Now I Know More (3 page)

Often, when things like that happen—when taxes get too high—residents move. That's kind of what occurred in this case. But there's a big difference: the people took the town with them.

Toward the end of 1908, Ulysses's remaining townsfolk purchased a new area of land about two miles west of Ulysses itself. In February 1909, the people started to move. Buildings were placed on horse-drawn skids and wagons and pulled to the new location of Ulysses. One of the hotels was cut into two parts and, over the course of several days, transported to the new site. By June of that same year, all the residents had moved, as had many of the municipal buildings, and the old town of Ulysses became a bondholder-owned ghost town.

General Order Number Eleven was short. Three items were wrapped into one edict. It read:

1. “The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the Department within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.
   
2. “Post commanders will see to it that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and anyone returning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished with permit from headquarters.
   
3. “No passes will be given these people to visit headquarters for the purpose of making personal application of trade permits.”
   

In short, “no Jews allowed,” effective nearly immediately.

But the “Department” wasn't a section of Nazi-controlled Europe or Inquisition-era Spain. The edict wasn't issued by Adolf Hitler. It was issued by Ulysses S. Grant, who would later be president of the United States. The year was 1862, and the “Department” was the “Department of Tennessee,” an area consisting of western Tennessee, western Kentucky, and northern Mississippi.

In the spring of 1862, Grant, then a general of the Union army, made great advances in the American Civil War, taking control of many of the areas listed previously. His next goal was to march south, with Vicksburg, Mississippi, in his sights. But commanding the army wasn't his only job. Despite the war, the North and South continued to have some limited economic activity between them; the North bought cotton from Southern plantations. Grant was also charged with enforcing the Union-set limits on the amount of cotton that could legally be imported into the North. Illegal cotton dealings were rampant and legal ones were a bother; merchants would come to Grant's headquarters seeking permits, as one historian noted. Grant viewed most of these merchants as war profiteers, and on December 17, he decided to ban them from the region by proclamation. But for some reason—
Slate
notes
that most of the “smugglers and traders [. . .] were not Jewish at all”—Grant's order targeted Jews, and all Jews in the area, for that matter.

The order was of limited effectiveness (against Jews, that is; it was almost entirely ineffective against smugglers because most weren't subject to the order) for two reasons. First, the order didn't get distributed immediately, as communications lines were disrupted by Confederate raids just hours later (unrelated to the order, though). Second, word of the order spread throughout the country and eventually to President Lincoln, who ordered Grant to rescind it. He did so, officially, on January 18 of the following year. Many Jews in the area were indeed displaced during the month the order was in force, however, and it kindled fears of anti-Semitism throughout the country. As
Slate
further
said, “It brought to the surface deep-seated fears that, in the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation, Jews might replace blacks as the nation's most despised minority.” Further, for perhaps the first time, American Jews needed to openly consider whether to vote for candidates who were good for the country but bad for Jews themselves.

Grant, for his part, claimed he had not intended the anti-Semitic aspects of the order. His headquarters showed some surprise when Jews who were not smugglers were relocated, even though the plain language of the order included all Jews. Grant also later stated that he didn't draft the order and hastily signed it without reviewing it, but other communications by Grant around that period also singled out “Jews” or “Israelites.” To his credit, though, during his term in the Oval Office, Grant became the first U.S. president to attend a synagogue service.

Depending on one's definition, there are roughly 5 to 10 million Jews living in the United States, constituting about 2.5 percent of the population. A smaller sub-group—perhaps as many as a million—keeps kosher, which means they follow a set of religious dietary restrictions to some degree or another. With many different customs and interpretations of the law, the rules about what's kosher and what's not are complicated—too complicated to detail in these pages. However, there are a few things that most agree upon: You can't eat pork or shellfish, and there's no mixing milk and meat (sorry, no cheeseburgers). And the whole idea that a rabbi has to bless the food? That's a myth.

In general, the food is supposed to be supervised. The rabbi watches its preparation and the processes involved to ensure that nothing disallowed happens. When the food is shipped after preparation, it is typically sealed so that the end consumer knows that nothing has been introduced since. That's why kosher airplane food, you may have noticed, is served in foil or plastic wrap, while typical in-flight meals are served already open.

It also may be why kosher meals are unusually popular in prison.

In the spring of 2013, the
Jewish Daily Forward
noted that an estimated 24,000 inmates ate kosher foods in American prisons, but only 4,000 considered themselves Jewish before their incarceration. The
New York Times
published an article in early 2014 suggesting that nearly 5,000 inmates in Florida alone requested kosher meals, with only a fraction having claimed to be Jewish prior to that request. Kosher meals, when in prison, aren't just for those who subscribe to certain religious beliefs.

Media reports suggest that the reason ostensibly non-Jewish prisoners prefer the alternative menu isn't only because of taste. Some feel the fact that the meals are pre-prepared and wrapped makes them safer to eat. As one prison chaplain told the
Times
, inmates are often concerned (rationally or otherwise) “about how the food could be adulterated, how the prison uses out-of-date products, how they use things that don't meet U.S.D.A. standards, how sex offenders may be handling their food.” Pre-packaged, sealed meals make all of that less likely.

It also makes the meals tradable commodities. Citing the practice at one Californian prison, the
Forward
notes that “prisoners who keep kosher receive three daily meals in a sack that they bring back to their cells. [. . .] Inmates frequently trade kosher food for prison-issued paper money, which can be used to buy items in the facility's canteen.” Kosher food, in an ironic twist, fuels the black market for contraband items.

Unfortunately for taxpayers, the kosher food isn't cheap, costing two to three times that of non-kosher meals. While some states try to identify opportunists, it's hard to do so. After all, and for good reason, American laws and culture generally allow people to be part of whatever religion they want, without any second-guessing by the government.

On June 7, 1998, a forty-nine-year-old African-American man from Texas, named James Byrd Jr., was brutally murdered by three men. While Byrd was still alive, the perpetrators tied his ankles to the back of a pickup truck and dragged him for three miles; Byrd was decapitated in the process. Byrd's murder resulted in legislation, both on the state and federal level, that addresses criminal activities typically called “hate crimes.” Two of Byrd's three assailants were sentenced to death, with the third sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. Of the two given the death penalty, one still sits on Death Row. The other, Lawrence Russell Brewer, was executed by the state of Texas on September 21, 2011.

Brewer's ritual “last meal” was Texas's last such “last meal.”

The origin of the traditional “last meal” of the condemned person's choosing—a final rite of passage before the inmate's final passing—has been lost to antiquity. But most U.S. states with the death penalty still allow those about to be executed a special meal beforehand (albeit not always as their true “last” meal). Texas, until Brewer, was no exception. Some requests were basic but high-end, with at least two men (Ronald Clark O'Bryan in 1984 and Dennis Bagwell in 2005) asking for, and receiving, feasts with steak and french fries. Other requests were just plain strange. In 2001, a murderer named Gerald Lee Mitchell requested that the state give him a bag of assorted Jolly Ranchers as a last meal; this request was granted. In 2000, a man named Odell Barnes asked for “justice, equality, and world peace.” In 1990, James Edward Smith requested a lump of dirt used for voodoo rituals, as a way of marking his body for the afterlife. His request was denied, and he was given a cup of yogurt instead.

Brewer's request? Per the
New York Times
, he asked for: