The teenager who saved a man with an SS tattoo

By Catherine Wynne

BBC News | Follow @BBCNewsMagazine on Twitter and on Facebook

 

In 1996, a black teenager protected a white man from an angry mob who thought he supported the racist Ku Klux Klan. It was an act of extraordinary courage and kindness - and is still inspiring people today.

Keshia Thomas was 18 when the Ku Klux Klan, the white supremacist organisation, held a rally in her home town in Michigan.

Liberal, progressive and multicultural, Ann Arbor was an unusual place for the KKK to choose, and hundreds of people gathered to show them they were not welcome.

The atmosphere was tense, but controlled. Police dressed in riot gear and armed with tear gas protected a small group of Klansmen in white robes and conical hoods. Thomas was with a group of anti-KKK demonstrators on the other side of a specially-erected fence.

Then a woman with a megaphone shouted, "There's a Klansman in the crowd."

They turned around to see a white, middle-aged man wearing a Confederate flag T-shirt. He tried to walk away from them, but the protesters, including Thomas, followed, "just to chase him out".

It was unclear whether the man was a Ku Klux Klan supporter, but to the anti-KKK protesters, his clothes and tattoos represented exactly what they had come to resist. The Confederate flag he wore was for them a symbol of hatred and racism, while the SS tattoo on his arm pointed to a belief in white supremacy, or worse.

There were shouts of "Kill the Nazi" and the man began to run - but he was knocked to the ground. A group surrounded him, kicking him and hitting him with the wooden sticks of their placards.

Mob mentality had taken over. "It became barbaric," says Thomas.

"When people are in a crowd they are more likely to do things they would never do as an individual. Someone had to step out of the pack and say, 'This isn't right.'"

So the teenager, then still at high school, threw herself on top of a man she did not know and shielded him from the blows.

"When they dropped him to the ground, it felt like two angels had lifted my body up and laid me down."

For Mark Brunner, a student photographer who witnessed the episode, it was who she saved that made Thomas' actions so remarkable.

"She put herself at physical risk to protect someone who, in my opinion, would not have done the same for her," he says. "Who does that in this world?"

So what gave Thomas the impetus to help a man whose views it appeared were so different from her own? Her religious beliefs played a part. But her own experience of violence was a factor, too.

"I knew what it was like to be hurt," she says. "The many times that that happened, I wish someone would have stood up for me."

The circumstances - which she does not want to describe - were different. "But violence is violence - nobody deserves to be hurt, especially not for an idea."

Thomas has never heard from the man she saved, but she did once meet a member of his family. Months later, someone came up to her in a coffee shop and said thanks. "What for?" she asked. "That was my dad," the young man replied.

For Thomas, the fact that the man had a son gave her actions even greater significance - she had potentially prevented further violence.

"For the most part, people who hurt... they come from hurt. It is a cycle. Let's say they had killed him or hurt him really bad. How does the son feel? Does he carry on the violence?"

Keshia Thomas (left) pictured before the rally with friends

[infopane color="8" icon="0001.png"]

'I am kinder thanks to her'

Teri Gunderson Teri Gunderson, who was bringing up her two adopted mixed-race daughters in Iowa at the time, was so touched by Thomas' story that she kept a copy of her picture - and still looks at it 17 years later. Gunderson even thinks the student made her a better person.

Teri, who now lives in Oaxaca, Mexico, emailed BBC News Magazine about her respect for Keshia Thomas when we published a series about kindness earlier this month: "Her courage so touched me that I keep a copy of the picture and often think of her in situations.

"The voice in my head says something like this, 'If she could protect a man [like that], I can show kindness to this person.' And with that encouragement, I do act with more kindness.  I don't know her, but since then I am more kind."[/infopane]

 

'Keshia's choice was hope'

"That some in Ann Arbor have been heard grumbling that she should have left the man to his fate, only speaks of how far they have drifted from their own humanity. And of the crying need to get it back.

Keshia's choice was to affirm what they have lost.

Keshia's choice was human.

Keshia's choice was hope."

By Pulitzer Prize-winning commentator Leonard Pitts Jr. The Miami Herald, 29 June 1996

But she asks herself whether she could be as brave as Thomas. What if one of the hurtful people who had racially abused her girls was in danger, she wonders. "Would I save them, or would I stand there and say, 'You deserved it, you were a jerk.' I just don't know the answer to that, yet. Maybe that is why I am so struck by her."

Brunner and Gunderson both often think of the teenager's actions. But Thomas, now in her 30s and living in Houston, Texas, does not. She prefers to concentrate on what more she can do in future, rather than what she has achieved in the past.

"I don't want to think that this is the best I could ever be. In life you are always striving to do better."

Thomas says she tries to do something to break down racial stereotypes every day. No grand gestures - she thinks that small, regular acts of kindness are more important.

"The biggest thing you can do is just be kind to another human being. It can come down to eye contact, or a smile. It doesn't have to be a huge monumental act."

Looking back at his photos of Thomas pushing back the mob that day in June 1996, Brunner says: "We would all like to be a bit like Keshia, wouldn't we? She didn't think about herself. She just did the right thing."

