GHOST RIDERS IN THE NIGHT

They came like ghosts in the night to burn a cross in the interracial couple’s lawn. It wasn’t in the twenties or thirties when the glow of crosses illuminated the strange fruit hanging from the live oak trees. It wasn’t the sixties when it was Sunday morning dynamite calling the faithful to worship in Birmingham. It was in Trent Lott’s Mississippi and just seven years ago. The leader of the wolf pack was caught, he was prosecuted and brought to trial before the Honorable U.S. District Judge Charles Pickering. It was one of  “all these problems we have had all these years.” But it was the nineties and a Mississippi jury convicted the Klansman. It was then that the Honorable U.S. District Judge Charles Pickering had to act. He picked up the telephone and called the Justice Department and first cajoled and then threatened to grant a new trial unless the District Attorney backed off asking for the sentence that the mandatory sentencing guidelines demanded.

It was an act that even a first year Law student would have known was just not ethical, but improper and strictly forbidden. No Judge may talk to one side of a law suit about the case without the other side being present. The Honorable U.S. District Judge Charles Pickering not only permitted the forbidden Ex Parte communication – he initiated it. That alone should have resulted in judicial discipline if not impeachment. But this was a special case. It involved one of the “problems we have has all these years” – an interracial couple living quietly and a burning cross. It was 1994 and Newt Gingrich ran the House, Bob Dole was in control of the Senate and Trent Lott was waiting in the wings.

Lott had his season in the limelight, basked in the glow and when he fluffed his lines was shuffled off to the third row of the chorus- stage right. There is a new star in the center stage yet the script is the same and the producer has sent Lott’s favorite back to audition again for a position on the Appellate bench where he will have the opportunity to again address “all these problems”.

The Nixonian Southern Strategy has worked well for the Republican Party. They packed away the sheets and hoods and put on the three piece suits and fraternity tie then rewrote the script to embrace the idea of a colorblind society while throwing up road blocks on the road that must be traveled to get there. They tried a new vocabulary. Affirmative action to achieve equal treatment became "quota systems". Integrated schools became "failing public schools".

Trent Lott committed the unforgivable sin of opening the door where the sheets and hoods were hidden. He had to be pulled out of the limelight. But then came the political tightrope act. On the one hand Lott had to be sent to the shadows. On the other that Southrun Neo-Confederate base had to be held on to. Honorable U.S. District Judge Charles Pickering furnished the answer to that problem. The President is hoping that his base won't listen to what he said but watch what he and the Republican Senate Majority are doing. You can be sure that the rest of us are watching for the ghost riders in the night.