Murder of Black Gay Mississippi Mayorial Sparks Old Civil-Rights Fears

I have held off weighing in on the story of the murder of gay Clarksdale, Mississippi mayoral candidate Marco McMillian (pictured above) whose body was found late last week near a levee after being reportedly dragged, beaten, and burned.   The alleged killer is another young black man, 22-year-old named Lawrence Reed, who is in police custody.  Some reports indicate that Lawrence may use a "gay panic" defense, but something just doesn't seem to add up in the whole sad story.  As a result, the FBI is monitoring the situation.   Having lived in Alabama and seen small rural towns in both Alabama and Mississippi first hand, when a young black man, especially one who s openly gay, is murdered, it is hard not to wonder what the real story might be and whether Lawrence is telling the truth.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the unfolding story.  Here are highlights:

In Clarksdale, Miss. — When Marco McMillian decided to move back to his home town and run for mayor, the 33-year-old aspiring candidate knew he needed the blessing of the silver-haired oligarchy that ruled quietly from church pews. It was familiar turf for McMillian, who grew up singing in the choir at New Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church a half-mile from his small house near the railroad tracks in this grindingly poor city in the Mississippi Delta.

A week and a half after McMillian’s body was found in the mud on an isolated stretch of levee outside Clarksdale, his death remains a mystery. It has roiled old suspicions and fears from Mississippi’s dark history of racial brutality, although both McMillian and the man charged with his murder are African American. McMillian was also gay, adding fire to demands by civil rights groups for the killing to be investigated as a hate crime. The FBI said this week that it is “monitoring” the investigation.

The Coahoma County Sheriff’s Department has charged Lawrence Reed, 22, in the crime. He told police that he killed McMillian and where to look for the body, according to two people familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss its early findings.
Reed’s family has yet to address publicly the allegations against him. The sheriff’s department has released almost no information on the case, adding to conspiracy theories and guessing over what exactly happened the night McMillian and Reed, who worked at Domino’s Pizza, were together.

McMillian’s bid for mayor was an audacious move. He had lived away from Clarksdale for 10 years, graduating from Jackson State University, working as the executive assistant to the president at Alabama A&M University and until 2011, serving as the executive director of Phi Beta Sigma, the black fraternal organization headquartered in Washington. 

He moved back to Clarksdale late last year. Known as the birthplace of the blues, the city of 18,000 has a 38 percent poverty rate. Tourists from around the world pour in to visit Muddy Waters’s shack and listen to the music of Pinetop Perkins. But black Clarksdale has existed in a separate realm from the New Bohemian South the city wants to be.

Little of what happened that night is known. On Tuesday morning, on a rural highway out near the Tallahatchie County line, McMillian’s sport-utility vehicle was involved in a collision with another vehicle. A distraught Lawrence Reed was driving the SUV alone.  

McMillian’s body was found the next morning near the levee between the communities of Sherard and Rena Lara. The spot was completely isolated. A steep embankment of pasture dropped down to the barbed-wire fence that went along the water, and that is where the body was, shoved partway under the wire.

“Our hearts go out to the family and friends of Marco McMillian, one of the 1st viable openly #LGBT candidates in Mississippi,” tweeted the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, a national political action committee.  It was a bombshell on top of a bombshell. 

Three days later, frustrated by a lack of contact with the Coahoma Sheriff’s Department, the Ungers released a statement saying McMillian had been “beaten, dragged and burned (set afire),” and that his death could not have been a random act of violence.

There's more in the story.   Hopefully, with more time answers to the swirling questions and speculation will be found.

Anthony Niedwiecki Wins Mayor Seat

One of the bloggers I met at the Blogger Summit was Waymon Hudson (on the right at left). He and his husband, Anthony Niedwiecki, are contributors to The Bilerico Project and I am happy to report that Anthony was elected to the Oakland Park City Commission and that as the highest vote getter, he will become the City's mayor. Throughout the campaign, Anthony and Waymon were complete open about their relationship. Anthony's campaign was endorsed by the Victory Fund which seeks to asist LGBT candidates get elected to office. The Bilerico Project had this report as of last night:

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Just ran out of the victory party to let you all know that Anthony Niedwiecki has become a city commissioner in Oakland Park, Forida, winning his first race for public office. At the time of this report, he is apparently the highest vote getter, making him the Mayor of Oakland Park, a community of 42,000, for the next four years.

