Frank Beacham's Journal

Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney were killed by a Ku Klux Klan lynch mob near Meridian, Mississippi in this day in 1964 — 58 years ago

Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney were killed by a Ku Klux Klan lynch mob near Meridian, Mississippi in this day in 1964 — 58 years ago.

The three young civil rights workers were working to register black voters in Mississippi, thus inspiring the ire of the local Klan. The deaths of Schwerner and Goodman, white Northerners and members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), caused a national outrage.

When the desegregation movement encountered resistance in the early 1960s, CORE set up an interracial team to ride buses into the Deep South to help protest. These so-called Freedom Riders were viciously attacked in May, 1961 when the first two buses arrived in Alabama.

One bus was firebombed. The other was boarded by KKK members who beat the activists inside. The Alabama police provided no protection. Still, the Freedom Riders were not dissuaded and they continued to come into Alabama and Mississippi. Michael Schwerner was a particularly dedicated activist who lived in Mississippi while he assisted blacks to vote.

Sam Bowers, the local Klan's Imperial Wizard, decided that Schwerner was a bad influence, and had to be killed. When Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney, a young black man, were coming back from a trip to Philadelphia, Mississippi, deputy sheriff Cecil Price, who was also a Klan member, pulled them over for speeding. He then held them in custody while other KKK members prepared for their murder.

Eventually released, the three activists were later chased down in their car and cornered in a secluded spot in the woods where they were shot and then buried in graves that had been prepared in advance.

When news of their disappearance got out, the FBI converged on Mississippi to investigate. With the help of an informant, agents learned about the Klan's involvement and found the bodies.

Since Mississippi refused to prosecute the assailants in state court, the federal government charged 18 men with conspiracy to violate the civil rights of Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney. Bowers, Price and five other men were convicted; eight were acquitted and the all-white jury deadlocked on the other three defendants.

On the forty-first anniversary of the three murders, June 21, 2005, Edgar Ray Killen was found guilty of three counts of manslaughter. The 80-year-old Killen, known as an outspoken white supremacist and part-time Baptist minister, was sentenced to 60 years in prison. He died in prison on January 11, 2018 at 92 years old.

Thanks History.com

Mississippi sheriff Lawrence Rainey (right) and deputy Cecil Ray Price on trial for the murder of the three civil rights workers, 1967

The bodies of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were found in an earthen dam in Mississippi, August 4, 1964

Photo by Reuters

Before this day in 1986 — 36 years ago — a woman could not be a “Ms.” in the pages of The New York Times

Styles often change very slowly. Before this day in 1986 — 36 years ago — a woman could not be a “Ms.” in the pages of The New York Times.

That’s because a top editor had persuaded the publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, that the usage was a passing fad. Reporters had to pry when interviewing women: Are you Miss or Mrs.? “It’s none of your damned business!” reporters were sometimes told.

In 1972, “Ms.” was accepted by the American Heritage School Dictionary. But it took protests, internal pressure, time and a smart strategy to persuade The New York Times to follow suit.

Paula Kassell, a feminist writer and publisher, bought Times stock so that she could raise questions about the policy at shareholders’ meetings. In April, 1986, Kassell persuaded Sulzberger to convene language experts — but then received word that the paper would allow “Ms.” without further discussion.

As The Times prepared its first edition using “Ms.,” Betsy Wade, a Times editor, wrote, “Gloria Steinem, Mary Thom and other editors of Ms. magazine walked into the city room with a basket of flowers for the editor” — A. M. Rosenthal — “and the copy editors and reporters applauded.”

Today, the U.S. celebrates Juneteenth, a day to commemorate the end of slavery

A previous Juneteenth parade in Flint, Michigan

Photo by Jake May

Today, the U.S. celebrates Juneteenth, a holiday to commemorate the end of slavery.

June 19, 1865, was the day that enslaved Texans got the news that President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It declared the freedom of the enslaved in rebelling states — two and a half years after its signing, and a few months before the 13th Amendment abolished slavery.

Juneteenth, now a federal holiday, is celebrated around the country with cookouts, music and dancing.

But African-Americans in Houston who wanted to commemorate the occasion shortly after emancipation ran into a problem: There were few, if any, public spaces where they could gather.

So a group led by the Rev. Jack Yates, a formerly enslaved Baptist minister, pooled together $1,000 in 1872 to purchase 10 acres of land for annual Juneteenth celebrations.

Those 10 acres are called Emancipation Park. The park, which completed a $33 million renovation two years ago, is considered Houston’s oldest.

You might say it is the spiritual epicenter of Juneteenth festivities.

