BY KAREN WEBB

Some of the Democrat representatives are obnoxious and thin-skinned, Moore said. Being in the minority causes a constant grab for attention, he said.

“Obnoxious and thin-skinned” is the way Rep. Lewis H. Moore puts it and I guess we know who he is calling “obnoxious and thin-skinned.” I am guessing Rep. Mike Shelton has been called worse. I need to make it clear that I speak for myself alone. I am proud to call Mike a friend, but he can speak for himself.

Had I been born African American in Oklahoma how would I feel if a state legislator decided to be the first ever to rearrange the décor at the state Capitol because he did not want to be seen speaking in front of the picture of the first African American president. It is not like I would have ever had a president who looked like me, had I been African American.

Were it I he had been dealing with, “obnoxious and thin-skinned” would have been an understatement. By the way, anyone needing instruction in the art of constant grabs for attention by the minority needs to look no further than what Moore’s party is doing on the Federal level and that constant grab for attention reaches to Oklahoma.

The first week after the first African American was elected president, Oklahomans bought guns like Civil War II was about to start at any second because the country had been taken over by the worst of the worst. It has only been one year and you would think there had been tanks in the streets of OKC.

During George W. Bush’s terms people were arrested and removed from his presence because they were wearing shirts with a crossed out “W” in a circle. People were arrested for having anti-Bush stickers on their cars at events where Bush appeared. You were not supposed to criticize a president in time of war. Well, we are still at war thanks to Bush and people are getting by with showing up at events where the president is speaking armed to the teeth.

They claimed the first African American president was not a citizen even though he has a birth certificate and his birth was announced in the newspapers in 1960 when he was born. They seem to think his parents were psychic. The minute they saw the infant they knew he was destined to become the first African American president so they faked everything.

Moore sees no reason why any African American should take anything personal. Well, Moore is from Illinois. It has taken a hell of a lot of patience in the face of an awful lot of abuse to get to the point where Mike could be elected in Oklahoma.

Moore is demanding an apology from “someone” because people are calling and threatening his family. However, I don’t hear him apologizing for all of the threatening calls regarding President Obama. There have been several times as many as for any other president. I guess he thinks Shelton has provoked the wrath, but he and the tea-baggers haven’t done that? I have no idea whether or not Mike has ever been threatened, but I would be surprised if he hasn’t.

What sort of things could have happened to cause a person to be upset that the first time this has happened was when the first African American president is in office? There was that little event in Tulsa in 1921 when a young African American man was force to go to the only restroom he was allowed to use in downtown Tulsa and was accused of being fresh to the female elevator operator. My mother-in-law who was born in Oklahoma in 1923 watched the special on the event and was shocked she had never heard of it.

In 1911, a mother and her 14-year-old son were lynched in Okemah, OK. A deputy sheriff bled to death from a gunshot to the leg after they came to her house seeking a person who had stolen meat. Her husband confessed to the theft, but they also arrested his wife and son. He was convicted and sent away. She actually begged to have someone kill her a week before the lynching because she knew what was going to happen, but they forced her to watch her son be lynched. They were afraid she and her son might not be convicted.

In 2007 at my mother’s 85th birthday party, her uncle, who was the same age, told me a story about Oklahoma. He said that about 1939, his girlfriend’s mother bought a car and asked him to drive them to Oklahoma to visit relatives. At a town just north of the Texas-Oklahoma border they had car trouble.

He was sitting with some locals on a wooden sidewalk waiting for the car to be fixed when a man rode very fast through town on a horse dragging an African American man with a rope around his neck. The man was dead, but my uncle started to get up and was told by the man next to him not to because the same thing could happen to him.

At the end of what is called the “Lynching Era,” around 1930, Oklahoma was No. 13 out of the 48 states in lynchings. Most of those before 1900 were white men lynched for cattle stealing. Between statehood and 1930 there were around 60 lynchings and all but a few were black men and women. In Georgia, in 1918, a man was forced to watch his 14-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son lynched as punishment for him.

If they weren’t lynched, they were whipped and, according to Oklahoma Gov. Jack Walton, there were 2,500 whippings in 1922 in Oklahoma. During the civil rights movement of the late ‘50s and ‘60s, Clara Looper was arrested over 35 times for trying to make it possible for Obama and Shelton to be elected.

Why on earth would that cause anyone to be upset and Rep. Moore was upset that Shelton took down a picture of a tax cheat [former House Speaker Lance Cargill], but so nothing wrong with showing how little he thought of the sacrifices it had taken to get Shelton and Obama to where they are today.

Maybe Lewis H. Moore should get a re-decorating business after he leaves office which can’t happen soon enough for me. By the way, I believe there are rules governing who can move the décor around at the Capitol. I am absolutely positive that I would be arrested if I decided to move anything.

I particularly like the part where Moore reported it was right next to him on the wall and he took it down right in front of everybody.

He should have done it the GOP way, on the sly, where only the security camera was recording it.

Maybe you have to be elected to redecorate the Capitol to suit your fancy. They should not have to bolt the furnishings in place to keep GOP representatives from moving them. Just because there isn’t a plaque on the wall saying “do not remove” doesn’t mean you get to move it.

– Karen Webb lives in Moore, OK and is a regular contributor to The Oklahoma Observer