• 1  For a discussion of Mississippi prior to the civil rights movement, see Nan Elizabeth Woodruff, 20 (...)

1Mississippi has long represented the counter-narrative to the dominant history of American exceptionalism. Its history of racism, violence, and poverty has constituted an aberration from the larger national story that portrayed America as the most prosperous, enlightened, democratic society on earth. Mississippi symbolized the undemocratic side of American society. The state led the nation in the late 19^th and much of the 20^th century in the legal disfranchisement, lynching, and terrorizing of African Americans who labored under an oppressive plantation system—it was the American Congo. The state government supported and subsidized the strongest massive resistance to the post-WWII civil rights movement, encouraging the formation of white Citizens’ Councils who used extra-legal violence to challenge all federal civil rights legislation and Supreme Court decisions. The state legislature created its own surveillance agency, the Sovereignty Commission, which investigated and spied on 87,000 people associated with the civil rights struggle.  Each successive governor served as chairman of the commission and its agents belonged to both the Citizens Councils and the Ku Klux Klan. State and local officials were complicit in some of the most dramatic acts of terror of the civil rights era including, among others, the murders of Emmett Till and Reverend George Lee in 1955, Herbert Lee in 1961, Medgar Evers in 1963, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in 1964, Charles Moore and Henry Dee in 1964, and Vernon Dahmer in 1966.1

• 2  An expansive scholarship exists on memory, commemorations, and confrontations with difficult pasts (...)

3Recently, black and white Mississippians have sought to confront and redress this past by forming interracial coalitions in communities where horrendous crimes occurred; by holding public debates over historical symbols surrounding the Confederacy, slavery, and civil rights; by attempting to reopen old civil rights murder cases, and by working to change the history curriculum in the public and private schools. This confrontation is occurring on the contested terrain of memory and history. In many instances, grassroots interpretations of history have challenged the more public official representations. Much is at stake, for the interpretation of the past holds major implications for the future that Mississippians hope to create—the “moral obligations of the past” weigh heavily upon both the present and the future of Mississippi communities.2

• 3  For a discussion of southern white memory and the Civil War, the Confederacy, and slavery, see Fit (...)

4The contemporary struggles over memory and history in Mississippi reflect conflicting black and white interpretations of the past. Many southern white people have an imagined history of slavery, the Confederacy, and the Civil War that is rooted in honor and sacrifice.3 For them, slavery remains in a distant past and they refuse to see or assume a direct personal responsibility for the institution or its consequences for contemporary society. Indeed, many are content to celebrate their Confederate heritage without any recognition of its relationship to slavery. The long memory of the distant past of the 19^th century glosses over the ugly realities of slavery.  Many white Mississippians interested in acknowledging the more recent history of the civil rights movement have yet to link that history with interpretations of slavery and the Civil War that they hold so dear. They have yet to understand that an acknowledgement of the history of segregation and massive white resistance to the civil rights movement requires a different interpretation of slavery and the Civil War.  

• 4  Virginia Joint Resolution 728, The U.S. Constitution Online (retrieved from http://www.usconstiuti (...)

7The current struggle over representations and interpretations of Mississippi history has not occurred within a vacuum. Beginning in the 1990s, federal and state officials and politicians began addressing the nation’s history of slavery and segregation with a series of apologies, investigative commissions, and the reopening of old civil rights murder trials. In 2005, the United States Senate offered an apology for not having passed an anti-lynching bill in the twentieth century. In 2007, the Maryland state legislature expressed “profound regret” for its role in slavery.  The state legislatures of Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida followed Maryland’s example by passing a similar resolution, with North Carolina adding an apology for Jim Crow laws and segregation. Individual communities have acknowledged and apologized for past lynchings. In 2011, the Alabama state legislature issued an apology to 91-year old Recy Taylor who was raped in 1944 by seven white men who left her on the side of the road to die.  Two all-white male grand juries refused to indict the known rapists, despite efforts by the governor at that time to bring the men to justice. The state legislature admitted the failure of the Alabama justice system to convict the men. 4

• 5  Patricia Older, “FBI Re-opens Mack Charles Parker Lynching,” New Orleans Picayune Item, May 9, 200 (...)

9Although a number of the more famous civil rights era murder cases, such as the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four African American girls, have been retried and convictions finally secured, many cases remain to be tried. In 2008, the US Senate passed the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Crimes Act, creating a section in the US Department of Justice to prosecute old civil rights era murder cases. The bill was named for the fourteen year old teenager who was brutally murdered in 1955 in Money, Mississippi, for supposedly whistling at a white woman. At the time, a white jury failed to convict the two known murderers. The FBI announced that it would reopen one hundred unsolved murder cases—forty-three of them were in Mississippi, including the Till case.5

• 6  The Commission published a little known report, One America in the Twenty First Century (New Haven (...)

