Peace In Mississippi? - A Lynching - Democratic Underground

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Fri May-07-04 01:13 AM
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Peace In Mississippi? - A Lynching

Edited on Fri May-07-04 01:23 AM by bigtree

WOODVILLE, Miss. - Family members say a man found Friday hanging from a tree in rural Mississippi had returned home to fight for his family's land.

The body of 52-year-old Roy Veal was discovered in Wilkinson County, relatives said.

Warren Strain, spokesman of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, said the body was discovered about midday in a wooded area of the county near Woodville. Authorities declined to identify the man pending notification of relatives.

But Doris Gordon, a Woodville native now living in San Francisco, said the victim was her brother, Roy Veal of Washington state. Thelma Veal, the man's mother, also confirmed the identity.

"They found my brother hanging from a tree with a hood over his head and some papers burned at his feet," Gordon said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from San Francisco. "It's awful. We don't know who did it."

A few more articles on this can be found at: http://www.bmorenews.com/news/042904news_lynching_roy_veal_mississippi_over_property_april_23_2004.htm

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/aplocal_story.asp?category=6420&slug=MS%20Body%20Found

This local story from the cops disputes the lynching allegation: http://www.mississippilink.com/pv/pageview.pl?section=hotstories&newsfile=n200405047.txt
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I posted this story because it brought back something I had found while searching through the history of Mississippi in hopes of finding the pulse of former hostage Thomas Hamill's hometown. I had put the jumble of facts and contradictions of this southern state aside confident that my pursuit was little more than muckraking.

Today I ran across this report of a Mississippi man who was found with a "hood over his head and some papers burned at his feet," in a wooded area of Wilkenson county near Woodville. My thoughts immediately fell to the little bit of Mississippi history I had cherry-picked from a few web pages. I won't pretend to know a thing about Mississippi, or anything southern that I haven't read or heard.

Still, as I dug through clippings and profiles of Macon, where Hamill lives, I found a racially mixed community that stood a united vigil for the local dairy farmer, turned Halliburton truck driver, who had turned to Iraq when his farm fell flat.

"Red, white, and blue American flags went up on Macon's main street," AP reported, "Several hundred friends and neighbors gathered for a vigil that Sunday night following the news of his capture, and Mayor Dorothy Baker Hines said the town would keep the lights on all night at some buildings as a reminder.“We will keep going until we get our guy out, all our guys and girls out,” she said. “It’s gotten too close to home.”

Flags on Main St., prayer vigils, a town united . . . All was well in Macon, it was clear. It's a wonder how tragedy seems to bring folks together. I was out of line snooping underneath. What state is free of antagonism and strife? I had looked at Mississippi with a jaundiced eye, fishing for the worst, and I had found a heart and soul that would transend the ugly past.

"Greetings from Noxubee County!" read the Chamber of Commerce fact page, "Located in East Central Mississippi, the rich black soil of our eastern prairie produces an abundance of crops while our western hills are thick with pine and hardwood forests that provide some of the best hunting grounds in the state."

I pushed on and clicked through pages filled with rantings of an ancient, black, discontented voice insisting that nothing much at all had changed in Macon:

"I was a conscienscious objector to the Viet-nam War.," his short bio read, "I was given a 1-W classification and assigned to work in a hospital laundry in Macon, Mississippi. I worked under Mennonite Voluntery Service. I left my native Indiana, and became immersed in the greatest people's movement since Biblical times - the Mississippi civil rights struggle."

He continued, "My assigned work was hard, the pay was 90 cents per hour and I supported myself on those wages. When I wasn't working for the hospital, I helped people register to vote, took them to doctors, worked at a Native American church mission, and was in and out of trouble for reasons that I cared about the poor people around me. I remember the day that Martin Luther King was killed. Black people were weeping tears of sorrow and white people were jubilant. It was and often still is, this seedbed of racism and selfishness that I and my family have had experiences in Noxubee County. I married my childhood girlfriend, went to college in the south and own a farm now in Macon, Mississippi. I am a teacher in public schools and am active lots of community development activities. I am member of the county Democratic Committee and consider it a privilege to see so many challenges still to be attacked in my area. I thank God for safety and wisdom. I live in the county neighboring to Neshoba County and I know where most of the civil rights spots are. So if you want to come and visit, make our place an overnight stop." That about summed it up for me.

There is a Civil War Monument at Macon. The units that it honors are from Noxubee County. The monument sits on the grounds of the courthouse in the center of the town.

"Centrally located in the deep South away from the threat of Federal forces, Macon was selected in April 1862 as the location of a huge center for the manufacture and distribution of nearly all of the military needs of the Confederate Armies. By late summer, the Confederate Government had established in Macon a large arsenal, its Central Armory and Laboratory. Before wars end it would even host a Treasury Depository for Confederate Gold.

In Macon, various Government institutions manufactured, stockpiled and supplied cannon, ordnance, small arms, ammunition, chemicals, accoutrements, clothing, horse equipment and other necessary supplies for the Army of Tennessee, the Army of Mississippi and even the Army of Northern Virginia. In the closing days of the war, Lee’s and Johnston’s armistice allowed Macon’s Confederate facilities to survive certain destruction when they were surrendered with the city to the Federal cavalry under Gen. James Wilson on April 20th, 1865."

