Vick, one of the most celebrated football stars in history and one of the wealthiest African Americans in professional sports, had become somewhat of a social pariah because of his involvement in a heinous dog fighting ring.

After the allegations became public two years ago, Vick instantly went from one of America’s most beloved stars to probably its most hated.

Despite the fact that Vick’s actions in the aforementioned dog fighting were indeed heinous, the punishment and the public fallout were extremely excessive. Many critics believed, and still believe, that the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback should be barred from making a living in the National Football League permanently.

As a publisher of an online magazine, I marvel how technology has transformed the way in which the media communicates with its audience.

What once was a one-sided relationship, has become reciprocal, as readers of various publications and viewers and listeners of television and radio shows can voice their opinions just as easily as the manager of a media enterprise.

However, as an African American it shocks me to hear the anger that many non-Black members of our great nation have when it comes to their opinions of wealthy African Americans. Practically all of the protestors against Vick’s signing with the Eagles were White, and practically all of Vick’s supporters were African American.

The fact of the matter is the uproar over Vick’s crime would not have resulted in such a harsh sentence if he was not one of many wealthy African Americans in the NFL with a football contract worth over $130 million at the time, in addition to his many endorsement deals.

Although we have come far as a nation when it comes to race relations, incidents always occur that lets us know that we have so far to go. When President Barack Obama was elected many believed we were in a post-racial America.

However, the threats and ridicule he has received from a certain bigoted segment of our population lets us know that many are not willing to accept powerful and wealthy African Americans.

Furthermore, many falsely believe if they do not utter racial epithets and say all of the political correct things in public, that somehow they are immune from expressing prejudice and racism. In actuality, many times our racist thoughts are subconscious,, virginia Crime, and deep down all of us our prejudice in some form or fashion.

Subconsciously, what many Americans have a problem with is not that Vick tortured, virginia Crime, dogs, which he was totally wrong for, but that this African American male from the ghettoes of Virginia can come out of incarceration and become an instant millionaire by jotting his signature on the dotted lines.

Even for those of us who are not blessed with a million dollar contract, everyone from wealthy African Americans to poor White Americans, deserve an opportunity to right the wrongs in their life.

No matter how severe the crime, we all need and deserve forgiveness, including Vick.

“I know what Michael was accused and convicted of, and I don’t like it at all,” Eagles teammate Donovan McNabb wrote on his, virginia Crime, blog. “I have had dogs all my life and consider myself a dog-lover. I am in no way excusing Michael for what happened, but he was punished for his crime. He served his time and, at least I believe, he has learned from it. I believe Michael is a changed person, and that he deserves a chance at putting his life back together.

”

Nevertheless, the hatred that is aimed towards wealthy African Americans does not have to stem from criminal activity. After the shocking death of Michael Jackson, his family began receiving the type of media scrutiny that they once received at the height of their popularity.

Much attention was placed on Jackson’s three young children and the details of the will that gave 40 percent of his earnings to his mother Katherine, 40 percent to his three children and 20 percent to charity. When CNN’s Nancy Grace asked another legal expert on her show if Katherine could give her portion of the earnings to her children and husband, Grace shook her head in disgust that all of the money would not go to his children.

I often wonder, if the fact that the skin of Jackson’s kids is fair had anything to do with the media’s concern for their welfare. If the three children had darker skin would news outlets such as CNN have been so concerned about their welfare and the allegations that their grandfather Joe had physically abused his own children?

Furthermore,, virginia Crime, would Grace had been so disgusted to think that Jackson’s parents and siblings could inherit hundreds of millions of dollars if all parties involved had dark skin? Throughout the history of this country, many wealthy White Americans have earned their fortune through inheritance.

If one is blessed to have a highly successful member of the family, why should they not benefit from “old money?”

It just seems that because we now have more powerful and wealthy African Americans in our country, some in society have become offended that wealth does not have a color complex, which has resulted in many wealthy African Americans. Unfortunately, many seem to have a cash complex when it comes to people of color.

The black community fearful of a mass killing spree by whites hide the boys, hoping to help them escape later. However, Bobo is caught and lynched as a frightened Big Boy looks on). .
Lynching was originally a system of punishment used by whites against African-american slaves. It seldom mattered whether the charges were true or not, since it usually camde down to the word of whites against the accused black person.
“The accusations against persons lynched, according to the Tuskegee Institute records for the years 1882 to 1951, were: in 41 per cent for felonious assault, 19.

2 per cent for rape, 6.1 per cent for attempted rape, 4.9 per cent for robbery and theft, 1.8 per cent for insult to white persons, and 22.7 per cent for miscellaneous offenses or no offense at a 11.5 In the last category are all sorts of trivial “offenses” such as “disputing with a white man,” attempting to register to vote, “unpopularity”, self-defense, testifying against a white man, “asking a white woman in marriage”, and “peeping in a window.” (Gibson). However, whites who protested against this were also in danger of being lynched.

Gibson writes, “In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the lynching of Black, virginia Crime, people in the Southern and border states became an institutionalized method used by whites to terrorize Blacks and maintain white supremacy. In the South, during the period 1880 to 1940, there was deep-seated and all-pervading hatred and fear of the Negro which led white mobs to turn to “lynch law” as a means of social control. Lynchings?open public murders of individuals suspected of crime conceived and carried out more or less spontaneously by a mob?seem to have been an American invention.

In Lynch-Law, the first scholarly investigation of lynching, written in 1905, author James E. Cutler stated that ‘lynching is a criminal practice which is peculiar to the United States’.”
John F. Callahan states that, “Lynching did not come out of nowhere. Its actual and symbolic grounding in history and literature goes back to slavery and slavery’s defining persons of African descent as property. During slavery there were numerous public punishments of slaves, none of which were preceded by trials or any other semblance of civil or judicial processes.

Justice depended solely upon the slaveholder. Executions, whippings, brandings, and other forms of severe punishment, including sometimes the public separation of families, were meted out by authority or at the command of the master or his representative.”
Though the Chicago Times and New York Times derided the practice of lynching, Other newspapers abetted these efforts, often creating the rationale for the attack. R.W. Logan writes, “It is next to impossible to locate a newspaper article that does not identify the victim as a Negro or that refrains from suggesting that the accused was guilty of the crime and therefore deserving of punishment.

For example, The New Orleans Picayune described an African-American who was lynched in Hammond, Louisiana for robbery as a “big, burly negro” and a “Black wretch”
On November 7th, 1837, Elijah Parish Lovejoy, the white editor of the Alton Observer, was killed by a white mob after he had published articles criticizing lynching and advocating the abolition of slavery. On 9th March, 1892, three African American businessmen were lynched in Memphis. When Ida Wells Barnett (a black woman) wrote an article condemning the lynchers, a white mob destroyed her printing press.

They declared that they intended to lynch her but fortunately she was visiting Philadelphia at the time.
It is estimated that between 1880 and 1920, an average of two African Americans a week were lynched in the United States. Dr. Arthur Raper was commissioned, virginia Crime, in 1930 to produce a report on lynching. He discovered that “3,724, virginia Crime, people were lynched in the United States from 1889 through to 1930. Over four-fifths of these were Negroes, less than one-sixth of whom were accused of rape.

Practically all of the lynchers were native whites. The fact that a number of the victims were tortured, mutilated, dragged, or burned suggests the presence of sadistic tendencies among the lynchers. Of the tens of thousands of lynchers and onlookers, only 49 were indicted and only 4 have been sentenced.”
After the First World War ten black soldiers, several still in their army uniforms, were amongst those lynched. Between 1919 and 1922, a further 239 blacks were lynched by white mobs and many more were killed by individual acts of violence and unrecorded lynchings.

During the 100 year period from 1865 to 1965 over 2400 African Americans were lynched in the United States. 1892 had a record 230 deaths (161 black, 69 white).
According to social economist Gunnar Myrdal: “The Southern states account for nine-tenths of the lynchings. More than two-thirds of the remaining one-tenth occurred in, virginia Crime, the six states which immediately border the South: Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Kansas.” (Gunnar Myrdal, “An American Dilemma,” 1944, pp.

560-561).
In 1901George Henry White, the last former slave to serve in Congress, proposed a bill in that would outlaw lynching, making it a federal crime. He argued that any person participating actively in or acting as an accessory in a lynching should be convicted of treason. White pointed out that lynching was being used by white mobs in the Deep South to terrorize African Americans. The bill was defeated.
In 1935 President Franklin Roosevelt declined to support the Costigan-Wagner bill,, virginia Crime, designed to punish sheriffs who failed to protect their prisoners from lynch mobs.

He believed he would lose the votes of southern whites and therefore, not be re-elected. In July of that year six deputies were escorting Ruben Stacy to Dade County jail in Miami when he was snatched away by a white mob and hanged outside the home of a white woman named Marion Jones, whom had made a complaint against him. The New York Times reported that a later investigation revealed Stacy “Went to the house to ask for food; (and) the woman became frightened and screamed when she saw Stacy’s face.

“
Other lynchings of note: Scottsboro (1931), James Byrd (1997), Will Brown (Omaha, NE, 1919)
Sources:
Robert L. Langrando, “About Lynching.”
Richard M. Perloff, “The Press and Lynchings of African Americans,” Journal Studies, January 2000, pp. 315-330.
R.W. Logan, “The Betrayal of the Negro: From Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson,” 1965, p. 298.
Robert A. Gibson, “The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States,1880-1950,” 1979.
James E. Cutler, “Lynch Law” (New York, 1905), p.

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Timothy Stelly is the author of two novels, “Tempest In The Stone” and “The Malice of Cain.” He is a contributor to several e-zines and lives in Pittsburg, California.