Lonely Planet Nigeria

I am the editor of a quarterly called the Rural Round Top Register based in a rural area of central Texas with a population of 77 years. My neighbors are mostly good, but very conservative. They find it difficult to change.

Many of them - black, white and Hispanic - as I have strong feelings about the state of race in this country and we are not always the same side of the fence. My country has voted 70% Republican in recent elections. I printed this story in the first issue after Barack Obama became the elected president of the United States

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I received a call on Nov. 13, nine days after the election of America's first African-American president. The caller - whose voice had an accent characteristic of my fellow Texans Rural - asked me: "Why no documents have reported that the incident occurred Klan at Dairy Queen in Bellville.

According to the man on the phone, he met a guy he knew "to the lumber yard" and her boyfriend saw the whole thing. There was mayhem at the Dairy Queen in Bellville (a small community about 50 miles outside of Houston), when some black people "before I used some white people."

The next thing you know, he said, the Ku Klux Klan hoods swarming around and leaves. They blocked traffic and ask people in passing cars what they were thinking about Black people. Before long the police were everywhere. He wanted to know why the event had been no media coverage.

I wondered how such an event might occur if controversial near me and I have heard of. After all, we are the biggest draw for each publication number in the editorial area and we try to keep up. I started to question the appellant about his "friend", telling him that I needed an eyewitness, if I write a story about the confrontation.

I said that I look at him, but he did not let me off the phone. He began to recite a litany of things he thought were wrong with our country - the national debt, entrenched special interests in Washington, and more. He really warmed to the topic of border security. He claimed all the illegal aliens voted and swung the presidential election, then proceeded to tell me a racist joke.

I took the phone and called the department's Austin County Sherriff. Just as I suspected, no event occurs. It was an attempt to create controversy where there was none, and to intimidate those who had hope for the election of Barack Obama.

I do not have the name of the caller, but I knew who he was. His name is Jim Crow.

I know Jim. We grew up in the same neighborhood. It was practically a member of my family, but we never had one.

Shocked and agry, I told my wife about the conversation and she told a story she heard that day. Apparently, the man assured of a friend arrived this morning on a sales call. He wanted to know if she had heard they were tearing the White House Rose Garden, now that Obama has been elected.

Confused, she said she had not heard. "True," said his agent. "They are replaced by a watermelon patch." Apparently, Jim Crow sells insurance, too.

Two weeks before the election, a national poll indicated that 30% of my fellow Texans still believe Obama is a Muslim. Each of us had been buried in the coverage of elections for two years. There is no chance someone who has a television or read a newspaper had no opportunity to explain that obvious lie.

However, you see, "Muslim" is a pseudonym. Jim Crow loves.