Alfredisms
The Polk Progress was a Nebraska treasure that ceased publication in late 1989 after 82 years as a weekly newspaper. From 1955 until its last issue, the editor and publisher was the late Norris Alfred. In its last few months, the Progress had 900 subscribers in 45 states. Alfred was a remarkable Nebraskan with an uncanny eye for connecting the present with the future. Prairie Fire has collaborated with the Alfred family, the University of Nebraska School of Journalism and the Nebraska State Historical Society to locate and archive many of Norris's writings. We are capitalizing on our good fortune to present many of the Norris Alfred writings to our readership. We believe that his observations are as fresh and relevant to today's world as they were when originally written.
Sept. 23, 1971
“The Prison Riots and ‘Southern Strategy’”
By Norris Alfred
Living in a rural Nebraska village, surrounded by summer’s greening, a blue sky, a full circle horizon with sunrises and sunsets; where the only manifest hostility is nature’s violent storms—we cannot conceive what life is like in the black ghettos of the cities. To grow up on concrete, in a hard, sharp-edged environment where security can only be obtained with a lock, is foreign to us.
We are fortunate to have grown up in rural Nebraska and to be able to continue living here. It is not complimentary to the society in which we live to also have to state we consider it fortunate our mother and father were white. We do not have to cope with the degrading word “nigger.” A word that degrades the user more than the person to whom it is directed.
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