Return-Path: <nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id gBOJ9RX00914; Tue, 24 Dec 2002 14:09:27 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2002 14:09:27 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <002501c2ab7e$937061c0$965ef7a5@MCORLEY> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: "Mary Ann Corley" <macorley1@earthlink.net> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-POVRACELIT:996] Mississippi Memory X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1106 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; Status: O Content-Length: 11094 Lines: 210 THe following article is from The Hartford Courant. SOMETHING PERSONAL Mississippi Memory Not everyone in Mississippi voted for Strom Thurmond back in 1948. But everyone remembers what he stood for. By FRANK HARRIS III December 22, 2002 Most of them are dead now - relatives like Aunt Enda and Aunt Lillie Mae - refugees from Mississippi who, decades ago, headed west and swore they'd never go back. They kept their promise, despite family members who thought it was not a good thing to forsake relatives because of bad memories and experiences under Mississippi Jim Crow. Nevertheless, my aunts - my great-aunts - persisted, forsaking family for decades until family came to see them. I was a teen visiting California for the first time in the early 1970s when I heard my great-aunts express their sentiments about Mississippi and the South. I didn't really question them about it and they never went into detail about exactly what led them to leave. All I know is they never set foot on Mississippi soil again, keeping their promise, living and dying in the Golden State where their bodies are buried and their souls are resting far from the dirt in the land of cotton. Old times there were never forgotten. What remains "unforgotten" can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on one's perspective. Sen. Trent Lott's unforgotten is of a state and nation that would, in his words, be better off had America's citizens followed Mississippi's lead in voting for Sen. Strom Thurmond in the 1948 presidential election. But my family members, whose roots reach deep into Mississippi's dark past, did not vote for Thurmond. They did not vote for anybody. Colored effectively had no vote in Mississippi in '48. Fear, lawlessness, violence and intimidation played a large part in that. From 1882 to 1968, Mississippi led the nation in lynchings with 581, according to the Tuskegee Institute archives. While there were no recorded lynchings in my parents' hometown of Rosedale during this time, there were lynchings in neighboring towns so that no Negro, no matter how old or young, male or female, felt safe in Mississippi. Before I was born, my mom and brother were visiting her parents in Mississippi when the teenager Emmett Till was killed for, supposedly, whistling at a white woman. My father immediately called for mom to come back home to Illinois. This was Trent Lott's Mississippi. This was the Mississippi of my parents and their parents before them. This is the Mississippi my parents left behind. I am the son of Mississippi refugees. My parents left in '53 shortly after they were married. They caught a train to Illinois and settled in the town of Waukegan, where my older brother was born in '54, I in '56 and my sister in '63. There were others from Mississippi who settled in the circle that was our neighborhood. One of them was Mrs. Warren, who lived just three houses down. Mrs. Warren, a heavy-set woman, was older than my parents but shared the same values of honesty and strictness. In her house, in the days before official day care, she watched many of the neighborhood kids while the parents went off to work. When my dad and mom first brought my brother and me over, she told them that if we didn't "mind" her - that is obey or show respect - she would have to whip us. My parents said they'd expect nothing less. Needless to say, we minded. All we had to do was see that leather strap and we minded. Over the years though, we formed a bond. She became like family. When I would return from college on semester break, I would visit her. When I married my wife from Bloomfield, she surprised me by flying into Bradley Airport with my parents to attend the wedding, where she was introduced as "the babysitter of the groom." But it was something she said during one of my earlier visits that has stuck in my soul and is particularly resonant given Trent Lott's words about the nation being better off had Strom Thurmond been elected in '48 and his segregationist policies followed. It occurred when she returned to Mississippi for the first time in years. While there, she became ill and had to see a doctor at a clinic. "Frankie," she said, sitting back in her chair, "I can't believe how much things have changed down there. There was this young white doctor and he called me 'Mrs. Warren.' " 'Mrs. Warren,' " she said again. My mom had once told me about her father, who was called "boy" by a white cop younger than him. All he could say was "Yes suh" or "No suh." There were many instances of grown black men and women never accorded the title of "Mr." or "Mrs." It was always a first name or a host of unwelcome, demeaning nicknames. So I understood what Mrs. Warren was saying. Most notably, I saw the look on her face. It was one of awe and wonder. And there was a light in her eyes the likes of which I had never seen. It was as if something she'd never dreamed would happen had happened and she was alive to see it and feel it. All I could do was feel glad for her, glad she had lived long enough to see the good change that had come in her place of birth. She died several years back, and I can't help but wonder what she would say if she had heard Trent Lott's statements about segregation and the way things used to