The server at Lou’s Full Serv Restaurant told us he had moved to Jackson Mississippi just a few weeks ago. From Seattle. He said Jackson looked like a city “on the cusp.” And he might be able to buy a home there. (Median home price in Seattle recently rose above $800,000.) But Jackson on the cusp? Well, he might be right.
Things are different in the Deep South. You might be accustomed to seeing a Starbucks on every other corner. In the South it will be a Waffle House. Or a Dollar General store.
Southern drivers apparently have trouble dealing with cold weather. Approaching every bridge, overpass, viaduct is posted a yellow-diamond sign warning “Bridge Ices Before Road” or a variation of that text. Every bridge, because if a bridge did not, presumably a motorist driving during freezing weather would think, “Don’t worry Sadie, this here bridge won’t be icy.”
Condom machines in rest rooms carry the helpful information that if used properly, the product can reduce the chances of STDs or AIDS, but the only sure prevention is celibacy before marriage and fidelity afterwards.
Personal Aside-
Christmas 1964: our family – Mom, Dad and six kids – traveled in our Ford station wagon from Portland Oregon to Tampa Florida to spend the holidays with my father’s family. Newly licensed, I shared the driving duties with my parents. We drove day and night, kids sleeping on a foam pad in the back. (Seat belts – who needed seat belts?) I remember seeing “Whites Only” signs in Mississippi and Alabama. I felt bemused, disdainful, angry and superior all at the same time. I thought these people were really backwards. Of course, coming from what has recently been labeled “The Whitest City in America” and ignorant of Oregon’s racial history, it was easy for me to feel superior.
Jackson, the state capital, recently opened its Museum of Mississippi History, replacing the original destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. The museum covers the past 15,000 years, although the first 13,000 are covered quickly. Choctaw and Chickasaw and several other tribes settled in what became Mississippi. They mostly minded their own business until Hernando de Soto showed up in the sixteenth century with Spanish troops carrying firearms and disease. The native population further suffered from the U.S. frontier expansion. President Jackson resolved the “Indian Problem” by signing the “Indian Removal Act” in 1830, sending the tribes on the “Trail of Tears” to Oklahoma.
In the meantime, slaves imported from Africa had become an important support for the burgeoning cotton economy. Slave owners often gained extra income by renting their property out to others when not needed in their own fields. As the cotton industry grew, slaves became too valuable to rent out for hazardous work such as railroad or levee construction. Irishmen were hired for those dangerous jobs, as they were considered expendable.
Adjacent to the History Museum is the brand-new Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. The exhibits focus on the struggles of the African-American people from the time of slavery through the Jim Crow era and the civil rights struggle, still ongoing. The museum gives a clear-eyed view of the civil-rights struggle: no pretexts, no justifications. Displays include the names of all known lynching victims. The stories of Emmett Till and Medgar Evers are told unflinchingly. (Click here to read about the gun used to murder Medgar Evers.)
A classroom exhibit shows the differences in classes size, textbooks and teacher salaries in the segregated schools. (White and black teachers are paid the same now; as Mississippi ranks at the bottom of teacher salaries, the races are equally underpaid.)
If you are carrying stereotypes of the South, this is a must-visit. The South is recognizing its history and is laying it out for people to learn. And Southerners are friendly, even if I don’t understand why they vote for the politicians they do. (Bring a jacket; the museums’ A/C is set to “frigid.”)
