Will Obama in the White House Satisfy the Ghost in the Parking Lot ?

About a half mile from my home there is a small strip mall that holds several small stores and an independent grocery store. I'm not going to mention the grocery store by name, after all it is not their fault that a racist killer made them famous for a while.

Every time I go by that store I think of the crime that happened there. Every single time I go by it, I remember.

I was working at the time on a court ordered plan for the integration of higher education in Oklahoma. I was not a popular fellow to say the least. I am white, but I had an integrated staff so we all felt the effect of what happened. We could put ourselves or our families in this picture without any great effort of imagination.

The recent inaugural of Barack Obama has brought back so many memories like this to so many people. Have we really changed we ask? I don't think deep down we have. But then again maybe we have.

It was on October 21, 1979, ".... The weather had been perfect for the children's Hula Hoop contest that warm October Sunday. As nurse's aide Marian Bresette, her black common-law husband, Jesse Taylor, and her three children piled into the family Ford afterward, their thoughts were on supper.

They stopped at a supermarket on the way home, and as Jesse was returning with a bag of groceries the first shot was fired. Store employees heard him moaning "no, no, no" as he slumped against the door of the car. Then two more shots threw him dead to the pavement. His wife ran screaming to his side and, as she bent over him, she too was hit—by a single, fatally accurate shot to the chest.

Casings from a high-caliber rifle were reportedly found in a grove of evergreens 75 yards away, but the killer escaped without being seen. There was no apparent reason for the killings."

From: http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20077938,00.html

That Monday I had a staff meeting and told my staff to cancel their meetings and appearances for the next two weeks until we knew more about these killings. We often went out as mixed race teams to do our job across the State. It seemed prudent to hold back and find out what this was all about. After the two weeks even though we didn't know why it had happened we went back to business, but kept our senses tuned to our environment.

It took a while but eventually we found out it was a racist serial killer named Joseph Paul Franklin that had blow away Jesse and his wife Marian in that grocery store parking lot on that warm Sunday afternoon.

"Franklin was a drifter, roaming up and down the East Coast, always looking for chances to "cleanse the world" of people he considered inferior, especially blacks and Jews. He sustained himself by robbing banks and often sold or traded the guns he used to kill. Despite being partially blind in his left eye and completely blind in his right eye, Franklin was a proficient marksman, and killed most of his victims from over 100 feet (30 m) away. He did not touch or try to contact the majority of victims, instead assassinating them from a distance; thereby falling into the category of a mission oriented serial killer. He was a highly organized killer, who would plan in advance several escape routes and techniques in which to leave no evidence."
---Wikipedia

He may have killed as many as 20 people or even more. We just don't know. He might have been able to really up the score except he got too ambitious and shot Larry Flynt and Vernon Jordon, two highly visible targets. That put him in the lime light.

He was caught in Florida in 1980 while selling his blood plasma. The nurse on duty recognized a tattoo from a TV program about him.

"Franklin has been linked by either indictment or confession to 20 murders, 6 aggravated assaults, 16 bank robberies and two bombings. He has confessed to eight murders, and has received several life sentences or death sentences for others. He made several confessions in the late 1990s on the condition that he confessed to "an attractive white female investigator"."
--Wikipedia

I drive by that grocery store maybe about twice a week. I always think about the killings when I do. I can see the trees from where Franklin fired his rifle when I go by. There are ghost there standing in that parking lot. Ghosts that have yet to be vindicated.
Franklin has never been tried for their murders.

I wonder how many ghost will have to be satisfied before we truly are a different Nation?
Can the Obama effect give them all rest? Maybe some of them. At least I hope so.

Franklin is still being held on death row at the Potosi Correctional Center near Mineral Point, Missouri.