Thanks New York Times!

Due to a simple ploy by George Lineberry — a talented young white dancer — black music found its way onto the jukeboxes in the white dance halls and pavilions along the Carolina beaches after World War II

Due to a simple ploy by George Lineberry — a talented young white dancer — black music found its way onto the jukeboxes in the white dance halls and pavilions along the Carolina beaches after World War II.

“Big George,” as he was nicknamed, was hired to install records on the coin-operated jukeboxes, then called “piccolos,” for a local amusements company in Myrtle Beach.

Lineberry was told which records to place on specific jukeboxes. Playlists were strict in this time of segregation. Black music in the day was forbidden from the jukeboxes in white establishments and was designated for black clubs only.

Lineberry ignored his bosses and took it upon himself to switch records, placing the most popular black records from the jukeboxes in the black clubs, including the infamous Charlie’s Place, to the jukeboxes in the white dance halls.

It was at Charlie’s Place that a handful of adventurous young black & white dancers — with the help of a fearless black nightclub owner named Charlie Fitzgerald — risked their lives due to a threat from the Ku Klux Klan not to mix races. Defying the segregationists, they created a new dance and an enduring Southern musical legacy.

It was this quiet switcharoo of records at the area’s jukeboxes by Lineberry — and Lineberry alone — that changed music along the Atlantic coast beaches for generations to come.

Big George, who died in 1999 at the age of 76, was an immensely popular fixture at the beach at the time. He was often slipped a few bucks by concerned parents to dance with a daughter who needed a boost in self-esteem. With great ceremony, he made it a point to “test” each new record installation with a personal spin on the dance floor.

He often single handedly introduced new black records to white audiences living in the Jim Crow era of segregation.

Soon after Lineberry serviced the jukeboxes along the Carolina coast, the “forbidden” race music — soon to be called rhythm and blues — could be heard only at the beach joints. It quickly became known as “beach music.”

As a dancer, Lineberry was also a major contributor to what today is known as the “shag,” the state dance of the Carolinas. “I first heard the term shag at Charlie’s Place,” Lineberry, who left the beach in 1948, told me in an interview. “They called it the shag on the Hill (Charlie’s Place). I think the shag and dirty shag came out of Charlie’s nightclub.”

Lineberry, who was a first generation member of the Shaggers Hall of Fame, had warm memories of his nights at Charlie’s Place — many ending at daylight. “Charlie once told me, ‘George, you got a little black in you.’ I knew the black music had a better beat. It would turn me on a little more. I was the best at the belly roll and the dirty shag. I could lay it on them.”

In fact, Lineberry is credited with inventing the belly roll as used in the modern shag.

For young Dino Thompson, the belly roll — or “vertical sex” as it was also called — was the ultimate shag step, a move that was perfected by Lineberry at Charlie’s Place. In his personal memoir, Greek Boy, Thompson offers a description of the belly roll: “Boy pulls girl close enough to touch belly buttons. Then, in rhythm, they throw one leg out together, then the other. Slick and sexy.”

The belly roll and a 10-cent song on the jukebox, recalled Thompson, was “your license for romance. Pick out the girl of your dreams, lead her out to the dance floor, ease her out of a fast sweaty pivot into a tight belly roll and bruise your excited private parts all up against hers. Then, right as the lyrics get down and dirty, burn her down with your Tyrone Power eyes.”

Lineberry later turned his love of music and dance into a career. He owned and operated Southern Amusement Corp. in Virginia Beach, Virginia. An avid shagger until he died, Lineberry later gave his fellow dancers their own jukeboxes loaded with their favorite music as a gift.

Lineberry’s story is in Charlie’s Place, one of the stories in my book, Whitewash: A Southern Journey Through Music, Mayhem and Murder.

All but the young photo of George Lineberry were taken in 1994 by Frank Beacham

Ernesto "Che" Guevara was born 94 years ago today

Ernesto "Che" Guevara was born 94 years ago today.

An Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist, Guevara was a major figure of the Cuban Revolution. His stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia in popular culture.

As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout South America and was radicalized by the poverty, hunger and disease he witnessed. His burgeoning desire to help overturn what he saw as the capitalist exploitation of Latin America by the United States prompted his involvement in Guatemala's social reforms under President Jacobo Árbenz, whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow at the behest of the United Fruit Company solidified Guevara's political ideology.

Later, in Mexico City, he met Raúl and Fidel Castro, joined their 26th of July Movement and sailed to Cuba aboard the yacht, Granma, with the intention of overthrowing U.S.-backed Cuban dictator, Fulgencio Batista.

Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents, was promoted to second-in-command and played a pivotal role in the victorious two-year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime. He was a prolific writer and diarist, composing a seminal manual on guerrilla warfare, along with a best-selling memoir about his youthful continental motorcycle journey.

Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to foment revolution abroad, first unsuccessfully in Congo-Kinshasa and later in Bolivia, where he was captured by CIA-assisted Bolivian forces and summarily executed.

Guevara remains both a revered and reviled historical figure, polarized in the collective imagination in a multitude of biographies, memoirs, essays, documentaries, songs and films. As a result of his perceived martyrdom, poetic invocations for class struggle, and desire to create the consciousness of a "new man" driven by moral rather than material incentives, he has evolved into a quintessential icon of various leftist-inspired movements.

An Alberto Korda photograph of Guevara, titled Guerrillero Heroico (shown), was cited by the Maryland Institute College of Art as "the most famous photograph in the world." It was taken on March 5, 1960 at the La Coubre memorial service.

Harriet Beecher Stowe was born 211 years ago today

Harriet Beecher Stowe was born 211 years ago today.

An American abolitionist and author, Stowe came from a famous religious family and is best known for her novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). The novel depicts the harsh life for African-Americans under slavery.

It reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and Great Britain. It energized anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South.

Stowe wrote 30 books, including novels, three travel memoirs and collections of articles and letters. She was influential for both her writings and her public stands on social issues of the day.

On this day in 1971 — 51 years ago — the New York Times began publishing what’s now called “The Pentagon Papers”

On this day in 1971 — 51 years ago — the New York Times began publishing what’s now called “The Pentagon Papers.”

The 47-volume Pentagon analysis of how the U.S. commitment in Southeast Asia grew over a period of three decades.

Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department analyst who had become an antiwar activist, had stolen the documents. After unsuccessfully offering the documents to prominent opponents of the war in the U.S. Senate, Ellsberg gave them to the New York Times.

Officially called The History of the U.S. Decision Making Process on Vietnam, the "Pentagon Papers" disclosed closely guarded communiques, recommendations and decisions concerning the U.S. military role in Vietnam during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, along with the diplomatic phase in the Eisenhower years.

The publication of the papers created a nationwide furor, with congressional and diplomatic reverberations as all branches of the government debated over what constituted "classified" material and how much should be made public.

The publication of the documents precipitated a crucial legal battle over "the people's right to know," and led to an extraordinary session of the U.S. Supreme Court to settle the issue.

Although the documents were from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, President Richard Nixon opposed their publication, both to protect the sources in highly classified appendices, and to prevent further erosion of public support for the war.

On June 30, the Supreme Court ruled that the Times had the right to publish the material. Government charges against Ellsberg were dismissed due to “improper government conduct.”

Today, Ellsberg is considered a hero and has praised Edward Snowden for his act of releasing government spying papers to the public.

The publication of the "Pentagon Papers," along with previous suspected disclosures of classified information to the press, led to the creation of a White House unit to plug information leaks to journalists. The illegal activities of the unit, known as the "Plumbers," and their subsequent cover-up, became known collectively as the "Watergate scandal," which resulted in President Nixon's resignation in August, 1974.

History has proven that people should reserve judgement on the government’s claim of national security in leaks. Often the only secret is the misconduct of the government itself.

Above, Daniel Ellsberg is shown after being freed from government charges

(Thanks to History.com for background information.)

Anne Frank was born 93 years ago today

Anne Frank was born 93 years ago today.

Frank was a German-Dutch diarist. One of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust, she gained fame posthumously with the publication of The Diary of a Young Girl, in which she documents her life in hiding from 1942 to 1944, during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.

It is one of the world's best known books and has been the basis for several plays and films.

Born in Frankfurt, Germany, Frank lived most of her life in or near Amsterdam, having moved there with her family at the age of four and a half when the Nazis gained control over Germany. Born a German national, she lost her citizenship in 1941 and thus became stateless.

By May 1940, the Franks were trapped in Amsterdam by the German occupation of the Netherlands. As persecutions of the Jewish population increased in July 1942, the Franks went into hiding in some concealed rooms behind a bookcase in the building where Anne's father, Otto Frank, worked.

From then until the family's arrest by the Gestapo in August 1944, she kept a diary she had received as a birthday present. Following their arrest, the Franks were transported to concentration camps.

In late 1944, Anne and her sister, Margot, were transferred from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they died (probably of typhus) a few months later. Anne was 15 years old.

