-‐old would later travel to New York to share his story at an anti-‐lynching meeting in Harlem sponsored by the International Labor Defense. Norman Thibodaux in New York City Janet Johnson, Freddie Moore's cousin, had researched his lynching without success before CRRJ contacted her 7 No one was ever prosecuted for the crimes against Freddie Moore and Norman Thibodaux. Moore’s parents did, however, successfully pursue a federal civil action for damages, winning a jury award against the parish sheriff in the amount of $2,500. Despite the paucity of the award, the case represented a rare victory in the campaign against lynching. Robert Black, ’13, was the first researcher to relate the full story of the lynching of Freddie Moore and the near-‐lynching of Norman Thibodaux, including legal developments in state and federal court. Professor Burnham visited Assumption Parish to retrace the events, and following up on Black’s work, investigative journalist David Mitchell wrote an article about the case for the Baton Rouge Advocate. Mitchell located a cousin of Freddie Moore, Janet Hébert Johnson, who had been pursuing the case on her own. In interviews with CRRJ, Johnson recalled that her grandfather went to Labadieville to cut down his nephew’s body and to rescue his family. CRRJ is working with Johnson to clear the name of Freddie Moore. Prentiss McCann 1945 Mobile, Alabama Born in Choctaw, Alabama, Prentiss McCann followed the footsteps of thousands of southerners who left the cotton and timber farms during World War II to take advantage of the boom economies in the seacoast cities. Mobile, New Orleans, Alexandria – these port towns almost doubled in population as the shipbuilding industry expanded to keep pace with the Navy’s needs. McCann had himself enlisted in the military, but in 1943 he was discharged from Camp Shelby because he had flat feet. He moved his young wife and three small children to Mobile, settled down in the historic Maysville neighborhood, and took a job as a truck driver at the Brookley Field Army Air Depot. On a Saturday evening in July 1945, McCann left his wife home with their infant twins and toddler, and headed to a nearby market to buy eggs. On the way to the store, he stopped outside of the Midway Club, where some fellows were playing dice. Moments later, Mobile police drove by to disrupt the fun and arrest the gamers. Most of the crowd, players and onlookers alike, ran off when the police pulled up, but McCann did not move and remained talking with a friend. Officer Melvin Porter, seated in his police car, shot McCann twice in the head, felling him instantly. The officer was alleged to have said, moments later, “I’m sorry it happened. The gun got caught up in the door.” The NAACP, led by Mobile’s John LeFlore, gathered affidavits and waged an unsuccessful campaign to get the Civil Rights Section of the Department of Justice to prosecute Porter and his partner. Despite clear evidence that Porter’s self-‐defense claim was fabricated, the Department closed the case because, it contended, that it would be difficult to overcome the officers’ version of the events. Hannah Adams, ’15 took up the McCann case in this year’s clinic. She worked closely with librarians and historians in Mobile and met McCann’s children and wife in Georgia and other relatives in Alabama. Bit by bit, she recovered the pieces of the story, bringing some sense of closure to the family, and H. Adams ’15 with the relatives of Prentiss McCann, Georgia 8 particularly to McCann’s daughter, Claudine, who had been searching for the truth about her father’s death. CRRJ is working with the McCann family and civic leaders in Mobile to memorialize his life. Samuel Bacon 1948 Fayette, Mississippi Samuel Mason Bacon grew to adulthood in Adams County where he was a farmer and a Natchez community leader. While he was relatively content in his hometown, his wife, restless during the war years when money was to be made in the cities, left Mississippi for Fairfield, Alabama, and one of the Bacons’ three daughters moved to Akron, Ohio. Eventually Bacon closed down his farm and joined his daughter in Akron, where he took a job at the Firestone Rubber Company. He appreciated the steady work and good hourly wages at Firestone, but Bacon found himself missing the rhythms of the farm, the smells, sounds and gossip of St. Catherine Street on a Saturday afternoon, the resplendent view from