Re-posted from National Public Radio:
Here's an astonishing speech by U.S. District Judge Carlton
Reeves, who in 2010 became the second African-American appointed as federal
judge in Mississippi. He read it to three young white men [on Tuesday, February 10th,] before sentencing
them for the death of a 48-year-old black man named James Craig Anderson in a
parking lot in Jackson, Miss., one night in 2011. They were part of a group
that beat Anderson and then killed him by running over his body with a truck,
yelling "white power" as they drove off.
The speech is long; Reeves asked the young men to sit down
while he read it aloud in the courtroom. And it's breathtaking, in both the
moral force of its arguments and the palpable sadness with which they are
delivered...A warning to readers: He uses the word
"nigger" 11 times.
