Lynching a State's Reputation

JACKSON, Miss. –– On June 16 a tragedy occurred in Kokomo, Miss. Raynard Johnson, a 17-year-old African American, was found hanging from a tree outside his family's home. Although it appeared to be a suicide, this state has a sordid racial history, and the possibility that it was a hate crime could not be ignored. There was every reason for a full investigation.

Without waiting for the results of that investigation, however, the Rev. Jesse Jackson asserted that the young man had been lynched. Mr. Jackson is not known for his reticence, and almost instantly stories of "Another Lynching in Mississippi" were given prominence around the nation.

Jackson charged that Raynard Johnson's throat had been cut. Photographs of the body clearly show that this is not true. Two autopsies, one conducted by a forensic pathologist hired by the family of the deceased, found that all evidence pointed to a suicide. Jackson ignored these findings and held a protest march.

Then he claimed that local authorities had conducted a "Waco-style raid" on the Johnson home to seize the victim's computer. A videotape of the serving of the warrant shows nothing of the sort.

A full investigation of the incident was completed this month, and the death was officially found to be a suicide. Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore said that every lead received from Jesse Jackson had been tracked down. Jackson's response was to hold a news conference and call for the body to be exhumed for a third autopsy.

I am not a native Mississippian. I have been a vocal supporter of the civil rights movement since I was a teenager in New Jersey in the early 1960s. I was horrified by events in Mississippi in those years. Following the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers, NAACP president Roy Wilkins declared, "There is no state that approaches Mississippi in murder, violence, brutality. . . . It is absolutely at the bottom of the list."

That assessment was entirely justified. But that was 37 years ago. How long does it take for a state to be restored the presumption of innocence that is given to previously convicted felons when a new charge is raised?

Mississippi has in the past several years reopened racial murder cases from the 1960s and obtained convictions of such notorious figures as Byron de la Beckwith, the killer of Medgar Evers.

Attorney General Moore is currently working with local officials to try to bring state homicide charges in one of the most infamous of the racist crimes in Mississippi, the 1964 killing of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.

Jesse Jackson's reckless charges serve to obscure those facts and perpetuate the stereotypes of the state. Mississippians seeking to recruit businesses, workers or students to the state in recent weeks say they keep hearing one word: "Kokomo."

Could a lynching occur in Mississippi in 2000? Of course it could, as it could anywhere else. But if it did occur, state officials and the vast majority of the citizens of Mississippi would be appalled and would insist that the perpetrators be arrested and convicted.

I agree with Jesse Jackson on almost all issues. I have talked with him several times over the years. He has done an enormous amount of good. But in this matter he has made himself into a caricature, indistinguishable from the fictional Reverend Bacon in Tom Wolfe's 1987 novel, "Bonfire of the Vanities."

But the Rev. Jackson was not alone in his rush to judgment. The national media eagerly joined him. Mississippi has long served America as the equivalent of the goats described in Leviticus, which were chosen to bear symbolically the sins of the nation as a whole.

We still have at least our share of racist yahoos in this state. But what state does not harbor such people?

A lynching is an execution that is based on prejudice, not evidence. There is no indication that this sad event was a racial lynching. If any such evidence ever emerges, it should and will be pursued with vigor. Lynching a state is no more justified than lynching a person. Geographical prejudice is no better than racial prejudice.

The writer is chairman of the history department at Millsaps College in Mississippi.