When I was a kid, the best thing in the world was driving in the backseat of my dad’s Cadillac listening to snooze jazz (that’s what I called it), watching the trees go by, wondering how my dad calculated where we’d go when we were cruising, inhaling the leather of the seats, pinching myself to not fall asleep because then maybe he’d think we should go home. Just because I was relaxed did not mean I wanted the moment to end.

So today I realized a few things:

1) Snooze Jazz is comforting now that Mr. Larry Ray Robinson is only with me in spirit. In fact, the nerd that I am, I only listen to NPR and snooze jazz. I am turning into an old person, but for a good cause.

2) I must remember that just because I am relaxed it doesn’t not mean I want the moment to end. That goes for lovers, friends, family, books, movies, trees, beaches, sunshine, grimy hot subway stations and the like. All of you must know that I will never be so relaxed that I take you for granted. I am relaxed because you allow me to be so.

3) There is nothing…nothing like seeing your work published. African Voices has published my short story “Wedding Dress, Capital of Egypt” and I am literally doing cartwheels. It’s the first time the piece has been published. It’s very much dedicated to my Renaissance High School girls who realized that they didn’t quite fit in with the cookie cutter lifestyle we could’ve chosen. Check www.africanvoices.com.

I hope you can pick up the magazine and check the story out. If you’re able, and if you’re out there since I have zero clue how many people read this thing, please drop me a line and let me know your thoughts. The self published novel is coming soon. I’ve scaled down my bling dreams and made it publishing made simple. When it’s available, you most assuredly will know as I basically pour my guts right here. Write here. Sometimes I erase though so you don’t see everything…whoever you are.

So here’s to an almost perfect day. What would have made it perfect, you may ask. Well, I really believe in the element of the unknown and making room for what’s to come. So to answer, I have no idea but it does exist.

Sometimes I feel like (no this is not a Red Hot Chili Peppers tribute) an asshole because I ask for stuff from the universe and it seems to take forever to get. I’ll be honest. I prayed for love for a good part of 15 years before I think I finally broached what I meant. Sometimes I realize that I am not getting what I ask for when I ask for it because it’s just not time and I’ve always been impatient. I’m not a brat so there are a few exceptions that I still don’t get, like my dad dying, but other than that, stories like these make me realize that my ass can wait a little longer if stuff like this is still in the line up.

New evidence collected in 1946 lynching case

* Story Highlights
* Officials said they collected items from property in Walton County, Georgia
* In 1946, a white mob beat and repeatedly shot four black sharecroppers
* One victim, Dorothy Malcom, had her unborn baby cut from her womb
* Case was last documented mass lynching in the United States

By Doug Gross
CNN

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — State and federal investigators said Tuesday that they spent the past two days gathering evidence in the last documented mass lynching in the United States: a grisly slaying of four people that has remained unsolved for more than six decades.

In a written statement, the FBI and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said they collected several items on a property in rural Walton County, Georgia, that were taken in for further investigation.

On July 25, 1946, two black sharecropper couples were shot hundreds of times and the unborn baby of one of the women cut out with a knife at the Moore’s Ford Bridge. One of the men had been accused of stabbing a white man 11 days earlier and was bailed out of jail by a former Ku Klux Klan member and known bootlegger who drove him, his wife, her brother and his wife to the bridge.

The FBI statement said investigators were following up on information recently received in the case, one of several the agency has revived in an effort to close decades-old cases from the civil rights era and before.

“The FBI and GBI had gotten some information that we couldn’t ignore with respect to this case,” GBI spokesman John Bankhead said.

Georgia state Rep. Tyrone Brooks, a longtime advocate for prosecution in the Moore’s Ford case, called news of the search encouraging.

“We just hope and pray they can bring some of these suspects to the bar of justice before they die, because they’re all getting up in age,” said Brooks, the president of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials.

Investigations like the one into the Georgia slayings may have gotten another boost in the past week. A U.S. senator agreed to unlock a bill that would create a “cold case unit” at the U.S. Justice Department.

The legislation is sponsored by Democratic U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia and passed 422-2 in the House. But Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, used an obscure Senate rule to freeze the bill, just as he routinely does on efforts that require government spending.

The plan would authorize $10 million a year for the next 10 years for the Justice Department to create a unit prosecuting pre-1970 civil rights cases. Another $3.5 million would go annually toward the department’s cooperative efforts with local law enforcement.

But last week, a spokesman said Coburn would lift the hold in exchange for a vote on cutting Justice Department spending in other areas.

Law enforcement officials say they face a daunting task prosecuting the deaths of Roger and Dorothy Malcom and George and May Murray-Dorsey.

Many of the dozen or so men who opened fire on the couples with shotguns, rifles and a machine gun are now dead, they say. And in the days following the massacre, residents of the community about 40 miles east of Atlanta, Georgia, were tight-lipped with federal agents sent by President Truman to investigate.

But advocates like Brooks say they think there was enough evidence in FBI files at the time to bring a case against the suspects. He said his group has identified five suspects in the slayings who are still alive.

Morgan County chief sheriff’s Deputy Bruce Wright said the 12-acre area searched Monday and Tuesday may have once been a working farm. The written statement said the current residents of the area are not suspects.

Bankhead and Wright said a bomb squad was called in to detonate some old military-style ordnance found on the property, but those explosives were not thought to be relevant to the Moore’s Ford case.

The lynchings were officially re-opened for investigation by former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes nearly eight years ago and were on a list of revived cold cases cited by former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales early last year.

Brooks said he and other advocates have noticed renewed activity by investigators in the area since then.

“We can feel their presence when we’re there,” he said. “Every time we do something, people show up that we’ve never seen before, and we know they’re not regular folks who live in Walton County. We don’t get in their way, and we don’t ask many questions.”

Historians say there has never again been a documented case of as many people being lynched — killed by mob without due process — in one attack in the United States since Moore’s Ford.

CNN’s Eliott C. McLaughlin contributed to this report.