Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon News

From red-line to renaissance
Things are looking up in Harlem, but some poor black families are being driven out by the neighborhood renewal.
By Keith Moore
[08/02/99]

Mercy for a terrorist?
Being a radical means never having to say you're sorry for violent crimes against innocent people yesteryear.
By David Horowitz
[08/02/99]

Who's crying now?
Linda Tripp, whose secret tapes of a tearful Monica Lewinsky almost brought down a president, now faces the long arm of the law herself for recording those fateful tapes illegally.
By Jeff Stein
[07/30/99]

As Atlanta mourns, Washington waits
The massacre of 12 people comes on the eve of the House's consideration of this year's gun control legislation. Don't expect any tough new laws.
By Jake Tapper
[07/30/99]

R.I.P. Prop. 187
California Gov. Gray Davis' flip-flop marks the end of immigrant bashing as a viable political tactic.
By Anthony York
[07/30/99]

Complete archives for News

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Less than a month ago, 11-year-old Santonio Lucas was dragged room to room by his mother's boyfriend, and forced to watch as the man shot first his mother, then his aunt, then four young children. The man shot Santonio, but miraculously, the boy lived, hiding in a closet for eight hours, terrified the gunman would kill him. And in May, a young man walked into an Atlanta-area high school, one month to the day after the Columbine killings, and shot at his fellow students, although he lacked either the heart or the marksmanship necessary for mass murder, and wounded a handful of kids.

Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell seemed as shell-shocked as the rest of Atlanta by the city's latest killing spree. "In the past two weeks," he said with a soft and solemn voice, "we've had two deranged people kill 17 people, perhaps more, in this city. I have no explanation for it."

But if acts like Barton's don't offer easy explanation, they do have a context. There was something peculiarly Southern about the way Barton began his horrific shooting. "He greeted people on the way in," the CEO of All-Tech Investment Group, one of the firms Barton targeted, told the Atlanta Constitution. And when he began shooting, Barton reportedly said, "I hope I'm not upsetting your trading day."

The South does not brook bad manners, even in its killers. Georgia State University historian John Burrison says there's long been an "undercurrent of violence" behind Southern gentility. It began in the 17th century, Burrison says, when the South swelled with three very disparate groups: the English gentry, which became the noble ruling class, the Scots-Irish, who clawed their way up and patented clan feuds in the meantime, and West Africans, whose importation opened the South's eternal wound, slavery. Differences were smoothed over thanks to legendary Southern charm and manners, but the roiling tension and resentment underneath remained. Atlanta has long had one of the nation's highest murder rates, and it has not plummeted there during the '90s nearly as much as it has in other cities.

"The clash of these cultures," said Burrison, "still plays out in Atlanta centuries later." And gives rise to the schisms in the Southern psyche. Live in Atlanta long enough and you'll notice it. Don't ever start a conversation without asking the other person how they're doing. Especially if you don't like them. Don't ever confuse a Southern drawl for stupidity. Especially in business. You'll walk away with less than what you walked in with, but you won't notice till it's too late. And never say what you mean if what you mean is hurtful.

The seeming courtesy with which Barton emptied his 9 mm and .45-caliber weapons is just one detail in a decidedly Southern narrative. He beat his wife and children to death, yet he took the time to cover each body with a blanket, and a note, no less. Modesty is a hard habit to break for some Southerners.

So, apparently, is florid passion, as well as the habit of thinking of people as property: Barton's note repeatedly declared his love for his wife and two children, and insisted they'd be better off dead than having to live with the consequences of his act. With a Faulknerian flourish, he pronounced he couldn't stand to have his son pay for "the sins of the father" -- yet another madman making his delusions the stuff of Greek tragedy.

Next page | The city sold its soul to business