Leadership Conference on Civil Rights

The bill before us would impose a stiffer penalty if the violation of our public accommodations law was malicious.

“What does that mean?” asked the representatives of restaurant owners and small businesses as they testified in opposition to the bill.

I was tempted to respond by saying that Justice Scalia would rely upon the dictionary definition of malicious – its plain meaning.

But then the restaurant spokesman said that there was a bill before the Congress that would set a reasonable requirement for structural changes to meet the needs of customers with a disability.

“Is that bill supported by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights?” I asked.

The witness knew that the business community supported the bill but didn’t know about the Leadership Conference’s position.

I’ll find out before my subcommittee acts on House Bill 935.

Better to rely upon my liberal roots than my conservative baseball friend, Justice Scalia.

I had never done this before.

I had no written testimony for the hearing on my lynching bill.

Instead, I distributed to the committee the chilling account of the lynching of George Armwood in Sherrilyn Ifill’s On the Courthouse Lawn.

I pointed out that Clarence Mitchell, Jr. reported on the Armwood lynching for the Afro American. His successor as chair of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Wade Henderson, had submitted written testimony, I told the committee.

In response to a delegate’s question, I said that I would consider it a friendly amendment to limit the remembrance of lynchings to historical markers, removing memorials from the bill.

Ironically, the state’s historical markers program originated in 1933, the same year as the last recorded lynching in the state, George Armwood’s.