Newspaper Article

DIVIDED BY RACISM, WE SURELY WILL FALL

1997

Overview

SUBHED} * So many white Americans live in denial that it might as well be the 51st state. Lenard Clark might be dead by the time you read this. He's a black 13-year-old from Chicago who, according to authorities, sustained massive head injuries after being attacked this month by three white teen-agers. They are alleged to have pulled the child from his bike, slammed his head into a wall and kicked him repeatedly, later bragging that they wanted to `take care of the niggers in the neighborhood.' The attack on him came six years after Rodney King was beaten by a mob of white cops, five years after white trucker Reginald Denny was maimed by black rioters, four years after white men burned a black tourist alive in Tampa, three years after Susan Smith murdered her own children and blamed their disappearance on a black carjacker, two years after a white soldier in North Carolina executed a black couple on a sidewalk, one year after a rash of church arsons that was motivated, at least in part, by bigotry, and approximately two days after the last time a white man told me to quit talking so much about race because hatred is gone now, a relic of the past.

• Publisher: Atlanta Journal Constitution, LLC
• Subject: LENARD CLARK / THE REV. JESSE JACKSON (SECOND FROM RIGHT) AND RELATIVES VISIT LENARD CLARK, 13, WHO WAS UNCONSCIOUS AT COOK COUNTY CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL IN CHICAGO