Word: farleys
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...caught on the billows of the church blast, Virgil Ware and Larry Joe Sims were hurtling toward another racial tragedy. Succumbing to peer pressure, Sims had gone along with friends to a segregationist rally that day--and now he was holding a revolver that his classmate, Michael Lee Farley, 16, had handed him as they rode home on Farley's red motorbike, its small Confederate flag whipping in the wind. As they passed Virgil and his brother James, 16, Farley told Sims to fire the gun and "scare 'em." Sims closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. Two bullets...
...story of Sims and Farley and their victim's family did not produce a clean, redemptive outcome for all. Told that this month marks the 40th anniversary of Virgil's death, Farley twirls his fingers sarcastically and says, "Whoop-de-do!" But Sims, who like Farley got no prison time for the killing, says his indifference about civil rights died that day too--and friends say he told them he decided to serve in the Vietnam War because he felt he still had a "debt" to pay. "Virgil knows in heaven that positive consequences came from this," Sims told TIME...
...desperately needed change. It was the civil rights epicenter, a place where bombings of the black community were so frequent that the town was nicknamed "Bombingham." Most white families were apoplectic about federal court orders to integrate the city's public schools, and one of their champions was the Farleys' Baptist pastor, the Rev. Ferrell Griswold. Griswold (who died in 1981) was, ironically, an American Indian whose birth certificate read "colored," but he harbored a century's worth of Native American hatred for the Federal Government and spoke out for states' rights at segregation rallies--like the one Farley...
...Farley, meanwhile, was showing off the pearl-handled, .22-cal. revolver he had bought for $15 from a school friend two days earlier. Farley, like Sims, was an Eagle Scout, but now, wearing his gun in a shoulder holster, he looked more like an enforcer wannabe amid the anti-integration rally's crowd of 2,000 whites. To his credit, Griswold denounced the church attack and spoke against violence. But moments later, a youth strung up an effigy of Bobby Kennedy, and the crowd burned...
...emerge. The Roots' Philadelphia studio has even been tricked out with a whole bunch of amenities so the band can play host to longer, later jam sessions. "We definitely want a darker, murkier texture," says Thompson. We'll know next year how well it works out. --By Christopher John Farley...