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...when I saw a story that a white man, and not just an ordinary citizen, but a public official, not only claimed to own a family heirloom fashioned from the skin of a black man lynched in 1896, but also specifically told African American residents of Algood, TN (that is actually the name of the town, I swear on the spirit of the Flying Spaghetti Monster) in order to intimidate a young black man from filing a complaint against the Algood Fire Department because its Deputy Fire Chief had refused to give his mother CPR, which might have saved her life, because she was, well, BLACK!!!! (excuse the all caps, but I find them appropriate in this instance), why, I just had to ask.

Apparently, the answer to my question is a man named "William Sewell,"a long time medical investigator with the Tennessee Department of Health. Here's the rest of the story:

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