Review of Ferguson
This is a summary of a discussion held on On Point from WBUR Boston. The topic is the recent killing of a black man in Ferguson and the pursuant unrest in that town and the country. The guest on the show was Jelani Cobb, associate professor of history and director of Africana studies at the University of Connecticut. He is a frequent writer in the New Yorker magazine. Mr. Cobb spent eight days in Ferguson trying to better understand what happened. The discussion below goes beyond the recent events in Ferguson and tries to get at the why. We have a racial divide and a divide with our history of lynching blacks. This is certainly the case with white Americans and many black Americans. Michael Brown's death brought about memories of these hangings. Michael Brown's body lay on the street for four hours and it was like the spectacle of the lynchings of blacks peppered in this nations history. A major purpose of the lynchings was to say to blacks “know your place and behave”. Per Pr