Thursday, December 30, 2010

Jackson City Jail and Courthouse


Protesters were jailed here. I learned on this trip how much the respectable, church going black community in the sixties south dreaded going to jail. One of the museums posted that nobody wanted to be a "jail bird". I grew up with that same prejudice, a strong sense of shame around being jailed. The movement really had to fight this belief in order to use the nonviolent strategy of crippling the oppressor by filling the jails. Martin Luther King described those jailed for justice as political prisoners, a phrase which applies, but which hadn't occured to me to use before this trip.

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