Tenn. official ‘threatened’ blacks with skin ‘trophy’ he saved from 1896 lynching

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Raw Story

Tenn. official ‘threatened’ blacks with skin ‘trophy’ he saved from 1896 lynching
y David Edwards
Thursday, February 20, 2014 15:25 EST

The state of Tennessee has fired a veteran investigator because officials believed that he attempted to use violent stories about how his relatives participated in a lynching to intimidate African-Americans who were trying to file claims against emergency responders.

WTVF reported that William Sewell, a medical service investigator who had been with the state for more than 40 years, told the graphic story to Shun Mullins last summer.

Mullins had filed a complaint claiming that his mother had died when the Algood’s deputy fire chief refused to perform CPR because she was black. The complaint stated that the fire chief covered it up by falsifying medical reports.

Sewell had started the meeting by asking Mullins if he had ever been to prison.


Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/20/tenn-official-threatened-blacks-with-skin-trophy-he-saved-from-1896-lynching/

[Scootaloo]

1. My chin just left a bruise on my sternum

What the shitting fuck, this shit fuck fucking what... the... bluh?

[louis-t]

2. Bolder and bolder.

They didn't get this way overnight, but the new normal of right-wing crazies has certainly made it easier for them to spew their hatred. Assholes, every one.

[JustAnotherGen]

3. Ahh yeah

But doncha know Judi - it can't be racism. They have good reasons and it had nothing to do with a cultural belief that people with different skin are inherently different. No - nothing to do with that at all.


Now aside - thanks for posting this. I'm somehow, sadly, not at all surprised.

[JimDandy]

4. Wow... no words. n/t

[LongTomH]

5. It's like someone turned over a rock.......and some really creepy, slimy things crawled out!!!!!

[KansDem]

6. Putnam County

[jsr]

7. "Sewell argued that he was the true victim"

It's time for Mullins to apologize.

[noiretextatique]

12. doesn't surprise me at all

racist assholes feel truly aggrieved when called out on their racist assholism i am sure zimmerman agrees with him

[SamKnause]

8. Worthless piece of shit.

I wonder in his 40 years how many other people he has fucked over ???

Absolutely sickening !!!

[gopiscrap]

9. what a sick motherfucker!!!

[2naSalit]

10. And that

is what the Tparty fucks want our world to be like.

[exboyfil]

11. I lived in in Cookevile in this county for five years.

Nice town but you did not have to drive too far to get into this attitude (even in town "Godly" Christian men joking about running down blacks for points - I will never forget it). Friends who had a mixed race child moved to Monterey and had issues. An African American mother and her young daughter (friends of ours - her husband is a doctor) were harassed in a small town near Cookeville and warned away from a Klan meeting that was going on at the time.

[wryter2000]

13. OMFG

I'm glad Mr. Mullins made an issue so this would come to light. OTOH, I'm not sure I wanted to know about that.

[Sunlei]

14. If the medical reports state CPR was done, fire that deputy fire chief & any other personal involved

Must be hell to have to live in some of these communities.

[sheshe2]

15. WTF!

WTFV confirmed that a black man’s body was mutilated during a lynching in Baxter in 1896.

Even after the death of Mullins’ mother and the intimidation that he suffered, Sewell argued that he was the true victim.

“I am the victim because I made a mistake,” Sewell observed.

Talk about White Privilege! He turns himself into the victim.

[heaven05]

23. I wonder where the 'usual suspects' are on this one?

Do they think Sewell is being victimized with some 'reverse racism'? I wonder.

[sheshe2]

25. Probably, heaven,

yet I saw a lot of them on an OP I posted last night.

Sigh.

[heaven05]

27. i read it

Last edited Thu Feb 20, 2014, 08:54 PM - Edit history (1)

and left a response. Teachers always have had it rough. I'm with you.

[sheshe2]

33. I'm going back to read your response, heaven.

I have reread the thread many times. At first it felt like a hit to the solar plexus. Breath knocked out of me. Such anger.

Yet so many wonderful posts there, in support.

Thanks heaven

[heaven05]

36. it was the usual suspect response I answered

with to your brilliant OP. Yes you are welcome.

[Blue_Tires]

16. speechless...

[ReRe]

17. That's disgusting...

... makes me want to

[Shrike47]

18. The claim of victim hood is appalling.

How could he tell them a lynching story? This is so disgusting.

[MerryBlooms]

19. jesus.

[PumpkinAle]

20. Yes, Roberts there is still racism

and hate for people who have different skin color.

