I Am Jack's Seething Cauldron Of Rage

Von Moltke was defiant before the Nazi appendage: Das Volksgerichtshof. In early 1945, the Allies had finally gained a strong enough foothold in Europe to directly threaten Nazi Germany. The Nazi Regime began it's final descent into utter defeat. The Gestapo, seeing a post-Nazi Europe full of potential witnesses to it's crimes, frantically prosecuted those who had spoke out against the war or were seen as capable of leadership after the Reich was swept away. Some of the targets of the Nazi leadership's rage came from universities and the higher echelons of German society. These were citizens who, for reasons either personal or practical, remained in Germany as it crumbled. They would find themselves on the receiving end of bloody injustice. The Nazis sought out the remaining credible opposition voices from among these groups and permanently silenced them publicly in kangaroo courts. The courts were known as Volksgerichtshof or "People's Courts". In thes...

Re-printed from a Cincinnati City Beat article by Lew Moores published in November 2006 Those who remember him recall the gray bib overalls, the railroad engineer's cap, perhaps the headband, the long hair and the black beard that really didn't seem to gray with age... The energy that was born while he was still in his 20's never really dissipated and was there right until the end when on November 15, 1996, he was shot while he sat in the Drop Inn Center as he looked up to welcome a friend and stared down the barrel of a handgun instead. Wilbur Worthen shot him. Gray fell to the floor. Worthen fired again and again, emptying his .357-caliber Magnum. It's been 15 years. His death at the age of 46 was a shock and an irony not lost on Gray's supporters and friends - shot and killed that day by someone he'd helped, by someone those who knew both called a friend. For almost a quarter-century Buddy Gray made the poverty-ridden little pocket of America called...

The now defunct Queensgate Prisoner Facility outside downtown Cincinnati. Preface: Justice is an uncertain thing. The testimony of a single witness, with no supporting evidence whatsoever, can put a man behind bars his entire life whether a crime has taken place or not. The following is a true story. I. They came for me in the middle of the night. Sitting up in my bed, I heard the low, garbled squawk of a police radio echoing in the alleyway. Someone cursed. The radio went silent. Bodies rushed past my window and then heavy hands slammed on my apartment building's thin common front door. Cops. It had to be cops I remember thinking. I got up and walked out of my apartment. At the front door I greeted the newest series of police with a half-asleep smirk at the door. This expression was quickly wiped off my face when the hand cuffs came out. "Are you Mr. XYZ?" one of the four police officers croaked with hand cuffs at the ready. The croaker, he coul...

Ruins of Freemont Street in the affluent black suburb of Greenwood in Tulsa, May of 1921. In the chapters of American history, there are stories of tragedy and senseless death that are very carefully and almost entirely forgotten. These tales are conveniently forgotten by the wise and craftily ignored by the haughty. This particular tragedy raged in 1921, in a Tulsa Oklahoma neighborhood that was burned to the ground by a mob. 300 people were officially reported killed. Those killed weren't soldiers or insurrectionists - they were a small community of successful minority business owners who were murdered by a mob of angry white Oklahomans for no better reason than hatred and ignorance. When the story of Greenwood is foggily recalled it makes Americans, as a people united by common cause, law and geography, question the value of life itself when witnessing that life so carelessly snuffed out. Life snuffed out like stray sparks from an untended fire - crushed under the collect...

The September 15 th 1963 Birmingham church bombing killed four girls - the oldest was fourteen. When man made injustice is done in the name of man's justice, in any age, it renders the man to whom that injustice happens helpless. This was the case in 1960's America as a growing population of black Americans became educated enough to realize that laws were a creation of a multi-cultural society not the immutable, unchangable commandments from a paper god. Many black American leaders fought for these changes in law and society but did not live to see them take place. These mens' rebuke, their punishment for seeking equal status, came for generations in the guise of official policy. Their consolation came in the form of official lies that stripped them of hard-earned dignity. Their shelter was the bitter cold. All the while, an inequitable society expected a smile on the wronged mens' faces. When these man continued to question official hypocrisy - they were quickl...

In November of 2002 in downtown Chicago, a car raced through a stop sign at high-speed and crashed into the side of a CPD squad car. The crash trapped two police officers in their vehicle and the cars began to burn. Horrified Chicagoans, unlike the stereotypical Southsiders, immediately began pulling the injured to safety before the vehicles could explode. Among the bystanders trying to save the officers lives was 41-year-old nurse Rachelle Jackson. Jackson was credited with saving the life of Officer Kelly Brogan who sustained injuries from the crash. Brogans partner, also injured, was knocked unconscious during the crash. Soon after the rescue it was discovered that Officer Brogan's partner's side arm was missing. Mrs. Jackson, staying on the scene until medical personnel arrived was accused of the robbery and theft. The weapon was not found in Jackson's possession nor has it ever been recovered. Jackson, wanting to clear her name, went to the local police station a...