Bigotry and scapegoating in Indiana

What happens when a black woman got stabbed to death in a small Indiana town in 1968? Just what you’d expect:

For nearly 34 years the outside world assumed that the killer was from Martinsville, with its Ku Klux Klan past, and that the police had covered up for the murderer.

Martinsville, which according to the 2000 census has 11 blacks among its 11,698 residents, became a place, as James Patterson, a black columnist with The Indianapolis Star, wrote recently, “where black folks traveling on State Road 37 know better than to stop after dark.”

Turns out it was done by another out-of-towner. For some reason the New York Times doesn’t treat the antiracist scapegoating as much of an issue, even in the aftermath of the Fortuyn murder.
Posted by Jim Kalb at May 17, 2002 07:15 AM | Send