Banned in Memphis

This week's Memphis Flyer contained a wonderful history article on Lloyd T. Binford, who was head of the Memphis Censor Board from 1928 to 1956.

But it was Binford's attitude toward blacks that caused him — and Memphis — the most condemnation. Binford was absolutely opposed to movies showing blacks and whites together on the same social level. In 1945, he blocked the hit musical Annie Get Your Gun from Ellis Auditorium because there were blacks in the cast "who had too familiar an air about them." For the same reason, he banned the film Imitation of Life (1934) with Claudette Colbert and Brewster's Millions (1945) with Eddie "Rochester" Anderson because certain scenes "gave too much prominence to Negroes."

To show the films in Memphis, local distributors had to delete these scenes. As a result, some movies shown here were minutes shorter than the same films shown in other cities, because Binford ordered the complete removal of scenes featuring prominent black performers like Duke Ellington or Cab Calloway. Memphians probably never realized that Lena Horne's segment, for example, was snipped completely out of the 1946 picture Ziegfield Follies, as was Pearl Bailey's role in the 1947 Variety Girl.

In 1947, Binford axed Curley, a Little Rascals-type comedy distributed by United Artists, simply because it included one scene that showed black and white children in a classroom together. In his official letter to the United Artists distributors, Binford explained, "The Memphis Censor Board ... is unable to approve your picture with the little Negroes, as the South does not permit Negroes in white schools nor recognize social equality between the races, even in children."

Anti-Semitism in Tennessee

I'm not fond of the knee-jerk cries of anti-Semitism every time someone is critical of Israel's policy toward the Palestinians, but this is the real thing.

The Anti-Defamation League on Monday condemned a flier circulating in Memphis that says U.S. Rep. "Steve Cohen and the Jews Hate Jesus," saying it "attempts to incite tension" between African-Americans and Jews.

The flier, which provides the name and telephone number of Rev. George Brooks of Murfreesboro, Tenn., has been in circulation since at least last Thursday. On Monday, Brooks took responsibility for the broadside, saying, "I sent that out."

The flier, which Cohen said he received at his law office in Memphis last week, reads in part: "Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen and the JEWS HATE Jesus. So Memphis Christians must unite and support ONE Black Christian to represent Memphis in the United States Congress in 2008. Simply because this Congressional district is predominantly black…

"It is the responsibility of the black leaders of Memphis to see to it that one and ONLY one black Christian faces this opponent of Christ and Christianity in the 2008 election."

Brooks said he sent the flier because the 9th Congressional District is "about 90-something percent black. That's the reason." According to the latest U.S. Census, in 2000, the district was 59.7 percent black.

Wow. Just wow.

The Mummy of John Wilkes Booth

The cover story of the Memphis Flyer this week is a macabre history article on the alleged mummy of Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, and how it ended up, for a time, in a garage in Memphis.

Sweating furiously, the old man pried open the wooden crate and peered inside. Memphis attorney Finis Bates breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the fragile contents were undamaged.

"John, my old friend," he said. "You're home at last!"

Lying inside was the mummified body of an elderly man Bates believed was John Wilkes Booth. How the corpse of Abraham Lincoln's assassin came to rest in a Central Gardens garage remains one of the strangest episodes of our city's past.

They're coming to get you, Barbara!

The 2007 Memphis Zombie Walk was held on Beale Street Friday night.





More zombie pictures on Flickr.

UPDATE: Here's a short documentary on the zombie walk by Daniel Lee. (HT theology&geometry.)