Justice Delayed...
June 15, 2007    File under: America , Civil Rights , Memory & Memorial

James Ford Seale is convicted of the murders of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore 43 years after the crime. Seale had been a suspect from the beginning of the investigation, but after he and another suspect complained of police brutality, the prosecutors dropped the charges in hope of securing more evidence, which never arrived. Seale was said to have been dead, but Thomas Moore, the brother of Charles Eddie Moore, discovered Seale very much alive when he traveled back to Mississippi a few years ago while making the documentary Mississippi Cold Case (now airing on MSNBC). The documentary led directly to the re-opening of the case against Seale.

Just hours after the conviction came down, the families dedicated a memorial to Dee and Moore in Meadville, Mississippi.

More here from the Jackson Free Press, which also hosts a wonderful article giving more background.

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Migration
May 16, 2007    File under: Alabama , America , Denver , Editing , Information Technology , Intake , Interior Monologue , Language , Lomography / Photography , Memory & Memorial , Poetry & Poetics , Postcards , Self-promotion , Steganography , Tapeworm , Teaching , The South

This is for those of you who read my blog via RSS...

I am considering, very strongly, moving to WordPress in the very near future. I've already arranged a version of the Ladder at http://www.jakeadamyork.com/wp/, and I'm leaning heavily toward switching, in which case the feed addresses will certainly change. I will broadcast a warning before it happens however.

If you're reading via RSS, you probably aren't much concerned with the way the site looks, but if you're at all interested, please take a look and let me know what you think.

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Jimmie Lee Jackson
May 10, 2007    File under: Alabama , Memory & Memorial , The South

There are new indictments in the 1965 murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson.

For the last year I've been talking about this very case. The title poem of my new book, A Murmuration of Starlings, is about the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson.

I'm glad to see this case is not slipping into memory, or from memory, but I'm sure what ensues will be interesting in many, many ways. Says James Bernard Fowler, the former Alabama State Trooper who, it seems, has been indicted for Jackson's murder: "The DA is trying to get a pound of flesh for civil rights, and I guess he's getting it from me" (source).

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The Crowd He Becomes
May 3, 2007    File under: Language , Memory & Memorial , Poetry & Poetics , Self-promotion

The new DIAGRAM presents a poem of mine, from the new book, which, it now looks, may be out in January (!).

I'm on the radio tonight here in Mississippi. See you then.

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We Mourn Our Loss
April 1, 2007    File under: Memory & Memorial

My friend, Elissa Auther, introduced me today to the work of Kerry James Marshall, of whom my ignorance must be criminal, or at least stupendous, shameful.

Born in Birmingham, transplanted to L.A., and now in Chicago, several years back, he produced a series of memorial works, including these:


"Memento"


"Souvenir II"


Souvenir IV

The revelation has me nearly frantic. I'm eager to receive a copy of Marshall's Mementos, which I ordered earlier today. I recognize in the clouds of angels in many of these works the faces of Emmett Till, Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, and Carole Robertson, as well as Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman. The other faces are more difficult to name for sure, but in one work, it may be Medgar Evers, in another Malcolm X, and in at least one of these the faces are not only wreathed by wings but also float over what appear to be text clippings. The combination of face and wing and inscription suggests the lapidary vocabulary of traditional tombstones, though the memorials are situated in homes rather than in the public spaces of cemeteries, and yet these homes are connected through shared texts and icons into elsewheres that are everywhere and that are connected to the forever they recognize together.

I should have been reading these all along...

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