Otto, the only survivor of the Franks, returned to Amsterdam after the war to find that her diary had been saved by his secretary, Miep Gies, and his efforts led to its publication in 1947. It has since been translated into over 70 languages.

In the above photo, Frank in 1940

Jacques Cousteau was born 112 years ago today

Jacques Cousteau with his dive saucer

Jacques Cousteau was born 112 years ago today.

Cousteau was a French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water. He co-developed the Aqua-Lung, pioneered marine conservation and was a member of the Académie française.

After an automobile accident cut short his career in naval aviation, Cousteau indulged his interest in the sea. In Toulon, where he was serving on the Condorcet, Cousteau carried out his first underwater experiments, thanks to his friend Philippe Tailliez who in 1936 lent him some Fernez underwater goggles — predecessors of modern swimming goggles.

His two sons, Jean-Michel (born 1938) and Philippe (1940–1979), took part in the adventures of the Calypso. In 1975, John Denver released the tribute song, "Calypso," on his album "Windsong," and on the B-side of his hit song, "I'm Sorry."

"Calypso" became a hit on its own and was later considered the new A-side, reaching #2 on the charts. Cousteau's legacy includes more than 120 television documentaries, more than 50 books and an environmental protection foundation with 300,000 members. He liked to call himself an "oceanographic technician."

Cousteau was, in reality, a sophisticated showman, teacher and lover of nature. His work permitted many people to explore the resources of the oceans. His work also created a new kind of scientific communication, criticized at the time by some academics.

The so-called "divulgationism," a simple way of sharing scientific concepts, was soon employed in other disciplines and became one of the most important characteristics of modern television broadcasting.

Cousteau died on June 25, 1997 at age 87.

Here is a short film on Cousteau’s work

Phillipe Cousteau

Here’s a personal remembrance of shooting video for Jacque Cousteau's television show onboard the Calypso.

Cousteau had long recorded his documentaries and television programs on film, but in the mid-1970s he began using video.

While based in Miami, I formed Television Matrix, one of the first small format video production companies. I got a call to shoot video for Jacques Cousteau and his son, Philippe, on the Calypso for The Cousteau Society.

Over a few months, we shot several segments with Jacques Cousteau on the Calypso. The main producer on the shoots was Philippe, who worked closely with his father on his film and video production.

On June 28, 1979, while the Calypso was on an expedition to Portugal, Philippe — Cousteau’s preferred and designated successor and with whom he had co-produced all his films since 1969 — died in a PBY Catalina flying boat crash in the Tagus river near Lisbon.

Jacques Cousteau was deeply affected by Philippe’s death and it was the last I worked with him. He then called his eldest son, the architect Jean-Michel Cousteau, to be at his side. Their collaboration lasted 14 years.

Gene Wilder was born 89 years ago today

Gene Wilder was born 89 years ago today.

A stage and screen comic actor, director, screenwriter, author and activist, Wilder began his career on stage, and made his screen debut in the TV-series Armstrong Circle Theatre in 1962.

Although his first film role was portraying a hostage in the 1967 motion picture Bonnie and Clyde, Wilder's first major role was as Leopold Bloom in the 1968 film, The Producers, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

This was the first in a series of collaborations with writer/director Mel Brooks, including 1974's Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, the latter of which garnered the pair an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Wilder also wrote Young Frankenstein, making it the first movie Mel Brooks directed but did not personally write.

Wilder is known for his portrayal of Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) and for his four films with Richard Pryor: Silver Streak (1976), Stir Crazy (1980), See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989) and Another You (1991). He has directed and written several of his films, including The Woman in Red (1984).

His third wife was actress Gilda Radner, with whom he starred in three films. Her death from ovarian cancer led to his active involvement in promoting cancer awareness and treatment, helping found the Gilda Radner Ovarian Cancer Detection Center in Los Angeles and co-founding Gilda's Club.

After his last acting role in 2003, Wilder turned his attention to writing. He produced a memoir in 2005, Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art; a collection of stories, What Is This Thing Called Love? (2010); and the novels My French Whore (2007), The Woman Who Wouldn't (2008) and Something to Remember You By (2013).

Wilder died Aug. 29, 2016 at home in Stamford, Connecticut, from complications of Alzheimer's disease. He had kept knowledge of his condition private, but had been diagnosed three years prior to his death. Wilder's nephew, Jordan Walker-Pearlman, said that this was so as not to sadden his younger fans.

According to his family, Wilder died while listening to one of his favorite songs, a rendition of "Over the Rainbow" sung by Ella Fitzgerald.

Wilder was regarded as one of the most appealing comedic actors of the second half of the 20th century.