be. I can't help but wonder, too, what my great-aunts would say: "See there. They'll never change. White folks down there will always want to go back to the way it used to be. They'll always want to instill fear in colored people." Would that be their words? They had long left Mississippi by the time I was old enough to remember my parents taking my brother, sister and me to visit the folks during the summer. This was our vacation, traveling by car, winding our way down I-57 South from Illinois, crossing into Tennessee, through Memphis and then down small Mississippi highways. I think dad tried to time his stops so we'd stop as infrequently as we could at gas stations in Mississippi until we got to where we were going. This particular time, night descended and we were low on gas and nowhere close to Rosedale. My dad ended up parking in front of the pumps of a closed gas station waiting for the morning light to come. Mom fussed and fumed at dad half the night because he hadn't listened to her when she'd suggested he stop and get gas earlier. Looking back at it now, I know mom was more fearful than angry. Here we were, a colored family in the heart of Dixie at night with our Land of Lincoln license plates. Foremost in her mind had to be the fear of some rebel-yelling rednecks or rebel-yelling cops. My dad, though he didn't show it or say much that night as mom fretted, was probably just as fearful. That is not to say he was unprepared. Years later, I would learn he kept a loaded .38 revolver in the glove compartment every trip we made South in the 1960s. He finally stopped carrying it in the 1970s when things were better. I think it is genuinely difficult for people to change their ways. Those who go their entire lives believing something, being taught by parents that a certain way is the right way, a certain people are a certain way, well, it can take a great deal for them to overcome. That goes for blacks as well as whites. The remarkable thing is despite all the injustices and all the wrongs, I saw and heard no heavy dose of bitterness, anger or hatred toward white people from those from the South. This is not to say this sentiment was absolute or universal. In my neighborhood in Waukegan, Ill., one of the prize jewels was the basketball court that drew people from throughout our side of town. On a couple of occasions, someone brought in a white friend or two, and one of the neighbors, an old man from Mississippi who lived next door to Mrs. Warren, was steamed about it. He wanted the white boys out. One of the guys I was playing basketball with called the old man prejudiced; others, however, pointed out how we didn't know what he had experienced in the South. We figured it must have been bad. Truth is, we rarely know what drives some to hate and never forgive while others are able to move on. It doesn't justify their attitude or action - but it gives it perspective. But it is perspective that is difficult to see, not only when people are as different as night and day, as Lott is to many African-Americans, but as African-Americans are to each other. It was around my 20th birthday that I saw cotton in bloom for the first time. All the years of visiting Mississippi before that had been in summer or winter, but it was September now, and the puffs of white cotton dotted the fields. For me, it was a fascinating sight, and I asked my dad to stop the car. I got out, pulled a branch off and brought it with me. My father, however, was quite cool to the sight of cotton. He had seen plenty of cotton in his life. As a boy, he had picked it in the fields, along with so many others. It was a way to make money. It was a hard way to make money beneath a hot Mississippi sun. We see cotton differently. Though I understand how my dad feels, I know I will never see it or feel it as he does. Like the old song "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen," there are some things that none of us will quite know as others know. Trent Lott's words stirred many souls in Mississippi and beyond. I know that those of my relatives and friends living and dead from Mississippi would not want to go back to those days of long ago. They are not that long ago. Sen. Strom Thurmond, who just turned 100, has outlived most of my relatives who were alive during his run for the presidency in 1948. Indeed he's outlived most folks. One might say his longevity is proof that life is unfair, or conversely, that God indeed does have a plan to make the wicked see the change that came despite them. I imagine many black Mississippians, related or unrelated, living or dead would look at it as the latter. Including my two great-aunts. Even when old bigots die, there remain seeds of racism and prejudice blowing in the wind. For blacks from Mississippi and throughout the South's old Jim Crow who forever walk with the wind in their eyes, there is a shared knowing of how life used to be. It is a knowing like those of veterans who survived a war. Like Jews who survived the concentration camps. Like Africans who survived the Middle Passage to America. Like any group of people who survived and persevered through sheer horror. There is a connection, a knowing. It is a "knowing" passed on to me, the son of Mississippi refugees. Though born in the North, I am connected with the experience of those black men and women who walked before me. It is a connection as old as the river. As old as kinship. As old as memory. As old as time. It is that connection that enables most Americans of African descent to know that Trent Lott said what he meant and meant what he said - from the bottom of his heart, to the marrow of his bones. Frank Harris III of Hamden is chairman of the Southern Connecticut State University Journalism Department. He can be reached at fh3ownword@rcn.com.
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