Back in the day, when racial segregation was the law of this land, when Jim Crow required that everything and everyone be separated, when there were handwritten signs saying Whites Only or Colored Only for such things are water fountains, restrooms, churches, schools, restaurants, hotels, bus seats, neighborhoods, and yes, even graveyards, there was a place within this country where none of that mattered.
There was a place where there were no Whites Only seats or Colored Only seats. Where was that place, you ask?
The one place where race, at least for poor people, did not matter was America’s death chambers. There were no Whites Only electric chairs, and no Colored Only electric chairs.
No separate hangman’s ropes or firing squads or gas chambers or anything else that could be used to murder poor people.
Today, segregation is supposed to be illegal in this country. Racial segregation is a thing of the past, or at least that is what I am told by the people who control these systems. Things have changed, and so forth and so on…
While there is written law concerning racial segregation, there still seems to be an unwritten law concerning class. Now, just as before and maybe just as always, the one place left in this country were a person’s class can keep them from ‘attending’ is death row. If there wasn’t this unwritten law, then rich people would be on death row.
So tell me, why is it that the one place left in this country where race still doesn’t make a difference, class still does?
In Struggle
From Death Row,
Kevin Cooper