A Mischief of Mice

I didn't understand what he meant until I saw him swinging a rope over the low branch of a box elder tree, with what was clearly a tightly-woven noose.



We all had seen bad guys hanging from nooses in the town square on our black-end-and-white television screens, where you could barely make out a face or even an outline. Even as a kid, I couldn't imagine how the townspeople in these cowboy shows could be callous enough to see hanging as a happening. But that's what we saw on TV. And despite everything we teach our children about kindness, peace, and love, I guess it is human nature.

I now live on bloodied soil in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the Tulsa Race Massacre took place just over a hundred years ago, and where the hangings and burnings of African-Americans, their homes, and their businesses were subsequently nearly erased from memory.