 

[infopane color="6" icon="0182.png"]I was actually there during the KKK demonstration on the campus of UofM in Ann Arbor. I was in the diag area taking photos when all hell broke loose. I knew some guy got his ass kicked but I never knew the full story until now. I just remember shaking my head wondering why the racist group from Howell, MI decided to march in the most liberal, multi-cultural l town in the Midwest.

 

Keshia showed everyone the beauty of compassion... without expecting anything in return.

 

Hate is such an exhausting emotion yet so easy to hide behind.

 

Love is so effortless yet is unnecessarily feared.[/infopane]

Caribbean Nations to Seek Reparations

Caribbean Nations to Seek Reparations, Putting Price on Damage of Slavery

By Stephen Castle, The New York Times

For the original article:  Click here

LONDON — In a 2008 biography he wrote of an antislavery campaigner, Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, described the trade in human beings as an indefensible barbarity, “brutal, mercenary and inhumane from its beginning to its end.”

William Hague, the British foreign secretary, said he deeply regretted the slave trade, but in a statement his office dismissed paying reparations.

Fourteen Caribbean countries that once sustained that slave economy now want Mr. Hague to put his money where his mouth is.

Spurred by a sense of injustice that has lingered for two centuries, the countries plan to compile an inventory of the lasting damage they believe they suffered and then demand an apology and reparations from the former colonial powers of Britain, France and the Netherlands.

To present their case, they have hired a firm of London lawyers that this year won compensation from Britain for Kenyans who were tortured under British colonial rule in the 1950s.

Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807, but its legacy remains. In 2006, Tony Blair, then prime minister, expressed his “deep sorrow” over the slave trade; the Dutch social affairs minister, Lodewijk Asscher, made a similar statement in July.

Britain has already paid compensation over the abolition of the slave trade once — but to slave owners, not their victims. Britain transported more than three million Africans across the Atlantic, and the impact of the trade was vast. Historians estimate that, in the Victorian era, between one-fifth and one-sixth of all wealthy Britons derived at least some of their fortunes from the slave economy.

Yet the issue of apologies — let alone reparations — for the actions of long-dead leaders and generals remains a touchy one all over the globe. Turkey refuses to take particular responsibility for the mass deaths of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, let alone call the event a genocide, as the French Parliament has done. It was not until 1995 that France’s president at the time, Jacques Chirac, apologized for the crimes against the Jews of the Vichy government. The current French president, François Hollande, conceded last year that France’s treatment of Algeria, its former colony, was “brutal and unfair.” But he did not go so far as to apologize.

His predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, offered an aid and debt-cancellation package to Haiti in 2010 while acknowledging the “wounds of colonization.”

In Britain, in 1997, Mr. Blair described the potato famine in Ireland in the late 1840s as “something that still causes pain as we reflect on it today,” but suffering pain is not the same thing as making a formal apology.

For some, such comments do not go far enough, particularly when some European nations, like postwar Germany, have apologized — the former chancellor Willy Brandt went to his knees at the Warsaw Ghetto in 1970 — and paid reparations for Nazi crimes.

Caribbean nations argue that their brutal past continues, to some extent, to enslave them today.

“Our constant search and struggle for development resources is linked directly to the historical inability of our nations to accumulate wealth from the efforts of our peoples during slavery and colonialism,” said Baldwin Spencer, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, in July this year. Reparations, he said, must be directed toward repairing the damage inflicted by slavery and racism.

Martyn Day, the senior partner at Leigh Day, the London law firm acting for the Caribbean countries, said a case could start next year at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, a tribunal that adjudicates legal disputes among states.

“What happened in the Caribbean and West Africa was so egregious we feel that bringing a case in the I.C.J. would have a decent chance of success,” Mr. Day said. “The fact that you were subjugating a whole class of people in a massively discriminatory way has no parallel,” he added.

Some Caribbean nations have already begun assessing the lasting damage they suffered, ranging from stunted educational and economic opportunities to dietary and health problems, Mr. Day said.

Critics contend that it makes no sense to try to redress wrongs that reach back through the centuries, and that Caribbean countries already receive compensation through development aid.

The legal terrain is not encouraging. Though several American and British companies have apologized for links to slavery, efforts by descendants of 19th-century African-American slaves to seek reparations from corporations in American courts have so far come to little. And, unlike the successful case made in Britain by Kenyans tortured during the Mau Mau uprising, there are no victims of slavery to present in court.

Even that case was disputed initially by a British government worried that it would expose itself to claims from numerous former colonies. And when he agreed to pay compensation, Mr. Hague insisted this was not a precedent.

Though Parliament abolished the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, the law took years to put into effect. In 1833, Parliament spent £20 million compensating former slave owners — 40 percent of government expenditure that year, according to estimates by Nick Draper of University College, London, who estimates the present-day value at about $21 billion.

Mr. Draper’s work traced recipients of compensation and showed they included ancestors of the authors Graham Greene and George Orwell, as well as a very distant relative of Prime Minister David Cameron.

But the prospects for a modern-day legal case for reparations by victims are far from clear. Roger O’Keefe, deputy director of the Lauterpacht Center for International Law at Cambridge University, said that “there is not the slightest chance that this case will get anywhere,” describing it as “an international legal fantasy.”

