Mississippi Burning

In the 1960s, Mississippi proved to be one of the most deeply entrenched, if not the most, deeply entrenched state in the Union to resist the African American civil rights movement. As the director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s (SNCC) Mississippi Project, Bob Moses, often compared to the Biblical Moses in the context of the Civil Rights movement, led voter registration and education drives in rural towns across the Mississippi Delta such as Greenwood and Rureville. During his campaign, Moses suffered constant physical beatings and threats at the hands of law enforcement, as well as regular jailings.

When James Meredith sought to become the first registered black student at Ole Miss in 1962 in Oxford, Mississippi (also the birthplace of William Faulkner), Governor Ross Barnett’s steadfast refusal to allow it to take place sparked riots that resulted in two people dead and nearly 80 wounded, many of whom were U.S. Marshals sent in by the Kennedy Administration. Eighteen months later, three civil rights workers - James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner - were killed in Philadelphia, MS after being released from the Neshoba County jail, where they had been booked for a few hours on charges of speeding. (Chaney was from Mississippi and Goodman and Schwerner were from NYC). Edgar Ray Killen, a member of the Neshoba County Klu Klux Klan was only convicted of conspiracy to murder them 13 months ago. That’s right....only 13 months ago. The deaths of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner inspired the movie Mississippi Burning.

Last weekend, I took a road trip to neighboring Mississippi along with my friends Bobby and Rhonda. Though we went to enjoy the sites and scenery in the central and southwestern parts of the state, Mississippi’s notorious clash with race relations was never far from our mind or from our itinerary. Our first stop was in Vicksburg, site of the famous Siege of Vicksburg. Vicksburg played a crucial role in the Civil War because it was situated on a high bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, and thus was necessary to control traffic on the waterway. In June of 1863, Union forces laid siege to the city and 47 days later, on July 4th, Confederate soldiers surrendered, marking a major turning point in the war. (As a result of this defeat, the town of Vicksburg didn’t celebrate July 4th until recently). The National Military Park in Vicksburg is the south’s equivalent to the National Military Park in Gettysburg, Pa., and we spent the day touring the park and walking downtown along the Mississippi River.

From Vicksburg, we followed the Mississippi River southwest and made our way to Natchez, a town known for its antebellum (i.e., pre-civil war) homes, and for its history as the center of the Natchez Indian Tribe. Today, Natchez is a quaint collection of beautiful antebellum mansions, a bunch of small-town bars and restaurants on Main Street, and a gigantic casino boat on the Mississippi River. The town turned out to be one of the most tourist-friendly places I’ve been to all summer. Though we were quickly identified as the “Yankees in town,” we had a whole group of friends to hang out with after a night of checking out the local watering holes. By the same token, Natchez also seemed to me to be one of the most conspicuously separated towns that I’ve been in all summer. The bars that we went to were almost 100% white, and we wound up being engaged in an hour-long conversation with a musician from Louisiana who didn’t beat around the bush when he told us that he didn’t want to sound prejudiced, but he thought too many African Americans were on welfare and simply sat around on their laurels taking advantage of tax payers’ money. Especially the ones affected by Hurricane Katrina.

On Sunday, we made our way back north to Jackson, along the Natchez Trace Parkway, which goes from Natchez all the way up into Tennessee, and commemorates the migration route of the Natchez Trace Indians. Jackson was the site of some of the most famous civil rights events in the 1960s. The first Freedom Ride ended in Jackson, MS in June 1961 when the riders, who consisted of both black and white activists seeking to integrate Greyhound’s southern bus system, were arrested upon arriving in the city. Two years later, Medgar Evers, the head of the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP, was killed by a white supremacist in front of his home.

Today, downtown Jackson is a pretty bland place with the exception of a few cafes and bars. Using a guidebook for direction however, we drove through the streets to pass by sites where sit-ins and integration protests took place 40 years ago, and then wound up at Millsaps College. In 1965, Millsaps College became the first private college in the south to integrate. On Sunday, it was hosting the New Orleans Saints training camp, which was really why we went there in the first place. (Though the Saints’ highly touted draft pick, Reggie Bush, had ended his contract holdout the day we went to training camp, he didn’t report to camp until Tuesday because he couldn’t get a flight out of LA). Seeing players who had biceps twice the size of my thighs put together was a pretty remarkable sight.

Just as the sun was setting Sunday evening, we arrived at our last stop of the trip - Philadelphia, Mississippi. Our time there was relatively brief, but driving through the streets and seeing the poverty that still permeates the black section of town brought echoes of what James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner must have seen when they came on a mission to effect positive social change. Seeing the memorial to them in front of the small Neshoba County Baptist Church, also reminded me that my work in Alabama this summer is the offspring of the cause that they died for.

With that, we made our way back to Montgomery, Alabama. There are still places I want to see in Mississippi. I want to hear the blues music of the Mississippi Delta (that’s the northeastern part of the state) where, legend has it, the blues player Robert Leroy Johnson sold his soul to the devil at a railroad crossing, and died at the age of 27 after recording only 29 songs. (Those 29 songs are now among the most famous blues songs to ever have been played.) I’d also like to travel to Oxford, birthplace of William Faulkner and home to the University of Mississippi. Last, but not least, I wouldn’t mind swinging through Tupelo, Mississippi, birthplace of none other than Elvis Presley.

I’ll just have to save that for the next time I make my way down south.