This story is sickening on so many levels. I need another word for disgusted - because I keep using it but it isn't sufficient to say how I feel when I read stories like this.

[theHandpuppet]

21. OMFG!!

[Solly Mack]

22. Damn. Just damn.

[dballance]

24. Baxter is near where I went to college. No big surprise here.

Putnam County and Baxter are near the eastern edge of middle Tennessee. I went to school in a town called Cookeville not far from Baxter. One of the other neighboring towns was called Crossville. They had a saying they liked to tell African Americans in Crossville, "don't be hanging around out here after dark or you'll be HANGING around here after dark."


so this is no real surprise to me at all. Just FYI, I would to school there in the 80s.

[eggplant]

26. For every person on the right that we convert to our side...

their side just gets intensifies. When we have almost everyone, those still on the other side will be REALLY nuts.

This asshole is one of those guys.

[msanthrope]

28. These fucking people. nt

[Number23]

29. Jesus H Christ. There is so much wrong with this story I don't where to begin

Mullins had filed a complaint claiming that his mother had died when the Algood’s deputy fire chief refused to perform CPR because she was black.

Jesus Christ.

“They hung him, and they started carving his skin out of his back,” Allen said. “It was like he got excited telling this story.”

“They lowered the body, and all the white men standing around took turns removing the skin from the black man’s back,” Mainord recalled Sewell saying.

Dear God.

Even after the death of Mullins’ mother and the intimidation that he suffered, Sewell argued that he was the true victim.

“I am the victim because I made a mistake,” Sewell observed.

There simply are no words.

[1StrongBlackMan]

30. Wait a minute ...

He tells a Black man about a lynching that he has kept a "trophy" from, as a way to tell the Black guy that he understands racism?

Isn't that a lot like beating someone up to say I know what GETTING beat up feels like?

[Jesus Malverde]

31. wow...nt

[Arugula Latte]

32. Holy Shit.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

34. :O

oh my god.

just....the whole story. oh my god.

[cyberswede]

35. Good lord!

[gollygee]

37. I have no words.

[exboyfil]

38. As far as the local Herald Citizen

It appears to never have happened.

[MadrasT]

39. Sick. People are so sick.

I don't even have any other words right now.

[kelliekat44]

44. Stop degrading "sick" people. This one is just plain evil. nt

[Lifelong Protester]

40. Wow! Just reading everyone's response is enough

of the story to make me ill.

I don't like to make our southern neighbors feel bad, but how do you all stand living there? (This said while looking out at mountains of snow here, but criminy).

[yurbud]

41. part of the problem is when Dems are in power, they ignore the real sins of the right

When the GOP is in power, they prosecute Democrats whether they have done anything wrong or not

[Sheldon Cooper]

42. When you think you've heard everything, this crops up.

Unbelievable.

[frwrfpos]

43. rec

holy shit!

[freshwest]

45. Only fired? A hell of lot more needs to happen to this piece of filth. n/t

[Behind the Aegis]

47. He should be charged with a hate crime!

[Behind the Aegis]

46. How is this not a hate crime?!

Sewell is the fucking victim because he "made a mistake"?! This is nothing but a hate crime and should be prosecuted as such!

[freshwest]

48. It was NOT a mistake. And his crime is being 'whitewashed' in the truest sense of the word. n/t

[Behind the Aegis]

49. I agree!! This is of the most disgusting stories I have read on DU in a while.

The fact he thinks he is the victim demonstrates how fucking stupid he actually is! It is a hate crime, plain and simple!

[freshwest]

50. And it was hate that inspired his family to commit atrocities, for which they have not only not been

punished, but he is proud of them and walking in their footprints. What was revealed in this OP is just the tip of the iceberg of the true history of AAs in this nation. It must be fully exposed and cleansed.

Every pastor in America ought to have their congregation beg their God for forgiveness in churches every Sunday for this hideous heritage until the members go out and make this right daily. If not, they are just as guilty of the massive crimes committed, IMO.

[yankee dandee]

51. Southern racism

The sad fact is that the criminals involved in the deaths of African Americans are still alive---and some are in state government still.

Lying just comes easy to the good ol' Southern boys. They protect their own Klansmen.

Southerner accepting the most idiotic outrageous conspiracies as "facts" just boggles mind.

If a Republican elected official would say that he/she has it on verifiable information that Obama is a space alien from some far-off planet, the "ya'll" hicks would demand an official Congressional hearing.....to repeal Obamacare because he's not from Earth.

There has been absolutely no effort to track down and punish Southern murderers of those African Americans because they are protected by the fascist whites in power in all the Red States.