Racial Equality, the Fight Continues in Even the Smallest Corners

If you are a regular follower of my blogs you know that I live in Marshall, Texas. The civil rights history of Marshall is long and storied. It is said the sit-in was invented here. 

At the Paramount Theater, if you were black during the eras before the 1960s, you walked past the front theater door where whites entered and rounded the corner to buy your ticket. You walked a steep flight of steps to enter and sat in the "Buzzard's Roost." Blacks weren't allowed to sit with whites, obvious in Jim Crow Marshall, but blacks weren't even allowed to enter with whites. CORE founder James L. Farmer Jr. who grew up in Marshall was so incensed that he went to Washington in 1941 to fight for civil rights.

The 1949 film "Pinky" became the subject of a tremendous battle when the city fathers decided it could not be shown in Marshall because the picture depicts "(1) a white man retaining his love for a woman after learning that she is a Negro, (2) a white man kissing and embracing a Negro woman, (3) two white ruffians assaulting Pinky after she has told them she is colored."The cinema owner was convicted of violating the ruling and was fined $200. He appealed the conviction all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court where he eventually won his appeal.

I mention this because Marshall Cinema is showing "White House Down" this week. It's the story of Channing Tatum saving the President of the United States played by Jamie Foxx from home grown terrorists. To the right you will see how it's posted on the Marshall Cinema website (as of July 6, 2013 at 10:30 am).

As you can see, this movie evidently doesn't star Jamie Foxx. It stars Maggie Gyllenhaal. Really? Yes, she's in the movie and she's important to the action but she isn't the star of the show. It's Tatum and Foxx, and for one reason or another Jamie Foxx isn't on the bill. 

Even in the smallest corners of our nation and our cybernation, discrimination exists. There is no other reason I can imagine leaving Jamie Foxx off of their web page. Do people not know? Are people so afraid of Jamie Foxx that even though his picture is on the page his name dare not be listed? Is Maggie Gyllenhaal a bigger draw? 

I find it hard to consider, but not so hard to believe, that even in the quietest moments, in the smallest corners of the internet, this fight has to continue.

Thanks to the Shreveport Times, http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/20080217/LIVING/802160309/On-trail-history-Marshal-Texas-offers-black-heritage-tour

and Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinky_(film)