Blog #10

About Miceal Westerman


Guthrie, Kentucky a place where races are separated and you are forbidden to step out of your boundaries, on January 14, 1995 that was changed. A young white man by the name of Micheal Westerman was shot and killed for riding around in a mostly black neighborhood with the confederate flag whipping on the back of his truck, a few young black guys saw him before in their neighborhood asking black people if they wanted to have some chicken and go swimming. Stories have been passed generations to generations about white people not liking black people and this generalization that people of different races have to stay on different sides of the line.
Hannah Westerman (Micheal’s wife) left alone with twins and hatred against the people who left her with what she has to live with for the rest of her life, “They got what they deserved-well, they deserved to die.” Hannah has to deal with the hurtful pain of looking in the closet and not seeing Micheal’s clothes or looking at their twins and seeing Micheal’s face. But there is something that just doesn’t make any sense, I could understand that any wife who just lost their husband would be mad but it seems like there is a little more to this flag then people seem. She said many times “The flag was red, the truck was red. They matched.” But it seems like everywhere they go white people are going to mention the flag and its meaning so I’m pretty sure that Micheal has heard about the flag and what it meant many times. There were also some allegations about someone screaming “nigger” outside of Micheal’s car, but Hannah testified saying that never happened and they lied. Were their witnesses around? What really happened?
Freddie Morrow (The shooter) grew up with a single mother in the descent part of Chicago. Then after his mom lost her job they were forced to move were they could afford to have a roof over their heads and not have to be on the streets. Since the move Freddie’s mother (Cynthia Batie) started to realize a change in Freddie from the nights of coming in late to the mysterious girls talking about how Freddie got them pregnant and other people Cynthia had to deal with, Cynthia sent Freddie off to Guthrie to shape him up. When Freddie arrived in Guthrie everything was fine he met a nice girl and started to attend church with her family, and then he came face-to-face with a bad group on the other side of town that wasn’t there to help him. On January 14, 1995 he was going to do something that would get him locked up in a cage like a bird for the rest of his life, one of his friends Damien Daren told him about this racist white guy that needed to be taken care of. “BOOM” instantly a life was taken.
There was so many different about what really happened, what started this? Who started this?