Streetvibes Feb. 15, 2010 Edition

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Feb. 15 - 28, 2010 • Advocating Justice, Building Community • Issue 171

The ‘Madness’ of Hate Downtown

Attack leaves Streetvibes vendor badly injured By Gregory Flannery Editor

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Michael K. Taylor, aka Madness (left), was apprehended by Las Vegas Police after a nationwide warrant was issued. Taylor allegedly attacked Robert Meehan (right), on Jan 24. Photo on right by Josh Spring.

he circumstances of the vicious beating endured Jan. 24 by Robert Meehan were fraught with irony. The attack occurred a few steps from the Metropole Apartments, purchased last year by the Cincinnati Center City Development Corp (3CDC). Just days before being assaulted, Meehan wrote a letter to the editor of Streetvibes, criticizing 3CDC, which plans to convert the subsidized low-income apartments into a boutique motel. The attack occurred soon after Meehan took training to become a vendor for Streetvibes, published by the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless. Both the newspaper and the coalition have been publicizing a recent spate of hate crimes against homeless people in Cincinnati. The attack was allegedly perpetrated by a man

See Madness, p. 5

Postcards from Hell Lynching exhibit captures hatred’s horror By Lew Moores Contributing Writer

Not all of the images depict AfricanAmerican men. Among the first images a visitor sees are of Laura Nelson and he images are beyond graphic. her son, L.W. Nelson, 14, hanging from a They are horrific. African-Amer- bridge in Okemah, Okla., in 1911. Laura ican men hang from power lines Nelson wears a dress that reaches to her and bridges, a light pole, most from trees. calves, her arms and hands at her sides. A blooming dogwood, a cedar. Many of Her head is sharply angled to her left the images are – remarkshoulder. In an image of ably – postcards. They them both hanging from “I would like students were sent through the the bridge, her son danto focus on that third mail, postcards not from gles at least 100 feet away section. To understand vacations, but sent from – separated in death – as hell. On the back of a postthat it just wasn’t in the a crowd stands on the card of a burned corpse, bridge and watches. past, that it certainly is one correspondent wrote Of the nearly 5,000 relevant to what is going about having a barbecue. on in their everyday lives lynchings that occurred About 75 of these imagin the United States be– not physical lynchings es are arranged on walls tween 1882 and 1968, anymore, but there that cover five rooms and certainly are hate crimes.” 3,437 were African 3,000 square feet of space Americans and the oth- Dina Bailey at the National Underers included white, Hisground Railroad Freedom panic, Chinese, Jewish Center. Without Sanctuary: Lynching and Native Americans, according to the Photography in America opened at the Tuskegee Institute. As signage in the exFreedom Center Jan. 19 – the day after hibit points out, 70 women were among Martin Luther King Jr. Day – and contin- those lynched, and lynchings occurred in ues through May 31. Halfway through the 41 states, mostly in the South. There were exhibit is a room called “Respite,” with 581 in Mississippi, 531 in Georgia, 493 in benches and two boxes of facial tissues. Texas, 391 in Louisiana. There were two And at the end are tables with “Reflec- in New York and one in Vermont. tion” Journals, where visitors can leave There were 205 lynchings in Kentucky, their thoughts: 47 in Indiana and 26 in Ohio. Hangings This exhibit was way too sad for me. … took place in Butler and Clermont counI can’t believe the things America let hap- ties. None are known to have occurred in pen. … It was very painful to view the pic- Hamilton County. tures and facts. We have come a long way but we still have a very long way to go. See postcards, p. 4

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Lynching, circa 1905, location unknown. Photo courtesy of National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.


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