ATROCITY, ENTITLEMENT, AND PERSONHOOD IN PROPERTY

On March 27, 1963, a pair of reporters from the New York Times and Newsweek, Claude Sitton and Karl Fleming, arrived in Greenwood, Mississippi, a small town on the banks of the Yazoo River that was becoming the front line in the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee's campaign to register...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Virginia law review 2012-05, Vol.98 (3), p.635-690
Main Author: Sharfstein, Daniel J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
CIVIL LIBERTIES
Community property
CULTURE
Land ownership
Native Americans
NEGOTIATION
Personal property
Political participation
Property law
Property ownership
Property rights
Social psychology
Tribal land
VIOLENCE
War
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Summary:On March 27, 1963, a pair of reporters from the New York Times and Newsweek, Claude Sitton and Karl Fleming, arrived in Greenwood, Mississippi, a small town on the banks of the Yazoo River that was becoming the front line in the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee's campaign to register black voters. Sitton and Fleming reached Greenwood shortly after police with shotguns and a German shepherd had attacked 150 nonviolent protesters in front of the Leflore County courthouse. In the hours that followed, groups of whites roamed the streets, openly contemplating lynching and murder. The reporters had traveled as a pair and dressed in Brooks Brothers suits on the theory that a mob would not attack men who looked like FBI agents, but no one was fooled that day. When Fleming began snapping pictures for News-week, they were immediately surrounded by some twenty "roughly-dressed, sullen men on the court house side walk." "You nigger-loving son-of-a-bitch," one said to Fleming, "I could use that cam-era strap to hang your ass." Another man looked at Sitton, the Times reporter, and uttered one of the most haunting lines ever committed to paper during the civil rights era: "We killed two-months old Indian babies to take this country and now they want us to give it away to the Niggers."
ISSN:0042-6601