the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi river, and his home church. Pining to see his family and homestead in Natchez once again, Bacon planned a trip back to the South. He also thought he might be able to persuade his wife, Fannie, to reunite with him, and hoped to visit her in Fairfield with that purpose in mind. And so in March 1948 Samuel Bacon boarded a southbound Greyhound bus headed for Natchez. It was a long but fairly comfortable ride for Bacon until the bus reached Vicksburg, whereupon the Greyhound passengers traveling further on into Mississippi transferred to a Tristate bus. The fifty-‐nine year old Bacon was handsomely attired and traveling with his bankbook and some cash, which he would need for his visit in Natchez and his journey to Alabama. When the bus arrived at the small town of Port Gibson, forty-‐two miles from his destination, the bus driver told Bacon to give his seat to a white man and stand in the crowded colored section at the rear. With white seats still available, Bacon said he would not do so. At the next stop, Fayette, about a half-‐hour from Natchez, the bus-‐driver, James H. Minninger, threw the dignified, upright man off the bus and had him arrested for “creating a disturbance.” Held overnight in the Fayette jail on charges that have never been revealed, on the morning of March 15, just three days after he had left Ohio, Bacon lay dead in his cell. Stanton Coleman, the Fayette town marshal, had shot him at close range in his cell, once in the belly and once in the chest. Bacon’s family waited in vain for him at the Natchez bus station. When they finally learned their relative was being held at the Fayette jail, he was indeed there but he was already dead. Bits and pieces of the story gradually emerged as black riders who had witnessed the arrest found the courage to relate the events. Protests ensued, but all for naught. Bacon’s three daughters wrote repeatedly to the Justice Department, as did scores of citizens, incensed by the marshal’s incredulous claim of self-‐defense. Bacon’s daughters, one of whom is still alive in Akron and another of whom worked for the Southern Negro Youth Congress in Birmingham at the time of the slaying, described their beloved father as a pious, hardworking person. “He did not drink, nor use profanity, and he had never been arrested in his life,” they wrote to the Justice Department’s attorneys. M. Nguyen’14 with relatives of Samuel Bacon, Natchez, MS 9 While the Mississippi authorities cleared the marshal in a sham grand jury proceeding, the Federal Bureau of Investigation assigned its agent, George Gunther, to pursue the matter. Gunther would, in the 1960s, earn an infamous reputation among civil rights activists in southwest Mississippi. In 1961, he once threatened the civil rights leader Robert P. Moses with bodily harm when Moses, who had been badly beaten, questioned whether the agent had sent a false report about the assault on him to Washington. Leaving no room to doubt his loyalties, Gunther, on retiring from the FBI, signed on as an informant for the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, whose mission it was to obliterate the state’s civil rights movement. Back In 1948, George Gunther reported to the FBI and DOJ in Washington that Bacon had been “disruptive” on the bus and that he had “behaved as a wild person” at the jail, attempting to strike the town marshal with a pick ax that had been in his cell. Armed with Gunther’s report that Bacon had brought trouble on himself, the Justice Department closed the case. This past year Mary Nguyen, ‘14, met with Bacon’s surviving relatives in New York and Natchez. For them, and for history, she pieced together the fullest account there is of how and why Samuel Mason Bacon died. She searched the archives of the Southern Negro Youth Congress at Howard’s Spingarn Library, the Justice Department at the National Archives in College Park, and the NAACP at Harvard’s Lamont Library. She looked for court records in Mississippi and found there were none. She interviewed family members and historians of Natchez. For the family, Nguyen resolved the painful, long-‐ lingering question of how a decent fifty-‐ nine year old man could die a miserable and invisible death. She gathered with them around Bacon’s gravestone in Natchez, at his hometown church, and, with them, bid him farewell once again. UPDATES Commemorating the Life