Rosalea Baker: Mississippi

Time to jump down, turn around, and pick a bale of cotton. Since leaving behind the original colonies and states formed from land east of the Appalachians, you may have noticed an increased tendency to hopscotch around the continental United States as we now know it.

First off, Ohio was created north of the river it is named for; then Louisiana was created to secure trading routes along the Mississippi River and to the Caribbean; then the pesky British, siding with the local tribes against settlers in what was supposed to be “the land of the Indians” forced a war and the creation of Indiana. Now here we are again down in the South.

The Magnolia State, as Mississippi is known, became the 20th state almost a year to the day after Indiana’s admission to the Union—December 10, 1817—and states were admitted at the rate of one a year for the next four years as well. Clearly, since population numbers was one of the measures for admittance to statehood, settlement was proceeding at a great rate during this time.

But I don’t want to dwell too much on nineteenth century history—you can read an excellent short article about the change from “Mississippi Territory” to statehood here on the Mississippi Historical Society’s website. It illustrates all the major forces at play during the formation of the United States—the wars with major European powers, expansion of settlement, wars with the original inhabitants of the land, regional rivalries, and an eye on gaining power at the federal level. One of the reasons that the Mississippi Territory became two states instead of just one—as was originally planned—is that there’d be four more Southern senators in Congress instead of just two.

I don’t know if it’s the sibilance of its name that causes my association of Mississippi with sadness and sorrow, but that’s certainly what comes to my mind first when I think of it. Its most famous literary son is William Faulkner, but it’s a 1933 short story by Louisiana-born writer Arna Bontemps that encapsulates for me the sadness associated with Mississippi, even if the story isn’t set in that state. Part of “Summer Tragedy” is available for preview on Google books here.

The story is about two sharecroppers and, obviously, it involves tragedy. But there is a real-life, more recent, story involving triumph and a sharecropper: Fannie Lou Hamer. In the mid-twentieth century, she became the inspiration for voting rights activists when her testimony about trying to register to vote in 1962 and 1963—given to the 1964 Democratic National Convention Credentials Committee—was televised live.

She and 61 others had travelled by bus to the convention, asking to be seated as the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegation. Not only did voter registration practices in MS effectively disenfranchise blacks, but the Mississippi delegates to the convention were illegally elected in a completely segregated process that violated both party regulations and federal law, according to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegates.

Fanny Lou Hamer’s testimony can be read in full here. She concludes by saying:

“All of this [her description of police harassment and threats from the owner of the property where she was a sharecropper] is on account of us wanting to register, to become first-class citizens, and if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?”

The State of Mississippi had taken the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education—aimed at ending segregation in schools—very seriously indeed. By 1956, it had created the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission to "do and perform any and all acts deemed necessary and proper to protect the sovereignty of the state of Mississippi, and her sister states…" from perceived "encroachment thereon by the Federal Government or any branch, department or agency thereof."

The Commission had broad investigative powers, which it exercised at first very secretively under the direction of Governor Coleman, who wrote that "if the things we have done and our quiet methods of doing it ever get into the newspapers, then our enemies will be fully ALERTED [emphasis his] and the usefulness of the Sovereignty Commission will likewise be at an end."

His successor, Governor Ross Barnett, took a more open and proactive approach—going so far as to make films like “Message from Mississippi”, which touted the virtues of segregation, and “Oxford, USA” after the violent events that occurred at the University of Mississippi in 1962 when a black student tried to begin classes there.

James Meredith is of African American and Choctaw heritage, and he has always maintained that he is not supportive of “civil rights” because the term means “perpetual second-class citizenship for me and my kind.” He intended his enrollment at Ole Miss to force the hand of the Kennedy Administration, just as the Freedom Democratic Party’s attempt to be seated at the Democratic National Convention two years later was intended to force the Democratic Party to live up to its high-minded notions about equality and voting rights.

According to 2008 statistics more people live in rural areas of Mississippi than in towns—as has always been the case. Cotton is now only the second most important commodity, a very, very long way behind poultry. And although aquaculture is the fifth most valuable commodity in the state—soybeans and corn come in at third and fourth—Mississippi accounts for 22 percent of the nation’s aquaculture value. That is largely due to the farming of catfish.

--PEACE—

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

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