In the Age of Trump Reminiscing the Old Days of Racism

The American Nation has a race problem. Understandable, because its cradle was made by Native Americans, currently occupying reservations usually designed to help animal species on their painful way to extinction.

The 2016 Republican Presidential candidates have more than a race problem. Uncomfortable human beings owned by various corporations to engage in verbal vomit, they spit out racism. Donald Trump is more direct than his ilk but no worse than them. They all dream about the good old days. Those were the days of the KKK. Those were the days of the O’Day Short tragedy. In memoriam of that tragedy, helping us heal while asking those in the know to name their grandparents’ deeds, here is more coverage of this domestic act of terrorism. Before #ISIS, we produced #KKK.

 Eduardo Gil, 36, who lived in Fontana, CA, from age 8 to 14, and who likes to read, learned about the O’Day Short case  mentioned in James Loewen’s book on “sundown towns,” the places some #Fontana residents, whose skin had a darker shade than white, knew they weren’t welcome after dark. Mike Davis’ 1990 book “City of Quartz,” also described the murder when the author reminisced about his native Fontana.

On December 16, 2015, 70 years after the act, David Allen of Inland Valley Daily Bulletin retold the events trying to shake people out of their complacent, impotent fright of the times to come and reassess their values. Here is his exposition:

In 1940s Fontana, this was the saying: “Base Line is the race line.” African-Americans were welcome north of Base Line Road but not to the south.

O’Day Short would have none of that. The refrigeration engineer from Los Angeles put $1,000 down on a five-acre vacant lot on Randall Avenue at Pepper Street, near downtown, and began building a house.

Short moved his wife and two children into the half-built home as he continued work on it in the fall of 1945. Not everyone realized the light-skinned family was black, presumably including the man who sold them the land.

But some did. A sheriff’s deputy visited to advise Short on behalf of neighbors that he was out of bounds. The Chamber of Commerce offered to buy the property back at cost. The seller dropped by to warn him “the vigilante committee” might bring down violence.

Rather than cave in, Short contacted the FBI, a lawyer and the black press.

“They’re just trying to bluff me out of my property,” Short told the Los Angeles Sentinel. “I recognize the old Texas technique when I see it.”

They weren’t bluffing, though. It doesn’t seem that way, at any rate.

Because on Dec. 16, 1945, the home exploded in a fireball, the Shorts inside.

Helen Short, badly burned, was seen trying to beat out the flames on the clothing of her children. The family was taken by a friendly neighbor by car to Kaiser Steel Mill Hospital.

Helen Short, 35, died, as did the children, Barry, 9, and Carol Ann, 7.

O’Day Short, 40, lingered in the hospital for a month before dying too, right after the district attorney personally informed him his whole family had perished.

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BY DANA NEACSU: In the Age of Trump Reminiscing the Old Days of Racism