of Isaiah Nixon, Voting Rights Martyr Isaiah Nixon was killed in September 1948 in Alston because he voted in Georgia’s democratic primary. A farmer and turpentine worker, Nixon returned home to his wife and children after casting his vote in Montgomery County. Later that day, two men who at the polling place had warned Nixon against voting showed up on his front steps. As he came out of his house, they shot him dead. The men, brothers, were tried in a Georgia court and acquitted of the murder. Christopher Bridges, ’12, recovered new archival material in the Nixon matter. His meticulous research led to a joint project among CRRJ, and the UNESCO Transatlantic Slave Trade Project, and the Rosewood Heritage Foundation to commemorate the life of Isaiah Nixon in Alston, Georgia, where he lived and died. Nixon’s wife, Sallie Zimon, fled to Florida from Georgia with the couple’s children immediately after her husband was slain. For many of Nixon’s family members, the commemoration on November 14, 2013 was their first trip to Alston. Bridges, who is currently the Racial Justice Fellow at the ACLU of Northern California, joined Sally Zimon and other family members, officials from UNESCO, and civic leaders at the event. Bridges planted a M.Nguyen '14, M. Wells (CRRJ Fellow), Mason's grandson, New York 10 magnolia bush and helped to install a cemetery bench in honor of Isaiah Nixon. This event marked the first public recognition of Isaiah Nixon’s sacrifice in the name of democracy since his death in 1948. Seeking Apology for 1946 Lynching of John C. Jones In June 2013, with legal assistance from CRRJ, Webster Parish NAACP President Kenneth Wallace petitioned the Parish Police Jury to issue an apology for the 1946 lynching of John C. Jones near Minden. Together with his 19 year old cousin, Jones, a World War II veteran, was accused of peeping into the window of a home of a white woman. The two men were locked up in the Minden jail and released by the sheriff into the hands of six white men who took them to a creek and beat them. Jones died in his cousin’s arms. The Justice Department pursued charges against several of the lynchers; all were acquitted. On behalf of the family members of the victims and the local NAACP, Wallace sought to have the parish acknowledge its role in the crimes. “You have a Confederate Memorial right up in the square,” Wallace told the parish officials, “And if we’re honest, Confederate ideology is what killed John C. Jones.” He also pointed out in Minden that there was a memorial shrine marking the location of where “the first white child in the Minden area” was buried. One of the officials acknowledged the other memorials and then explained that the men accused of Jones’ lynching had been acquitted of the lynching. That, he said, should be the end of the matter. Reverend Wallace is determined to bring the case again before the parish officials in 2013. Seeking Apology for 1940 Lynching of Elbert Williams In September Dr. Dorothy Granberry led a group of Tennessee citizens in seeking an apology from the office of Attorney General Eric Holder in connection with the 1940 lynching of Elbert Williams and the banishment of NAACP voting rights advocate Elisha Davis. Granberry, assisted by Andrew Cohen ’14, had appealed for an apology unsuccessfully to the Tennessee United States Attorney, who informed her that his office could not comment on past cases. Other avenues are being pursued. Webster Parish NAACP leader Kenneth Wallace seeks apology Jones Case Sallie (Nixon) Zimon, Family and Friends, November 2013, Alston, GA 11 George Stinney Case Goes to Court Armed with CRRJ’s Archival Research When he was sent to the electric chair in South Carolina in 1944, George Stinney, 14 years old, was the youngest child to have been killed by the state in the twentieth century. In recent years the case has gained notoriety, and efforts have been made to redress this travesty. Clayton Adams ’13 began research on the case in 2011, drafting memorandums for South Carolina lawyer Steven McKenzie, and providing him with evidentiary material. The Stinney family is now seeking to obtain a review of the conviction in Columbia, and evidence uncovered by CRRJ is at the center of these legal efforts. CRRJ dug up letters in the South Carolina Department of Archives and History from the South Carolina Governor Olin Johnston in 1944, that cast doubt on the police investigation