The Jackson Legacy
My childhood was spent in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1950’s.
Back in that day, life was different in the Old South.
I mean, it had been less than a century since President Abraham Lincoln had stood in the Courthouse door and declared that the rebel southern states would not be allowed to separate themselves from this Union just because they so stubbornly insisted on keeping slaves.
During the course of that ensuing war, the Civil War, known in some southern quarters as the “war of northern aggression”, our Union Army had defeated the rebel insurrectionists and delivered this nation back into the hands of President Lincoln and back into the legacy of American Liberty and Justice for All.
A century later, as I was growing up in Jackson, Mississippi in the ’50’s, there was an American patriot, Medgar Evers — who had joined our US Army during World War II, and had defended the free world against the hitler nazis in Europe. After World War II, Medgar then returned to his home in Jackson, where he prolonged his fight for Freedom by leading his black brethren toward voter registration. This was during the pointy-headed, fiery cross terrorism of the jim-crow South. But Brother Medgar’s defense of freedom was tragically terminated when when he was shot dead in his own front yard in Jackson because he was guiding his brethren black folk toward voter registration. (I later wrote about that in my novel, King of Soul).
That honky capitol city of Mississippi had been named after President Andrew Jackson, who had served as US President from 1929 to 1837.
A century and a half after President Jackson, along came a civil rights fireball, Jesse Jackson, whose bold activism at North Carolina A&T University — just down the road from where I live — was laid into the foundation of the 20th-century American Liberty project, back in the day, 1950’s-60’s, when I was coming of age.
Now, as I grow old, 72, along comes the Supreme Court Justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, who stands up for the grand Liberty legacy of Jesse, Medgar and many other profile-in-courage Americans who defend our American civil rights against the slings and arrows of outrageous magamaniac abuse.
So here comes Justice Jackson, defending the preservation of our American liberty against the onslaught of magamania and the fairytale notion of immunity for chief-insurrectionist trump. She poses her probing question in this week’s trump-immunity Supreme Court hearing. Justice Jackson asked the maga lawyer:
“If someone with those kinds of powers (immunity) — the most powerful person in the world, with the greatest amount of authority, could go into office knowing that there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes . . . I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into. . . the seat of criminal activity in this country.”
My objective here is to express appreciation and moral support for Justice Jackson, whose insightful probing proves that she is still dedicated to the cause of Justice, while others of her privileged Supreme Court colleagues seem to be striving pretentiously to protect the fairytale privileges of the chief insurrectionist instead upholding protection of our .Gov of the people, by the people and for the People.
Keep it up, Justice Jackson — your vigilant protection of American Justice!
