This week, I was tipped by a reader that there was some Ku Klux Klan
activity being exacted on black business owners in a Midwestern town. As
I traveled across the Midwest between
book signings, I went to the town, to the businesses, and could hardly believe what I witnessed.
The crimes and harassment were not only going unreported, but unpunished.
We don’t always know whether anecdotal accounts are actually rooted
in racism, until we see patterns. That becomes especially true when you
witness it with your own eyes.
I spent a day in a town where most of the residents are white, and
they are so angry at what they are told is oppression, they are
intentionally destroying their own town. Prominent leaders of the KKK
were instigating whites to riot not just locally, but all over the
country. News media would only report the black-on-white crime, but the
white-on-black crime was swept beneath the rug.
I spent more time going from black business to black business. They
told me how young, white males are preying on their customers day after
day. One black business owner said white kids as young as 10 years old
were loitering and yelling at his customers as they walked in his
restaurant. The white youth yelled, “Go back to where you came from!”
and “Leave, or we will kill all of you!