Strange Fruit Indeed!

Depending on your of view of Mr. William Bennett, former Secretary of Education for the Reagan administration, On September 28 of this year (2005), Mr. Bennett uttered a very unsettling or revealing view. In response to a caller to his 'Morning in America' show as they discussed ‘Freakonomics’, a book authored by Mr. William Morrow, Mr. Bennett said the following. 'But I do know that its true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.'

Wow! I was stunned when I heard that he had said such a thing. Of course, his point of view was softened a bit by his adding 'that would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do' in the middle of his opinion. I read his book, 'Book of Virtues' and quite frankly, and I enjoyed it.

Interestingly, the Rev. Jesse Jackson asked a couple of questions in an article he wrote for Right to Life News in January 1977. He asked 'What happens to the mind of a person, and the moral fabric of a nation, that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience? What kind of a person, and what kind of a society will we have ... if life can be taken so casually?’ (Tragically, he seems to have a different position now)

This brings me to an interesting bit of history. In a letter dated December 10, 1939, Mrs. Margaret Sanger (the founder of Planned Parenthood Federation of America) wrote: 'The minister's work is also important and also he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.' This letter was to instruct a colleague by the name of Dr. Clarence Gable (he was an heir to the Procter & Gamble fortune who later helped pay for efforts to expand North Carolina's eugenics program) as to the proper way to execute the program known as the 'Negro Project', which was to promote sterilization and birth control among blacks. Note: Eugenics - The movement devoted to improving the human species through the control of hereditary factors in mating. In the early 20th century they strongly espoused racial supremacy and purity of the Aryan race and the idea of containing the ‘inferior’ (especially black) races through segregation, sterilization, birth control, and abortion.

Even though there have been those that would defend the words of Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Sanger, I find both of these statements are reprehensible. If we condemn the words of Mr. William Bennett, and we do, then we should condemn the words of Mrs. Margaret Sanger even more. Mr. Bennett's words are worthy of rebuke, to say the least, yet, he has not erected an apparatus to carry out the goal of his ill-spoken position. However, Mrs. Sanger not only wrote those words, but has left intact an organization that appears to be committed to carrying out the her sinister goal of exterminating Black people. Over 13 million African-American babies have been aborted since 1972, while the abortion industry received over four billion dollars in revenue to destroy these lives. Between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 African-Americans were lynched in the U.S. That number is surpassed in less than three days by abortion.

This reminds me of the song ‘Strange Fruit’ that Ms. Billie Holliday recorded in 1939. This song depicted the tragedy of the lynching of African-Americans. This first sentence of this song is so gut-wrenchingly descriptive. It follows: 'Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.' Today, there is no blood on the leaves and root to see, and the bodies are not swinging from a poplar tree. Yet, according to Social Worker and Civil Rights Activist, Erma Clardy Craver (deceased), when 17,000 aborted babies were found in a dumpster outside a pathology laboratory in Los Angeles, California, some 12-15,000 were observed to be black. Listen my friend, the blood of the unborn is on our hands, because we have not sounded the alarm, we have not defended our unborn, we have allowed others to tell us what is good for us and the fruit of our intimacy. If a racial group is to survive, the fruit must be saved and nourished. Over 13 million African-American babies aborted since 1972! Strange fruit indeed!