COLD BLOODED

Happy Birthday to pianist, singer, songwriter and civil rights activist Eunice Kathleen Waymon better known as the great Nina Simone.

Wharlest Jackson, father, husband , Korean war veteran, plant worker and civil rights activist was murdered in Natchez, Mississippi on February 27, 1967. Mr. Jackson accepted a coveted position as a “chemical mixer” at Armstrong Tire and Rubber plant. This position was reserved for whites and he was the first African American to be promoted to the position over two white employees.

Mr. Jackson’s new position was the cause of much contention in the white community as was his affiliation with the NAACP. He was recruited by Charles Evers (the brother of Medgar Evers) to work as treasuer for the NAACP. He often served as a bodyguard for George Metcalf the president of a local chapter of the NAACP. Metcalf had also accepted a promotion years earlier at the Armstrong plant. A bomb was planted in Metcalf’s car and exploded once he turned on the ignition, however he survived the attempted murder. Wharlest Jackson was not so lucky.

A month after accepting the new position Wharlest Jackson was driving home and as he put on his turn signal his car exploded. He was not far from his home and his wife Exerlena heard the explosion and new instantly that her husband had been murdered. Exerlena Jackson never wanted her husband to take the position but after she was diagnosed with a blood disease and could no longer work he had to quit one of his three jobs and take the promotion at the plant. Though noble it turned out to be a fatal decision. It is suspected the members of the “Silver Dollar Group” a more violent subsect of the Klan were involved in the muder. This is still a cold case file.

Booker T. Washington and his children (top), Earnest (standing left), Booker T. Washington Jr.(right) and Laura Washington (lap) and Booker T. Washington giving a lecture in 1906.

One of the best albums of my generation and in the Fall of 1998 you could hear any one of the songs from this album blaring from the open windows of my all girl’s college campus dormitories. It was seminal in my growth and evolution in womanhood, spirituality, love and life. *side bar* Her writing style is eerily similar to that of the great Mr. Stevie Wonder’s. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is ranked #312 on Rolling Stone magazine’s The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.