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Cleveland: The Verdict This Time
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common foe;
Though far outnumbered, let us still be brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
— Claude McKay, If We Must Die, written in the immediate aftermath of the Red Summer of 1919.
Salim Muwakkil is a popular radio talk show host in Chicago. He is also a prolific and perceptive writer for In These Times magazine. And, he is therefore considered something of a go-to guy, an eminence grise` in all things black in Chicago.
Muwakkil opened his radio show Saturday night (May 23) just after the horrific “not guilty” verdict came down in the criminal case of yet another white killer cop of black lives. This time the scene of the non-crime was — yet again — Cleveland. This same city, of course, was only a few months ago roundly excoriated by the Justice Department for…
