VIOLENCE

Franklin Knight, one of hundreds of people who came out to West Florissant Avenue in Ferguson, Missouri, to protest the killing of Michael Brown. Six miles south on West Florissant Avenue is Calvary Cemetery, where Dred Scott is buried.

Ferguson, Missouri

1958 revenue stamp of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, author of the Dred Scott decision.

Department of Internal Revenue, Washington DC.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal...

The general words above quoted would seem to embrace the whole human family, and if they were used in a similar instrument at this day would be so understood. But it is too clear for dispute that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this declaration, for if the language, as understood in that day, would embrace them, the conduct of the distinguished men who framed the Declaration of Independence would have been utterly and flagrantly inconsistent with the principles they asserted, and instead of the sympathy of mankind to which they so confidently appealed, they would have deserved and received universal rebuke and reprobation.

Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 US 393 (1856).

Community members reenact the Moore’s Ford Lynching to create pressure for the case to be reopened.

Walton County, Georgia

The Place: Moore’s Ford Bridge across the Apalachee River that divides Walton and Oconee Counties in North Georgia— approximately an hour’s drive from Atlanta.

The Time: July 25, 1946, nearing sunset.

The Victims: All black Americans
Roger Malcolm age 24
Dorothy Malcolm age 20 (common-law wife of Roger Malcolm and sister of George Dorsey)
George Dorsey age 28
Mae Murray Dorsey age 23 (common-law wife of George Dorsey)

The four occupants of the car never reached their destination on that fateful afternoon.

It was rumored that George Dorsey, after he came home from the Service in World War II, became more bold in his social attitude... Was this a possible motive, the reason why the mob had included him the massacre? But why should the wives of Roger and George become victims? They may have recognized one or more members of the mob.

Georgia Bureau of Investigations. (2000, December). Investigative Case Summary (No. 44-HQ-1421).

Meldon Moffitt

Ferguson, Missouri

Kyndal Bolden

Ferguson, Missouri

Karen Hill

Ferguson, Missouri

A makeshift mosque in an apartment complex where many Somali immigrants live, targeted by Patrick Stein and his coconspirators. In a sentencing memo asking for leniency, Stein’s lawyers wrote that Trump’s rhetorical influence on their client could not be ignored.

Garden City, Kansas

Stein then texted Brian that he was emotionally prepared to carry out an attack.

‘I will just tell you the game plan. We are going to blow up a mosque when they are at their prayer time and they are packed in there like sardines. This is in a location where a select few pieces of shit property owners in this town are housing these bastards. They have taken some of the apartments and converted them into their mosques. So we were going to use trashcans (sic) that were modified on the inside to make a directional blast and set them on the outside of the mosque both sides of the building set them off at the same time and throw a fucking party! LOL’

United States v. Stein, No. 19-3030 (10th Cir. 2021).

President Donald Trump enters his private living room.

White House Executive Residence, Washington, DC

Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.

Donald J. Trump Statement on Preventing Muslim Immigration. (2015, December 7). [Press release].

The World Grows Here (Town motto)

Garden City, Kansas

Ivy Schamis, one year after Nikolas Cruz murdered fourteen students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Parkland, Florida

Everything in Room 1214, where Ivy Schamis taught a popular elective on the Holocaust, is exactly as it was on February 14th, 2018: books, years of lesson plans, the big yellow ‘We Will Never Forget’ banner gifted to her by a Holocaust survivor.

She was in the middle of a lesson about the 1936 Berlin Olympics; Nick Dworet had just raised his hand to answer
a question. ‘That very second, that’s when the shots rang out,’ Schamis says. ‘He had literally the last words in my class.’

Stuart, T. (2019, February 12). ‘Parkland, One Year Later: Ivy Schamis, a Teacher of Hope.’ Rolling Stone.

A portrait of Rachel Scott, the first student killed in
the Columbine High School massacre, twenty years
after her murder.

Lakewood, Colorado

Sue Klebold, mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the Columbine killers.

Denver, Colorado

I feel that Dylan was a victim of some kind of malfunction going on in his brain...whatever killed all the others, killed him, too.

I let this happen; it was my role to keep him safe, and to keep others safe, too, and somehow this happened because of me, because I wasn’t able to stop it. The guilt one feels doesn’t fit in a room, it’s so huge.

Brockes, E. (2016, February 14). ‘My son, the Columbine high school shooter: “a mother is supposed to know.”’ The Guardian.

Final messages sent by Tim Lingle to his brother Toby Lingle, who died by suicide.

Williston, North Dakota

Toby asked Tim to do him a favor. He knew his brother had a friend in the gun-shop business. He wondered if he could get a good deal on a pistol and an AR-15. Tim obliged, and soon Toby was texting photos of his new toys.

Rodrick, Stephen. (May 2019). ‘All-American Despair.’ Rolling Stone.

BY THE OLIVE TREES