that led to the boy’s conviction. RUBEN SALAZAR FILM PREMIERES The film Rescuing Ruben Salazar: Visions and Voices premiered in Los Angeles in September. Salazar, a well-‐known journalist who chronicled the radical Chicano movement, was mysteriously killed in 1970 during a Los Angeles demonstration against the Vietnam War. CRRJ assisted filmmaker Philip Rodriguez obtain and analyze government documents relating to Salazar’s public life and violent death. The documentary premiered in September in Los Angeles SPECIAL PROJECTS RESTORATIVE JUSTICE FOR PERSONS WITH CRIMINAL HISTORIES CRRJ has initiated a pilot project on a current criminal justice issue: barriers to employment facing persons with criminal histories. Thanks to input from Professor Michael Meltsner, CRRJ is collaborating with the Legal Action Center’s H.I.R.E. Project to address the collateral effects of convictions in the area of employment rights for former prisoners and others with criminal records. CRRJ assisted in the drafting of a “ban the box” bill in New Hampshire, which would prohibit employers from asking an applicant about his or her criminal history until a conditional offer of employment has been made. Hearings on the Bill in the state Legislative Assembly will begin in January 2014, and CRRJ will be preparing the briefing papers for the Committee hearings. CRRJ is serving as the Faculty Advisor for one of the Law School’s first year law offices in the Legal Skills in Social Context program, which is producing a national tool kit for legislators, activists and policy-‐makers on the issues associated with post-‐ conviction employment barriers. Professor Rose Zoltek-‐Jick, who is now Associate Director of CRRJ, is leading this initiative. In the coming year, CRRJ intends to pursue other avenues together with the LAC to further public education and policy-‐making on the “ban the box” movement and other impediments to prisoner re-‐entry. COLLABORATION WITH NU SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM In 2013, CRRJ began a collaboration with the faculty from the NU School of Journalism offering students interdisciplinary research projects on cold cases. Sponsored by Professors Laurel Leff and Walter Robinson from Journalism, CRRJ has worked with their graduate students to share and compare investigative methods, interviewing and writing techniques, and ethical modalities. In the Summer 2013 Clinic, a journalism student, now a professor at the University of New Hampshire, examined the history of the World War II internment of Latin American citizens of Japanese descent by the US Military in the United States. In the Fall semester, two journalism students researched 1940s-‐era cold homicide cases from Atlanta and are now working with Alexander Cherup '14, who did the original archival work on 12 these cases. ALABAMA LEGISLATIVE INITIATIVE CRRJ convened a briefing session with Alabama public officials at the Birmingham Town Hall. Professor Melissa Nobles, MIT Political Science and advisory board member of CRRJ, and Margaret Burnham presented their research and discussed opportunities for official inquiries by legislative and executive bodies into historic racial violence in Alabama. Nobles and Burnham provided the state legislators, city officials, law enforcement officials, and academics in attendance with a comprehensive dossier of Alabama cases. CRRJ is working closely with civic leaders across the state who are exploring the creation of a standing commission. CAMBRIDGE HIGH SCHOOL CIVIL RIGHTS PROJECT CRRJ is collaborating with a community-‐based group in Cambridge, Massachusetts and educators at the Cambridge-‐Rindge and Latin High School to introduce students to our case method. At CRLS the Kimbrough Scholars Program is designed to create exciting hands-‐on opportunities for students to work and study in the field of racial justice. The students, under the supervision of their teachers, members of the community group, and CRRJ staff, are examining American history, restorative justice, and law through the lens of a cold case on our Mississippi docket. The young victim, a World War II veteran, was killed in 1945 because he wanted to leave a white man’s farm and go to work for his father-‐in-‐law. The students plan to travel to Mississippi to interview persons with knowledge of the events. Professors Nobles and Burnham, H. Adams ’15, M. Newman ’15, Birmingham, Alabama legislative