[ConservativeStatement]

Splendid mentality:

But Mr. Fleming was not bitter. ‘‘If I was a young black man growing up on the streets of Watts,’’ he wrote in his book, ‘‘seeing what they had seen and going through what I know . . . they went through to survive, I might feel like hitting some white guy in the head, too."

[freedumb2003]

>>But Mr. Fleming was not bitter. ‘‘If I was a young black man growing up on the streets of Watts,’’ he wrote in his book, ‘‘seeing what they had seen and going through what I know . . . they went through to survive, I might feel like hitting some white guy in the head, too.” <<

I grew up in the East L.A barrios. interestingly those are now gentrified Asian communities. Some cultures improve their neighborhoods. Other cultures expect and demand the government to do so. How did we let this happen? (OK that is rhetorical).

These guys have nothing on me. Poverty teaches you all you need to know about life. The stupid ones don’t learn those lessons. It was a bit of a grind but all my siblings learned what they needed to learn. I won’t put up with “you don’t know how tough it is” nonsense. I DO know and I worked through it with hard work and stubbornness.

The Who said it best: “I was a born with a plastic spoon in my mouth...”

[IronJack]

a ... reporter who dodged bullets and choked on tear gas while covering some momentous events of the civil rights era

So now we're supposed to revere people who just OBSERVE history? I'm sorry, but I must have missed the "heroism" in reporting events, harrowing "bullet and tear gas" experiences notwithstanding.

[fieldmarshaldj]

RIP.

[GOPJ]

He covered the Freedom Summer of 1964, when college students from around the country went to Mississippi to join in a voter registration drive. After three of those volunteers — Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman — were jailed, released, and, weeks later, found shot to death, Mr. Fleming was one of the first two reporters to arrive in Philadelphia, Miss. The other was Claude Sitton of The New York Times, a Georgia native with whom Mr. Fleming worked closely.

I don't usually stand with the press - but ... Reporters who went South in '64 were courageous. They stood with what was right against the establishment of their time. It's easy to forget there was a tradition of reporters willing to risk their lives for the public's right to know... They also defended blacks when blacks were prevented from voting - prevented from sitting on a bus (based on the number of white people in the bus - as white numbers increased blacks were force back and eventually had to stand - blacks were seated back to front and white front to back... horrible humiliating stuff), prevented from eating at lunch counters - and restaurants...

We need to give them their due - this man went down when he had no idea how dangerous it would be... he would have been considered an 'outside agitators'. Not a safe group to be identified with... It would be as if a reporter today decided to stand with the Tea Party against the politically powerful Southern Poverty Law Center.

That's something the press missed - it's not that one victim groups gets to be milked forever for glory - but that corruption and evil are moving targets. And the press needs to move with them... closely... watching and reporting.