Black Power Casualties

Last April Donald Lambright cruised slowly along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, a rifle cradled in one arm, firing random shots at passing cars. He killed two people, wounded seventeen, then pulled off the highway and shot his wife and himself.

Nine months earlier Bill Cosby stood before CBS-TV cameras to narrate the first in the Xerox-sponsored series on “Black America.” His voice dripping scorn, he dissected the roles of oldtime Negro movie actors—one in particular. “The tradition of the lazy, stupid, crapshooting, chicken-stealing idiot,” said Cosby, “was popularized by an actor named Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry. The cat made $2 million in five years in the middle Thirties. And everyone who ever saw a movie laughed [at him].”

JR

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John R. Coyne Jr.

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Last April Donald Lambright cruised slowly along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, a rifle cradled in one arm, firing random shots at passing cars. He killed two people, wounded seventeen, then pulled off the highway and shot his wife and himself.

Nine months earlier Bill Cosby stood before CBS-TV cameras to narrate the first in the Xerox-sponsored series on “Black America.” His voice dripping scorn, he dissected the roles of oldtime Negro movie actors—one in particular. “The tradition of the lazy, stupid, crapshooting, chicken-stealing idiot,” said Cosby, “was popularized by an actor named Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry. The cat made $2 million in five years in the middle Thirties. And everyone who ever saw a movie laughed [at him].”