No More Lies by Dick Gregory

Author:Dick Gregory
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amistad
Published: 2021-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

There are countless other black cowboys who made a substantial contribution to the legends of the Old West—Jesse Stahl, Deadwood Dick, Bill Pickett, Isaiah Dorman, and Jim Beckwourth to name but a few. Their lives and activities should be a television scriptwriter’s dream. Unfortunately the reluctance to fully utilize existing black talent which still plagues the television industry would also make that scriptwriter’s dream a casting director’s nightmare.

COLOR THEM WHITE

Following the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence was formed June 10, 1968, to analyze the escalating problem of violence in America. The commission wanted to find out if Jean-Paul Sartre was correct in regarding “that super-European monstrosity, North America” as a bastard child or a satanic mutation of degraded Europe.

A year later the commission’s report was published, and the frontier tradition figured prominently in its pages. Joe B. Frantz, professor of history at the University of Texas, called the frontier tradition an “Invitation to Violence.” Professor Frantz echoed an earlier observation in this book: “Nowhere was lynch justice more swift, certain, or flourishing than on the frontier. Human life simply was not as valuable on the frontier as property.” (Italics mine.)

Though American mythology and the television screen idolize the law and order men of the old frontier, their brand of justice set the precedent for police brutality today, and their mistakes were seldom subject to civilian review. Bat Masterson was once fined $8 for shooting a citizen through the lung. With raw violence as a standard of judgment, the lawman was hard to distinguish from the outlaw. The great gun fighters of the Wild West frequently operated on both sides of the law.

Wild Bill Hickok is known as a great lawman from Kansas. Yet he looked more like the first citizen of Woodstock Nation in his deerskin suit and his long flowing hair. He first came into public fame in 1861 when he hid behind a curtain in the Russell, Majors, and Waddell station near Rock Creek, Nebraska, and fired a single rifle bullet through the heart of David McCanles who had come with a hired hand and his twelve-year-old son to protest nonpayment of a debt. Hickok was acquitted on a plea of self-defense. Within six years Hickok was a national hero. He served the Union Army and then pursued a postwar career as a gambler in Missouri and Kansas.

Wild Bill became a deputy United States marshal operating out of Fort Riley and did some Indian fighting around Denver. Then he was elected sheriff of Ellis County, Kansas, in August 1869. He developed such a reputation as a law-and-order man that he was brought to Abilene as city marshal in the spring of 1871. Hickok operated out of the Alamo Saloon, filling in his time playing poker and drinking large quantities of whisky. He was good at keeping rowdy Texas cowboys in line and ran a tight, two-fisted town. But after six months, Wild Bill ended up killing Phil Coe, and one of his own policemen (by mistake).

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