Because of a front-page image of Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s image within the sites of a rifle, an article from the Roswell Beacon, Roswell GA (pdf), has become national news. But the article itself, underlying the photograph, is actually informative and necessary. It shows that, even though most whites believe that Obama would be an acceptable president, including Jimmy Carter effectively endorsing Obama and urging Clinton to cede the race by June 6, there nonetheless remains a fervent wish among a small percentage of white Americans that Senator Barack Obama be assassinated before he can assume the US presidency.

Even Hillary Clinton has made repeated comments which some believe are suggestive of her membership in this small minority of Obama assassination proponents. (Sen. Hillary Clinton has repeatedly suggested that if Sen. Barack Obama were assassinated then her campaign would be given new life.)

One speaker at a white supremacist rally cited in the Roswell Beacon article says, seeming to be thinking along the lines of Senator Clinton,

We should remember to be law abiding, but we will remember that what they won’t allow at the ballot box can be won at the bullet box. Roswell Beacon

The front-page image is shocking, but it brings necessary attention to a reality of American life: Black people risk our lives when we endeavor to improve our status in ways that were previously off-limits to us, based on our skin color. This was so when Blacks integrated the Jim Crow lunch counters of the South and it remains so as Barack Obama seeks to become the first Black presidential nominee of the Democratic Party and the first Black president of the United States.

Blacks have always whispered, as have whites amongst themselves that in this “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” Blacks’ liberty was strictly limited by the threat of white violence, as we see when Obama has to run for president knowing full well that the most recognized Black presences of the previous generations were assassinated, including Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X.

On the other hand, the most recognized Black presences of subsequent generations have not been assassinated, including Jesse Jackson and Colin Powell. And so we don’t know who we are as a nation: a terrorist nation in which Blacks’ accomplishment is limited by the threat of violence or an increasingly free nation where the threat has passed?

Cross-posted at the Francis L. Holland Blog.

Hat Tip to the AfroSpear’s Pastor Kyev Tatum Blog for the link to the Roswell Beacon pdf file.