By Phillip M. Bailey
“If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” That simple colorful rhyme made Johnnie Cochran a household name in America, and although Cochran will be remembered, loved and hated for acquitting O.J. Simpson — and a host of other celebrities — his legacy speaks to a selfless cause. “The clients I’ve cared about most are the No-J’s, the ones nobody knows,” Cochran said once.
Those No-J’s include Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt, the former Black Panther who spent 27 years in prison for a murder he adidn’t commit; Ron Settles, the black college football star choked to death by the LAPD — which originally claimed Settles hanged himself in jail; Tyisha Miller, a black teenager who Riverside (Calif.) Police riddled with bullets as she sat in a locked car. And who could forget Abner Luima, the Haitian immigrant tortured and raped by the NYPD?
Still, the community prefers celebrities. Three weeks after my column on the murder of a Louisville “No-J,” a 17-year-old named Lamartez Griffin, who was brutally stabbed to death by five skinheads last summer, little public outcry has ensued.
And we all know why.
Griffin was not famous or powerful. He was young, black and forgettable, or, as Bob Herbert, a columnist for The New York Times explained, “There’s no shock value and hardly any news value in yet another black or brown kid going down for the count.”
Imagine. If any one of those sanctified, Northup-aligned, “doctor I got to get paid,” Bentley-in-the-garage black ministers was murdered by skinheads, Courier-Journal columnist Betty Baye wouldn’t waste time on shredding ousted conservative shock jock John Ziegler. You’d see at least one African-American member of Louisville’s Metro Council come finally come forward.
And not to forget the dozens of hip-hop entrepreneurs, who profit by keeping my peers deaf, dumb and dancing.
If one of those millionaire rappers, unconcerned about whether we lived or died, and faintly talented R&B singers perished due to a hate crime, a parade of money-hungry benefit concerts, college party cliques and nightclubs would arise to consciousness.
Lack of leadership, however, doesn’t excuse the nakedly exploited dearth of legal acumen and civic responsibility displayed.
As one reader pointed out, many black jurors in preliminary procedures, for whatever vulgar reason, excused themselves from the pool. Before hollering racism, check your own rugged individualism.
Black folk and their organizations must own up to their allergic reaction to long-term civic responsibility, political awareness and action.
This is not a retreat into the “black the victim” speeches of Bill Cosby; it’s a call to intellectual arms. If anything demonstrates our weakness, the acquittal of Griffin’s murderers did.
Johnnie Cochran — dead (in all of us) when we need him most.
Phillip M. Bailey is a junior double-majoring in Political Science and Sociology, Chair of the U of L SNCC and a columnist for The Cardinal. E-mail him at: pbailey@louisvillecardinal.com