briefing 13 FIELD RESEARCH Hannah Adams ’15 and Michelle Newman ’15 were in Cecil, GA meeting the family of Prentiss McCann, and in Birmingham, AL researching the murder of Willie Daniels. Adams also traveled to Mobile to meet with historians, librarians and family members on the McCann case. Molly Campbell and Rosie Nevins travelled to Wilson and Johnston counties, North Carolina to research the murders of Otis Newsome, J.C. Farmer and Dan Sanders. Georgi Rosen Vogel ’15 and Ibinabo Koleosho ’12 went to Nacogdoches, TX to investigate the Hutson matter. Mary Nguyen ’14, Kirsten Blume ’15 and Michele Wells investigated the Tom Jones case in Wilkinson County, MS., Natchez, and Long Island, NY. Melissa Nobles and Margaret Burnham met with members of the DeBardelaben family in Atlanta, and Burnham and Koleosho interviewed witnesses and family members of Hattie DeBardelaben in Detroit. Burnham investigated the murder of Freddie Moore in Assumption Parish, LA. FELLOWSHIPS AND SCHOLARSHIP Michele Wells was CRRJ’s Summer 2013 Fellow. Wells, currently a graduate student at the University of London, holds bachelors’ degrees from Brooklyn and Spelman. She is interested in how black communities have used the dramatic arts to portray history. She wrote the play, The War At Home, during her fellowship. The play, which is based on CRRJ’s cases, was work-‐shopped at the law school in August, and it is Wells’ graduate project at the University of London. Bayliss Fiddiman is the 2013-‐2014 Fellow for CRRJ. Fiddiman graduated from the Law School in May 2013 and has been working with CRRJ since 2011. Her work is featured in our video, The Trouble I’ve Seen. Andrew Cohen ’14 researched the lynching case of James Scales in the Summer 2012 clinic. His Note, The Lynching of James Scales: How the FBI, the Department of Justice and State Authorities “Whitewashed” Racial Violence in Bledsoe County, Tennessee will be published in the Spring 2014 issue of the Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights. In April Melissa Nobles, Head, MIT Department of Political Science and Margaret Burnham discussed their work on racial violence between 1935-‐1955 at Emory University and at the Southern Center for Human Rights, where they were joined by Emory University Professor of Journalism Hank Klibanoff. M. Campbell ’15 interviews Howard Jones, Smithfield, NC R. Nevins ’15, M. Campbell ’15 present CRRJ cases, Wilson, NC 14 In November Margaret Burnham presented a work-‐in-‐progress titled Soldiers and Southern Buses: Jim Crow Transportation, the Double V Campaign, and Restorative Justice at the Northeastern Humanities Center, and in March she presented her work at the Center for Social Justice and Public Service at Santa Clara Law School. EVENTS NO WELCOME HOME: REMEMBERING HARMS AND RESTORING JUSTICE Commemorating the Lives Lost in the Birmingham Bombing September 15, 2013 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church. CRRJ’s California supporters, organized by Kaylie Simon ’11, hosted an Oakland event to commemorate the lives of the six young people who lost their lives that day. Angela Davis, the keynote speaker, recounted her memories of the bombing, shared what it was like growing up in Jim Crow Birmingham in the 1950s, and reminded the audience that terrorism has long been a defining element of American history. The program also featured the Vukani Mawethu Choir and spoken word artist Dante Clark. On January 18, 2013 CRRJ hosted its annual event in commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Titled No Welcome Home: Remembering Harms and Restoring Justice, and attracting an audience of 1,000, the event featured Toni Morrison, who read from the novel Home and addressed the relationship between past racial harms and present understandings of race in the United States. CRRJ premiered its award-‐winning documentary, The Trouble I’ve Seen at the event. Narrated by Julian Bond, the documentary features CRRJ’s investigations of three harrowing civil rights cold cases. Victims’ family members from Texas, Alabama, Illinois, Maryland and California attended the event. The three families featured in The Trouble I’ve Seen were able to share their stories with a large audience for the first time. The documentary can be seen here: http://www.northeastern.edu/law/news/multimedia/videos/crrj-‐trouble-‐seen.html Burnham, Davis, and Kaylie Simon '12 (student of Angela, then