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It appears that Anthony is the only gay candidate to win in this year's round of elections in this region.

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And, everyone at the party was congratulating Bilerico's own Waymon Hudson, Anthony's husband, on becoming First Lady of Oakland Park, Florida.

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The Sun Sentinel has more election coverage here.

National LGBT Blogger Initiative Summit

Blogging can be addicting as I suspect most fellow bloggers will concede. For me blogging allows me to express my thoughts and opinions, has allowed me to build a remarkable network of friends around the globe, and hopefully allows me to bet information out to others that may help the rights and visibility of LGBT Americans. Others have seen the role that LGBT blogs can play in political and social discourse. Now, there will be a summit that will allow some LGBT bloggers to meet each other and hopefully build networks and ties that will allow them to further their blogs and LGBT citizens in general. I think the summit is a wonderful idea and have applied to attend the summit - I will be keeping my fingers crossed that I am lucky enough to be selected. You can apply to attend here. Here are details on the summit which will run from December 5-7, 2008, in Washington, D.C.:

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Washington, DC – Blogger Michael Rogers today announced the formation of the National LGBT Blogger and Citizen Journalist Initiative to support training and grants for the country's leading and emerging online voices. The program, established with a leadership gift of $50,000 from Jonathan Lewis, will bring together the online world with traditional organizations throughout the country. To date, over $70,000 has been committed to the Initiative.

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“The importance of bloggers in both the LGBT community and larger blogosphere cannot be overstated,” said Rogers, publisher of PageOneQ and a leading blogger. “This initiative will bring bloggers together to acquire new skills, build relationships, and improve the effectiveness of their work. This is the first opportunity to collaborate between online media and traditional organizations and I am excited at the coalitions that will form as a result. Groups sponsoring this Initiative are at the forefront of new media in the LGBT community and we are grateful for their support.”

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The Initiative will begin with a summit of 50 bloggers, citizen journalists, and representatives of LGBT and progressive groups. The event will take place in Washington on Dec. 5-7. . . . “Citizen journalism is strengthening the LGBT community in ways none of us could have imagined just a few years ago,” Victory Fund President Chuck Wolfe said. “We’re sharing information at lightning speed and reaching audiences that have been underserved by traditional media.

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For Initiative and Summit application info, please visit www.bloggerinitiative.com.

Christianists Are Losing the "Culture War"

I suspect that we will be hearing more shrieks and gnashing of teeth from the wingnut set as news of the results of a Victory Fund sponsored poll become more widely disseminated. According to the poll, more than six in ten U.S. voters say they could support an openly gay candidate for president of the United States, and 70% say they’d support the appointment of an openly gay cabinet secretary, according to a new nationwide poll from Zogby International. This, combined with a growing desire among the public -including conservatives - as reported by 365gay.com that there be less blurring of the lines between pulpit and ballot box, will certainly have Daddy Dobson, et al, upset since it means that the money spigot that they have gorged themselves from may begin to dry up. Already the political activities and anti-gay and anti-immigrant jihads of the Christianist has caused Christianity to be viewed in an increasingly bad light. Hopefully, the trend continues until Dobson and those like him are banished to the political wilderness. Here are highlights on the poll results:

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Washington, D.C.—More than six in ten U.S. voters say they could support an openly gay candidate for president of the United States, and 70% say they’d support the appointment of an openly gay cabinet secretary, according to a new nationwide poll from Zogby International. The poll results come just a week after an openly gay congressional candidate, Jared Polis, won his Democratic primary in Colorado. If Polis wins the general election in November, he would become the first non-incumbent, openly gay man ever elected to Congress.

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Sixty-six percent of poll respondents said they could support an openly gay vice-presidential candidate, while 69% said a gay candidate for U.S. Senate could get their vote. The poll of 1,089 adults was conducted August 13 to 15 for the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Institute (GLLI), a non-partisan leadership development organization.

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More than 415 openly LGBT elected officials serve at every level of government throughout the United States, a ten-fold increase in just the last two decades. At the federal level, five openly gay or lesbian Members have served in the U.S. House of Representatives, including current Reps. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Barney Frank of Massachusetts.