Mississippi is Smoldering

David: When we rode into Mississippi several days ago we stopped at the state line and took selfies of the sign. I titled mine, “Mississippi is not burning.” An allusion to a famous quote from Civil Rights days. Even as I wrote that caption it made me a bit nervous. I can’t really characterize the state of race relations of an entire state in one sentence, especially not a state where I don’t live. But the picture was posted, and we rode on. 

This bike ride across the country takes us through a number of states that were part of the "Deep South," both active slave states and therefore part of the Confederacy during the Civil War, and States where the Civil Rights movement took especially sharp and often bloody form.  There is not just one way to characterize an entire State. It is not fair to define a person or a society entirely by their past.  Equally importantly, the places I've lived in "The North," places like Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., and Goshen, Indiana, all have active patterns of discrimination and racism that are alive today, if lessened from the past.  If I were going to go looking for past and present patterns of racism, I would not have to travel to the South.

Nevertheless, here we are. And I was curious what signs of change there might be, as well as commemoration of the past.

 

One jarring reminder of the past was a sign along the white beaches of Biloxi, Mississippi. There was a sign announcing that this was the scene of a Civil Rights Wade In. I had never heard of this kind of civil rights protest or action. In 1963, Dr. Gilbert Mason, an African-American Physician and resident of Biloxi, led African-Americans onto the beaches of BIloxi, which was then either illegal or just "not done" by custom.  In either event, Dr. Mason and the others were beaten. They persisted for 5 years, at which time a Federal Court ruling opened the beaches to all residents. 

When I read that name, it seemed familiar.  Then I remembered seeing Dr. Mason's name above the main boulevard running alongside the beach in Biloxi. Somehow official attitudes toward Dr. Mason changed dramatically.  Which is wonderful.  The morning we biked along the beach, we passed two men sitting in the lawn chairs on the boardwalk, talking and laughing together.  Seemingly friends.  One was White, one was Black. They were my age, which meant they had been children during the events of 1963.  They would have remembered them.  Had they always been able to make friendships across racial lines?  Did their sitting there together indicate a change of heart on the part of one, or both of them?  Again, it was wonderful to see.

But I also remember a scene just a few miles inside the state line. I passed a line of cars beside the highway, parked one after the other, just off the main road. The line was several blocks long. As I got to the head of the line, I saw that they were turning into the parking lot in front of a public health clinic. Just down the road, I saw a billboard advertising free clinics four days a week, first come first served, no health insurance necessary.  

One of the main drivers for so many people to need this help is the fact that Mississippi has not accepted the enhanced Medicaid provisions made available through the Affordable Care Act. Which means that  hundreds or thousands of the poorest residents of Mississippi, who are overwhelmingly African-American, lack basic health insurance.  So racial discrimination, previously overt, and put into effect by law, continues today under a different guise.

It reminds me of a sign just prior to the State Line, commemorating a spot in that  Alabama  town where the "colored" students were schooled prior to 1948 and the Supreme Court decision outlawing official segregation of schools. That segregation no longer officially remains. But segregation continues in different forms. 

We parked our car one morning in the parking lot of the Lighthouse Apostolic Holiness Temple, a very large church in the countryside, with an attached daycare. I watched the young parents dropping off their children, White, Black, Hispanic and Vietnamese. All bringing their children to the same place.  I mentioned to the Director how refreshing it was to see so many of the racial groups voluntarily coming together.  She sighed. And said how difficult it is to create a place like that in the countryside of 

Alabama.  

I am sobered by the ways deep attitudes can remain in societies - North and South - long after the laws have changed.