Margaret, CRRJ board member and Contra Costa County Public Defender) 15 IN THE NEWS On January 21 Margaret Burnham wrote for Cognoscenti about President Obama’s responsibility to redress past racial harms. You can read the piece here: http://cognoscenti.wbur.org/2013/01/21/obama-‐mlk-‐inauguration-‐margaret-‐burnham On February 18 CRRJ was featured on WVCB’s Cityline. Karen Holmes interviewed Rebecca Miller, director and producer of the CRRJ documentary, The Trouble I’ve Seen. The interview can be seen here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsQRdEvYRCI . On July 16 Margaret Burnham contributed an article to Cognoscenti on the Trayvon Martin verdict. The article can be read here http://cognoscenti.wbur.org/2013/07/16/george-‐zimmerman-‐verdict-‐margaret-‐ burnham . She also wrote for Cognoscenti about the 50th Anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights March and blogged about the Alabama Legislature’s pardon in the Scottsboro case, http://nuslblogs.org/category/faculty/margaret-‐burnham/. On September 12 the San Jose Mercury News reported on CRRJ’s 50th Anniversary Commemoration of the Birmingham Bombing. The article can be found here http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-‐ news/ci_24078761/angela-‐davis-‐commemorates-‐50th-‐anniversary-‐alabama-‐church-‐bombing. Democracy Now also covered the event: http://www.democracynow.org/2013/9/16/terrorism_is_part_of_our_history. On October 23 the Baton Rouge Advocate published an article by investigative journalist David Mitchell on the case of Freddie Moore. Freddie Moore, 16, was lynched after accusations that he killed his next-‐ door neighbor. CRRJ is working with the family to try to clear Freddie Moore’s name. The article can be found here http://theadvocate.com/news/7274951-‐123/labadieville-‐lynching-‐in-‐1933-‐receiving. On November 15 CRRJ was invited to participate in a presentation of the University’s most innovative projects at its Empowerfest Campaign. An interview with Margaret Burnham at Empowerfest may be found here: http://vimeopro.com/empowernortheastern/empowerfest/video/81638644. AWARDS The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Circle of Excellence conferred on CRRJ an award for the documentary, The Trouble I’ve Seen. CASE promotes educational material. CRRJ received the Gold Award for News and Research Videos. H. Adams '15, Burnham, Law School Dean Jeremy Paul, Empowerfest 2013 16 ABOUT US CRRJ Staff and Boards Margaret Burnham, Director Rose Zoltek-‐Jick, Associate Director Bayliss Fiddiman, 2013 Fellow Rick Doyon, Administrator Honorary Advisors: Rita Bender, Julian Bond, David Dennis, Robert P. Moses, Charles Ogletree, Ruby Sales, Hollis Watkins NU Faculty Advisors: Karl Klare, Hope Lewis, Daniel Medwed, Michael Meltsner, James Rowan, Lucy Williams Board of Advisors: Ifetayo Belle, Janeen Blake, Tasmin Din, Geraldine Hines, Bonnie Kanter, Nancy Madden, Melissa Nobles, Rashida Richardson, James Rowan, Kaylie Simon Research Collaborators: Alfred L. Brophy, David Cunningham, Daniel T. Kryder, Leslie McLemore, Melissa Nobles, Margaret Russell, Geoff Ward, Jason Morgan Ward CRRJ IN OAKLAND, SEPTEMBER 2013 17 CONTRIBUTE TO CRRJ CRRJ relies on individual support to cover litigation expenses, student travel, and its reconciliation and restorative justice projects. Please make a donation to help us pursue our work, training tomorrow’s civil rights lawyers and filling the gaps in American history. Visit https://securelb.imodules.com/s/1386/giving.aspx?sid=1386&gid=1&pgid=846&cid=1907, then check the box marked “Other” and write in “Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Program” in the special instructions. Your full donation will benefit CRRJ. OR Mail your check (made out to “NUSL-‐ CRRJ”) to Northeastern University School of Law; Civil Rights and Restorative Justice; 140 DK; 400 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115. 400 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115 │ Email: crrj@neu.edu │ Tel. (617) 373-‐8243 │ http://www.northeastern.edu/civilrights/ September 2014, Alston, GA. Sallie Zimon commemorates the sacrifice of her husband, Isaiah Nixon. The couple’s two daughters are behind her. Nixon was murdered because he voted in the September 1948 Georgia gubernatorial election. CRRJ recovered the story of his life and death in 2012.
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