Talk radio host Mark Thompson told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell that the recent shooting deaths of black Americans — including both the nine massacred victims at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston and Michael Brown — are essentially the 21st century’s equivalent of lynching.
Thompson, during a Monday night appearance on “Last Word,” stated that black Americans are being forced to relive the pattern of terror and oppression, prevalent throughout the South during Reconstruction:
I think we’re seeing history repeat itself. The same atmosphere that existed after Reconstruction when the period of reclamation started. The first Congressional Black Caucus, which was as significant as the first black president at the time, these are former slaves in Congress, were met with voter disenfranchisement and violence, lynchings of innocent people. The first black president, and what we might consider the second Reconstruction after Selma, his administration has been met with voter suppression again. We’re reliving that, and a more sophisticated form of lynching. Many of us see no disparity between the Emmanuel Nine and Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis and Renisha McBride and Michael Brown and Eric Garner. All of that is part of the same thing. So this is history repeating itself and it’s appropriate for the president to speak.
WATCH:
Despite his stirring rhetoric, Thompson’s inclusion of Brown in his argument is slightly perplexing, notes Mediaite’s Alex Griswold:
Brown, you’ll recall, was shot by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson after a struggle for his weapon and after charging the officer. There is no evidence he was shot in the back or had his hands up. Wilson was cleared by a mixed-race grand jury and a Justice Department headed by African-American icon Eric Holder.
[h/t: Mediaite]