Lynch Mob Definition
- a mob that kills a person for some presumed offense without legal authority
Progressive Values: Herman Blackmon on Justice
My name is Herman Blackmon. I've been on the central committee since 2000, prior to that I was active on the Hercules City Council as a member, as Vice Mayor for one term and as Mayor.
Like most terms, progressive becomes somewhat hackneyed. It means different things to different people. For me, having been in politics ever since I can remember back to the time I was a paperboy delivering the Houston Chronicle, it’s been pretty clear to me what progressive means, primarily as an African-American, to make progress in the real world, racial progress.
So if you can be progressive in that sense you pretty much can be progressive in most other senses of that word, economically, certainly socially, and politically. More specifically, if you want talk about political progressivism, I believe that you’ve got to be willing to integrate and incorporate other cultures into your party.
I don’t know if you recall the 1964 convention which marked my beginning with progressive Democrats. They weren’t seated by the regular blue-dog rightwing white racist Democrats out of the South. And for a long time, that group has prevailed. But for some reason there’s been a resurgence of reactionary elements within the Democratic Party.
Edwin: In one word, would the value be diversity?
Answer: More than that, I think it’s justice. One word might be too much of a distillation – maybe social justice across the entire spectrum that a society by definition must be made of. Certainly social justice, economic justice, full employment.
As a child, in Houston, which during the 50’s was very segregated and a very unjustly treated black community, and so I can recall long periods of strife, when the NAACP was always raising money at church to provide legal services for a black man who had somehow run afoul of white law, which was by definition unjust, because it had a duty to uphold the colored-white separation. And every Sunday we were collecting to defend a black who was about to be railroaded through the racist criminal justice system.
Specifically, I remember around 1955 the Johnny Lee Marlees, where a black man was sentenced to die ultimately for killing a white bus driver, because he attempted to force him out of the all-white seats to give the seat to a white man or woman. Incidents like that mark for me, they are riveting.
Edwin: Were you personally involved?
Answer: Well, he was a black man, and by definition.
I saw how people had to react and how they often had to go to extraordinary methods just to make sure that a black man received justice. So by definition it has to be a willingness to include social justice and justice within the criminal justice system for everyone, because there’s a great deal of prejudice in that system.
