PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

In 1931 the New Republic reported on a lynching in Mississippi: "Jim [Ivy] was staked with heavy chains and dry wood was piled knee-high around him. Gasoline tanks were tapped for fuel. Three men set the wood and Jim on fire. I saw the flames climb high on Jim. Jim screamed, prayed and cursed; he struggled so hard that he snapped one of the log chains that bound his ankles to the stake. I was looking into his eyes that second. They were popping with pain and terror...the flames reached up and burned his screaming voice into silence. The mob turned to go. It was about time for supper."

In Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963, four 11- to 14-year-old girls were in the basement restroom of the 16th Street Baptist Church when a bomb went off. The ground floor collapsed on them. As shocked and bloodied churchgoers wandered through the smoky aftermath, community members began to gather outside, and Governor Wallace sent the police in to disburse the crowd. Two young black men were killed that night, one by the police and one by white thugs.

On June 17, 2015 a white man murdered nine African-American members of a bible study group at a church in South Carolina. "I have to do it," he said.

A Second Way: Killing Quietly

The violence goes on. But in our modern era of surveillance and DNA testing and instant media, racism is evolving into a more insidious form -- still violent, often, but with an emphasis on the relatively quiet economic subjugation that was taken for granted during periods of slavery and Jim Crow. Racism is constantly being polished and perfected.

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/two-ways-racists-kill/19387-two-ways-racists-kill