Bizarre Bit of Americana Gets Newsletter Contributor Fired

[The Straight Story]

Bizarre Bit of Americana Gets Newsletter Contributor Fired



LANSING, Mich. (CN) - A worker who responded to a request for information for a company newsletter by describing a ticket she found for a 1920s basketball game sponsored by the NAACP, in which the Ku Klux Klan played to benefit the Jewish Relief Fund, says she was fired for mentioning it.
...

Shaft, who is white, says her manager, "in an effort to start a department newsletter, required the employees of her department, including plaintiff, to submit, on an approximately weekly basis, information about events in the employees' lives during the past week."

Shaft says the workers "were required to submit the afoementioned information to Candace Jones, a Jackson employee who is African-American."

At the time, Shaft says, she was spending her free time cleaning out her husband's grandmother's attic.
"During the course of this cleaning, plaintiff found an item of historical interest, to wit: a ticket for a basketball game from the 1920's between the Ku Klux Klan and the Knights of Columbus, for the benefit of the Jewish Relief Fund, and sponsored by National Association for the Advancement of Colored People," the complaint states.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/01/27/43402.htm

[sinkingfeeling]

1. I think what Ms. Shaft discovered was a 1920's racist spoof. The so called

ticket does not say where the event was to take place and manages to include almost every spurned minority there was: Catholics, Masons, NAACP, Irish, Russians, and the Jewish community.


A google search shows a couple of others and list them as a 'joke'.

[The Straight Story]

2. Another tip off to me was it was on St Patricks day

[piedmont]

12. How did you miss where the event was to take place but catch the Masons part?

[sinkingfeeling]

13. It doesn't have a city nor state attached to it. Either of which

would have been useful in an attempt to verify that it was legit (which it's not).

[piedmont]

14. Many tickets don't have city and state printed on them, especially from that era.

I don't think it's legit either-- only because of the cast of characters. Here's a ticket for another (real) exhibition game from 1927:



These things were local draws, and everybody in town knew where the YMCA gym was.

[deutsey]

3. I wonder if this wasn't a joke from the '20s

http://www.newspaperarchive.com/SiteMap/FreePdfPreview.aspx?img=107448907

Check out this link and look at the very bottom under the headline "Unique Placard in Oklahoma City Capitol"

[rafssm]

16. Out of curiosity, how'd you find that?

Deutsey,

I enjoyed your link -- out of curiosity, how'd you find that newspaper page (seems pretty obscure!).

Thanks
Raffi M

[deutsey]

17. I did a Google search

I used a direct quote from the "ticket" in the OP and put it in quotes...like "Ku Klux Klan vs. Knights of Columbus", I think.

This link was one of three or four that came up.

I love old stuff like this, too. In fact, I used to go to the library and college and flip through old archived magazines. Yes, I'm a nerd about a stuff like that.

[rafssm]

18. Thanks

Cool, thanks.

[Loudmxr]

4. This is also offensive to the Irish because its St Paddy's day and

because Patrick was English ... them too.

Unless there is something more to the story... oh pick one... it is perhaps internal office politics???

This is silly.

I love finding stuff like this, having been the grandson of store owners, in Ireland 1908, who sold Fry's Chocolate in tins that today would be offensive.

I can see it in the picture of the window at 57 Ranelagh Rd.

Hi Daddy!

[REP]

11. Actually, he was Welsh

He was captured in Wales by Irish slavers. Britain is an old name for what is now called Wales; conquerors took their name as their own and gave them a new one (which means "foreign" and has the same root as 'walnut').

[Ikonoklast]

5. That is not a bit of "Americana", it is an old bit of spurious bullshit.

That 'ticket' was someone's idea of a chain e-mail from way back when.

Let's see, the KKK, the KoC, the Jews, the Catholics, the Masons, Russian referees, and the Blacks all in one event.

Oh, yeah, that really happened.

Total BS.

Yes, it is insulting, but I'm not sure the person who found that ticket realized it.

[Loudmxr]

6. I disagree. I didn't see the Russian referee line. Its a joke!! The Spinal Tap concert of its day.

It is satire. in my opinion.

And speaking of ST Harry Shearer once said "The best satire is truth."

After all these years... brilliant.

[RZM]

7. It sounds like she really got screwed over

They asked for personal stuff, she found something interesting (if rather un-PC in its humor), and forwarded it to the appropriate people. And for that she was let go?

[NBachers]

8. "Can't we just all get along?"

[eShirl]

9. Employees were required to submit events in their lives in the past week for a company newsletter?

What if they don't want to share details of their away-from-work lives with everyone in the company?

[Ikonoklast]

10. I'd submit some interesting events, that is for certain.

"This Wednesday last I found myself with an explosive case of Diarrhea after eating at Joe's House Of Grease for dinner on Tuesday. The amount of discharge and the attending amount of gas generated from the burrito special that I had was stupendous. My next-door neighbor called the police as he thought there was a gas main leaking somewhere in the vicinity, and that whoever was practicing playing the trombone that late at night needed to be told to stop it."

[McCamy Taylor]

19. No time. Looks like a joke to me.