There was a committee adjourned in the State of Mississippi which intended to change the state flag removing the "Stars and Bars" from any portion of the flag. This was brought on by a Mississippi supreme court case which ended with the opinion that the "charter" of the present flag ended in 1906.

"... one with width two thirds of its length; with the union square, in width two-thirds of the width of two thirds the ground of the union to be red and a broad blue saltier thereon, bordered with white and emblazoned with thirteen (13) mullets or five-pointed stars, corresponding to the number of the original States of the Union; the field to be three bars of equal width, the upper one blue, the center one white, and the lower one extending the whole length of the flag,"

This was the description the legislative committee came up with. It was their way of honoring the living and deceased Confederate dead.

Gov. Haley Barbour called Hamill’s escape “a wonderful miracle.”

“We still have a lot of people in harm’s way. Just yesterday, a young man from Mississippi was killed over there,” the governor said. “It’s great to have something wonderful like this to happen.”

The Rev. Jesse Jackson had benn in Macon, offering to contact religious leaders in Iraq to seek the release of Thomas Hamill. Jackson made the offer last week and Kellie Hamill agreed to let him try. Sen. Trent Lott talked with Jackson and got him in touch with Hamill's family. Jackson would write a letter to Al-Jazeera in a plea for Hamill.

"Mr. Hamill came to Iraq not to wage war against any group or religion, but to serve the Iraqi people and thus help relieve their pain and sufferings," Jackson said.

Something went terribly wrong in Wilkinson County for Roy Veal, the man found hanged. There was reportedly a lawsuit pending naming several members of the Veal family, including Roy, and his sister, Doris Gordon as defendants. the lawsuit sought portions of land owned by her late husband and his brothers. Thelma, his distraught mother, said her son "had a map of the property and was collecting documents to prove the family owned the land." "Now they have found my son hung back there on a tree," said Thelma Veal, 79.

She said her husband owned more than 40 acres in the area southwest of Woodville and that it was being sought because it might have oil deposits. "My husband's daddy bought this land in 1926 and I've been here ever since I was 18," she said. "It's our land." http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/8502677.htm

According to a family friend, Dr. Jewel Loretta Crawford, "Roy was a Vietnam vet who survived Vietnam only to come home and be lynched in Mississippi." She said that the case of Roy Veal is "a 2004 version of the 1955 Emmett Till Story. They are still lynching us." http://www.bmorenews.com/news/042904news_lynching_roy_veal_mississippi_over_property_april_23_2004.htm

Indeed, Mississippi has, in its history, over 500 recorded lynchings. 500 recorded lynched since the 1800's, named and recorded: http://users.bestweb.net/~rg/lynchings/THE%20LYNCHING%20CENTURY%20States%202.htm

I recalled the written testament of the black conscienscious objector from Noxubee County, in Macon, where Thomas Hamill lives: "I remember the day that Martin Luther King was killed. Black people were weeping tears of sorrow and white people were jubilant. It was and often still is, this seedbed of racism and selfishness that I and my family have had experiences in Noxubee County."

Between 1816 and 1840, tribes located between the original states and the Mississippi River, including Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles, signed more than 40 treaties ceding their lands to the U.S. In his 1829 inaugural address, President Andrew Jackson set a policy to relocate eastern Indians. In 1830 it was endorsed, when Congress passed the Indian Removal Act to force those remaining to move west of the Mississippi. Between 1830 and 1850, about 100,000 American Indians living between Michigan, Louisiana, and Florida moved west after the U.S. government coerced treaties or used the U.S. Army against those resisting. An estimated 3,500 Creeks died in Alabama and on their westward journey.

The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was signed near Macon, Mississippi, on September 27, 1830. The three district chiefs-Greenwood Leflore, Nitakechi, and Mushulatubbee-and 168 other Choctaw warriors of the Choctaw Nation put their "marks' on the treaty. Secretary of War John H. Eaton and John Coffee were the federal commissioners who negotiated with the Choctaws at this treaty. Under the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, Choctaw who chose to remain in Mississippi could claim individual allotments of 640 acres and an additional 320 acres for each child under age ten and 160 acres for dependent children over age ten. However, the Choctaw agent, William Ward, failed to register many of the land claims and turned away many legal claimants.

History repeats. In Macon, it seems that the tragedy in Iraq, as it hit close to home, revealed the ability and willingness of folks to unite, despite the racial differences that have driven wedges between members of the same community for generations. Obviously many things have changed since slavery, emancipation, reconstruction, segregation, and the passage and enforcement of the Civil Rights and the Voting Rights Act. Clearly though, many things that have divided communities in the past remain in Mississippi, and certainly beyond its borders.

In Macon, a town united. It took a tragedy, but the town united, black and white vigiled together.

In Wilkinson County, however, for the Veal family, the world came apart. Their tragedy threatens to divide Mississippi again.

Me Book