He argues that while the Netherlands and Britain have accepted the court’s jurisdiction in advance, Britain excluded disputes relating to events arising before 1974.

“Reparation may be awarded only for what was internationally unlawful when it was done,” Dr. O’Keefe said, “and slavery and the slave trade were not internationally unlawful at the time the colonial powers engaged in them.”

Even lawyers for the Caribbean countries hint that a negotiated settlement, achieved through public and diplomatic pressure, may be their best hope. “We are saying that, ultimately, historical claims have been resolved politically — although I think we will have a good claim in the I.C.J.,” Mr. Day said.

Mr. Hague’s own views add an intriguing dimension. In his biography of Britain’s most famous abolitionist, William Wilberforce, Mr. Hague highlighted many atrocities of slavery, including a case in 1783 involving a slave ship that ran out of drinking water, prompting its captain to throw 133 slaves overboard so he could claim insurance for lost cargo.

In 2007, on the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the trade, Mr. Hague spoke of his deep regret over “an era in which the sale of men, women and children was carried out lawfully on behalf of this country, and on such a vast scale that it became a large and lucrative commercial enterprise.”

But as foreign secretary, Mr. Hague is opposed to compensation. In a statement, his office said that while Britain “condemns slavery” and is committed to eliminating it where it still exists, “we do not see reparations as the answer.”

The question about Reparation has been going on for decades.  The Japanese were compensation for being put into concentration camps in the U.S.  The Jews were given their own state... out of guilt for what Germany did to them.  In both cases, these people on suffered for a short period of time (and I do not demean their experiences one bit).  Blacks were slaves for hundreds of years.  And even when freed, they were still treated like second class citizens.  Raped, murdered, terrorized... shall I go on?

Someone asked me once about how reparations should be administered if ever awarded.  That is a tough question really.  Money is a simple solution but I would expect more.  It isn't about the money for me.  It's about recognition of the atrocity.  Just like you can never question that the Holocaust happened,  I would want a reminder of the past that can be passed down through generations.  Learning from the past in order to build towards the future.

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Loyalty

Always question where your loyalties lie.

The people you trust will expect it.

Your greatest enemies will desire it.

And those you treasure the most will without fail... abuse it.

Loyalty is everything in this Lifestyle.  No matter your level of involvement.

Some say loyalty inspires boundless hope.

And well that may be... there is a catch.

True loyalty takes years to build.

And only seconds to destroy.

[This Is The End] Channing Tatum as a sex slave

Just something to think about...

NOTICE:  I'm posting something to ponder since Religion (once again) was brought up in my presence.  The fallout in the wake of dropping undeniable truth in the face of mindless leemings wasn't pretty but I thought I'd share some of the observations I made...

 

[infopane color="1" icon="0101.png"]Have you ever wondered why Renaissance statuary and paintings of Adam and Eve always have them with belly buttons?[/infopane]

 

[infopane color="1" icon="0101.png"]If God tore down the tower of Babel and confounded ancient man's language because he didn't want them to work together to build a tower to the heavens, where was he when we landed on the moon?[/infopane]

 

[infopane color="1" icon="0101.png"]If the soul enters humans at conception, do identical twins share one soul since they are the product of one egg and one sperm; does each get only half; or do souls divide like cells?[/infopane]

 

[infopane color="1" icon="0101.png"]Who the hell were those other people Adam and Eve encountered after they were expelled from Paradise?[/infopane]

 

These are just a few of MANY kernels of knowledge I end up sharing when religious fanatics choose to take a book written by MAN as the end all, be all of human existence.  You would have to be a complete idiot to blindly believe everything somebody else tells you to believe in.  Especially without verifiable facts.  What's the purpose of free will if you have people always trying to deny your right to be who you are?   Because the bible tells you so?  People really can't be that stupid.  Wait, oh yes they can.  Humans think they are above the animal kingdom but forget we are mammals and instinctively desire to be lead.  For those who are not raised to think for themselves,  they become prey to the wolf pack.  Brainwashed to believe and live by a set of rules designed to enslave and control the masses.

Control = POWER

And who holds the POWER, controls the world.  Don't even attempt to argue.  Pick up a history book.  Man created religion.  Man has destroyed any civilization or ideology that they feel threatens that POWER.

 

I believe that if there truly was a God, then he is indeed flawed.  Or the universe's biggest game player.  Why else would you demand worship and dedication while giving humans free will to think and make decisions on their own?

The guy who was the target of my impromptu lesson on common sense looked like he was going to explode so I took pity on him.  I told him that I was spiritual and had grown up in a bi-religious family of Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists.  He didn't get the irony so I asked him some questions.

 

"Isn't God supposed to be all knowing and kind?"

"Yes, he is to all of his children."

"Right... then why would he let bad things happen?"

"... no... he doesn't.... whatever happens to us is because it's God's will...."

"Hard to say that with conviction, isn't it?  You should stop listening to him and start listening to me.  Remember, God sold out his only son to die on a stick."

 

That was pretty much the end of that conversation, debate, or whatever.

 

"In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination." ...Mark Twain