Peter’s Post
Laura and I made it to Jackson on Thursday night after a full day in Birmingham which Laura covered. We both realize by unearthing the painful past and reminding ourselves of the work yet to be done on equity and justice, we’re not giving credit for the progress that has been made. Laura and I have talked a lot about how congenial people seem, how races mix comfortably, and how some black friends we know who’ve moved to Seattle really miss the south and can’t wait to get back. More on that perhaps later.
Meanwhile, our tour guide in Birmingham did keep us focused on how racism doesn’t go away, it goes underground and sprouts in new forms more subtle, insidious, and perhaps more pervasive than before. Kinda like new strains of bacteria impervious to old treatments. He rained heavily on any notion that we’ve made real progress on this front.
Consequently, crossing the border into Mississippi gave me a tingling, apprehensive feeling. As our Birmingham guide said, something like: “Alabama likes Mississippi because they make us look good” or “the 50 bombings Birmingham did over 15 years, Mississippi did in one summer.” In spite of its smaller population, Mississippi was the lynching capital of the country and you can see how that played out by county. Emmit Till in 1955 and and the Goodman, Schwerner, & Chaney murders in 1964 made the national news but so many more were under the radar except to black people in Mississippi.
Our first stop today was the Civil Rights Museum in downtown Jackson. This is another “must see” experience. Perhaps not on the same plane as the Legacy Museum in Montgomery as a “gut punch” but there is plenty of that too and perhaps more historical and informational content. It’s incredibly well designed and full of amazing displays. This is the mural across the street. I confess, not being from Jackson, I only recognized Megan Evers on the mural and didn’t know the names of the other 3 hero’s of Jackson and had to look them up.
Eudora Welty, Medgar Evers, Thalia Mara and David Banner.
My first real awareness of the civil rights movement came in June, 1963 when I was 11. As a kid growing up in rural Hawaii with no TV and close to zero black people or cultural references, I had no context for understanding what was happening when the Medgar Evers’ assassination was highlighted in Life Magazine or Time which were available in our house. Laura says she was about the same age when we watched the original movie on Evers that perhaps launched out shared exploration of the civil rights movement. 1963 was a heavy year of things in the national awareness with the anti-segregation movement in Birmingham, the assassination of Evers, March on Washington in August, the 16th St. Baptist Church bombing in September, and the Kennedy Assassination in November. For people in the movement in Alabama, Mississippi and other places, these were just the headlines of intense struggles going on in many places that need to be recognized.
In the Civil Rights museum we encountered Hezekiah Watkins, age 75 giving a talk to a group of middle school aged students about his experience getting caught up in the Freedom Ride arrests in Jackson in 1961 where Mississippi distinguished itself for not just arresting the freedom riders but sending them to prison for months, including 13 year old Hezekiah, the
youngest person imprisoned. He would go on to be arrested over 100 times, sometimes twice in one day. Like Jo Ann Bland, he said he was just like any kid at the time who thought everything was fine. If you were black and stayed in your lane (water fountains, restrooms, etc.) and didn’t challenge the order of things, you were fine and life could be congenial. It’s amazing how we can think any situation is “normal” until we realize it isn’t (
e.g. It’s normal that the U.S. spends ~ $ 1 trillion/year on the military and has hundreds of bases around the world, politicians argue that teachers should be armed to protect their students, etc.). Both of them had elders who pointed out how marginalized they were and opened their eyes to how it could/should be. Mr. Watkins parting words to his students was: “When you turn 17, go and register to vote so when you’re 18, you can vote. If you don’t vote, you’re nobody.” Laura and I had a nice chance to chat with him because, when he’s not traveling, he hangs out in the reflection room of the museum to give talks and inspire people like us. Like, our guide in Birmingham, Mr. Watkins reminds us that just because of the fact that blacks are in positions of power in places like Jackson or Birmingham doesn’t necessarily mean they’re immune from corruption action or able to be effective. Witness Herschel Walker being put up by the power structure in Georgia …window dressing. Mr. Watkins compared racism going underground to fire ants that can live quietly below the surface until they swarm. Great analogy.
https://www.visitjackson.com/blog/hezekiah-watkins/
Laura and I drove our bikes to to Vicksburg in the afternoon and cycled around the battlefield park. For the Civil War buffs among our readers, Vicksburg was a huge strategic victory for the North that happened simultaneously with Gettysburg that gave the North control over the Mississippi River and helped to choke off supply lines to the Confederacy from the West. Grant’s strategic genius and willingness to take risks launched him into prominence and earned him the respect of Lincoln who promoted him to head the union army. Although it was a brutal campaign, the siege of Vicksburg starved 38,000 soldiers into surrender vs. being killed outright. It’s a fabulous bike 16 mile bike ride around the park if you’re ever in the area. The park has a series of monuments created by individual states to commemorate their own regiments who fought there. These were “federated states” and “confederated states” who raised armies vs. a fully national military force that we have now. This struggle between the power & authority of states vs. the federal government lives on.
Civil War, Civil Rights … history all blends together to form the present. Maybe we need a new Civil movement … perhaps something that promotes civility in general. In the words of William Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It's not even past."
We return our car today and will venture north toward Memphis on the Natchez-Trace National Parkway on our bikes. This is a very rural part of Mississippi and we’re not sure what will have in terms of cell or internet service where we’re going. We’re looking forward to the time on the road and a chance to emotionally digest what we’ve seen while just making the pedals go around. I think of cycling as a contemplative practice and a good way to integrate and make meaning out of what one has taken in and is just percolating in the soul. If you’re following on the map, we’ll be in Kosciusko, French Camp, Houston, and New Albany before arriving in Memphis on the 5th. Inshallah.
No comments:
Post a Comment