10In 1996, President Bill Clinton sought to foster a national conversation on race in America by creating his Commission on Race Initiative, chaired by the distinguished historian John Hope Franklin and former Governor William A. Winter of Mississippi. This Clintonian project focused on public interracial dialogues in selected communities throughout the country; not surprisingly, it was void of any presidential or political mandate to redress the ongoing inequalities associated with the legacies of white supremacy.6  

• 7  The Independent, April 18, 2001

12Public displays of Confederate and Civil War history remain among the most contested sites of memory in Mississippi.  As in other southern states, major controversy has centered around the Mississippi state flag which contains an image of the Confederate flag embedded in the larger flag, something African Americans and many white people have long found offensive. In 2001, sixty-five percent of Mississippians actually voted to retain the Confederate flag on their state flag where it remains to this day. 7

• 8  Alex McDaniel, “In the Face of Adversity: The Chant and the Chancellor,” DMonline (Daily Mississip (...)

14In 2003, the Chancellor of the University declared that the school would no longer have as its mascot the beloved Colonel Rebel—a replica of the Old South plantation slave owner, with long flowing white hair and beard. His figure is plastered all over the campus, the town of Oxford, and the rest of the state. Seven years later, the alumni, students, faculty, and staff voted to replace Colonel Reb with Rebel Black Bear as the new mascot—named for a cherished state creature featured in William Faulkner’s work. Finally, in 2009, the Associated Student Body Senate passed a resolution demanding that the Rebel band no longer play “From Dixie With Love” at the football games after each touchdown, at which point the crowd yelled “The South Will Rise Again.” After much debate among students and alumni, the newly appointed Chancellor of the university endorsed the resolution. Still, a state legislator introduced a measure in January 2011 to reinstate Colonel Rebel and Dixie. 8

• 9  Howell Raines, “Age Issue is Focus of Mississippi Race," New York Times, October 20, 1982.

16Haley Barbour comes from five generations of lawyers and politicians who lived in Yazoo City, Mississippi. He achieved national prominence when he ran unsuccessfully in 1982 for the US Senate seat of the venerable John C. Stennis. Barbour gained notoriety during the campaign when an aide noted that “coons”—a derogatory term for African Americans—would be present when the candidate arrived on a campaign stop at the state fairgrounds. Embarrassed that a New York Times reporter had overheard the joke, Haley told the aide that if he was not careful, “he would be reincarnated as a watermelon and placed at the mercy of blacks.”9  

• 10  Eric Stringfellow, “Barbour Links Himself to CCC By Not Acting,” Clarion Ledger (Jackson (Ms.), Oc (...)

18Barbour has been criticized for his refusal to disassociate from racist organizations like the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), the descendant of the Citizens’ Councils that served as a major force of massive resistance to civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. The CCC’s website is decidedly anti-Semitic, nativistic, and racist, supporting a South African style apartheid system for African Americans, who are referred to as “Congoids.” Barbour once spoke at a CCC barbeque and his photograph appeared at one time on the organization’s website. When asked why he refused to disassociate himself from the CCC, Barbour replied: “Once you start down the slippery slope of saying, ‘That person can’t be for me,’ then where do you stop?”10 Barbour clearly wants to have his cake and eat it too, by denouncing the anti-Semitism of the organization while permitting his photograph to remain on its website.

• 11  Jonathan Darman, “The Anti-Obama,” Newsweek, January 2, 2010.
• 12  Jeffrey Goldberg, “Why Do African Americans Forgive So Easily?,” Atlantic Monthly, October, 5, 201 (...)

19Nor does he distance himself from his Confederate heritage. A large portrait of the University Greys, the Confederate rifle company that suffered 100 percent casualties at the Battle of Gettysburg, hangs in his governor’s office near a Confederate Flag signed by Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy.11Barbour drew fire recently for his refusal to criticize the Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell for issuing a proclamation to commemorate Confederate Heritage Month without mentioning slavery. Barbour said in an interview on CNN that critics of McDonnell were making “a big deal out of something that doesn’t amount to diddly.” He then noted that his own state celebrates the birthday of General Robert E. Lee and that of Martin Luther King, Jr., both on the same day.12

• 13  Sam Fullwood III, “Race and Beyond: Whistling Dixie,” Center for American Progress, September 14, (...)

20Barbour has become more visible of late, as he has engaged in public remembrances of his own experiences during the age of segregation, and as he has sought to establish some control over representations and commemorations of the civil rights movement.  In those efforts, Barbour has engaged in a bit of mythmaking of his own.  He recently astonished most knowledgeable people by announcing on national TV that he had supported the civil rights movement. He recalled that, while a student at Ole Miss, he had “never thought twice” about a federal court order that had desegregated his university. Indeed, he claimed he had even befriended the first African American woman to attend Ole Miss. When asked to respond to Barbour’s comment, the student, Verna Bailey, said that she barely remembered him.  Her own recollection of the southern white boys at Ole Miss was decidedly less friendly than Barbour’s. While she was dancing with another girl on the Oxford Square, male students threw coins and beer at them. “I just saw this mass of anger, anger and hostility. I thought my life was going to end.” 13

• 14  Andrew Ferguson, Weekly Standard, December 27, 2010.

21Barbour continued his fond remembrances of the past. In a January 2011 interview with Andrew Ferguson of the conservative Weekly Standard, Barbour recalled that in his hometown of Yazoo, Mississippi, the public schools had integrated peacefully, because the business community would not tolerate violence. “You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up North they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders.  In Yazoo City,” he continued, “they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town.”  Barbour insisted that “if you had a job, you’d lose it. If you had a store, they’d see nobody shopped there. We didn’t have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City.”14

• 15  “Remarks of Governor Haley Barbour at the Inaugural Meeting of the Governor’s Commission to Establ (...)
• 16  Jerry Mitchell, “Mississippi Governor Pushes Civil Rights Museum,” Clarion Ledger (Jackson, Ms.), (...)

23Barbour quickly followed the public uproar over his comments regarding the Citizens’ Councils by re-affirming his earlier call for the creation of a National Civil Rights Museum in the state capitol of Jackson. In 2006, he had appointed as co-chairs of the museum’s planning commission Judge Reuben Anderson, the first African American to serve on the state Supreme Court, and a conservative Federal Judge, Charles Pickering, Sr., whose nomination was held up in the US Senate because of his racist views.15 Barbour insisted that the state build a “world class” museum that would interpret the national civil rights story and attract tourists from all over the world.  In his January 2011 State of the Union address, Barbour urged lawmakers to “move this museum forward as an appropriate way to do justice to the civil rights movement and to stand as a monument of remembrance and reconciliation.”16  

• 17  The Picayune Item (Ms.), January 19, 2011.

24Barbour has also announced that he will host a national commemoration on the 50^th anniversary of the famous Freedom Rides of 1961, when over 400 black and white people rode public buses across the South in an effort to desegregate bus terminals. The Freedom Riders were brutally beaten when they arrived in Jackson, where many were imprisoned in the state’s notoriously harsh Parchman Penitentiary (Arsenault). In a 2011 speech on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Barbour observed that “A lot of reprehensible things took place between the advent of the Freedom Rides in 1961 and the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and finally integration in the bulk of the state’s public schools.” He continued by saying that “Deplorable actions including the murder of innocent people, young men in service to a cause that was right, will always be a stain on our history.” However, Barbour insisted that “the 100-plus Freedom Riders participating in the 2011 celebration will find Mississippi an enormously changed state as to race relations.” Anticipating criticism, Barbour said that “Some may be surprised that a conservative Republican governor would play a leading role in celebrating this epic event in the civil rights movement, but the fundamental founding principle of the Republican Party was freedom.” Noting that people working on the event “may have different views of which government policies and programs—or absence thereof—best serve freedom. But no believer in freedom can defend segregation as acceptable to those who believe our Creator endowed us with certain inalienable rights that include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”17 The governor intends to honor the Freedom Riders with a reception at the Governor’s Mansion.

• 18  “Statement Regarding Mississippi 50^th Anniversary Event: Reverend James M. Lawson, Jr., Dianne Nas (...)

25Some of the leading Freedom Riders responded negatively to Barbour’s initial announcement of the anniversary. Reverend James Lawson, Jr., who in the late 1950s and early 1960s had trained Diane Nash and other students at Fisk University in the philosophy of nonviolence, issued a statement with Nash, Ralph Fertig, and Reverend C. T. Vivian. They accused Barbour of using their names without their permission, and insisted that Barbour did not have the authority to announce such a commemoration. Any celebration, they said, should be decided by the Freedom Riders, and not by someone who has pursued policies that have harmed African Americans. The signatories accused Mississippi “white racists” of attempting to steal the legacy of the civil rights movement because they had “discovered the millions of dollars that can be derived from tourism pertaining to the legacy of the civil rights movement.” In their view, the persistence of racism and inequality in Mississippi signaled the problems that should be Barbour’s priorities: black infant mortality was more than double that of white people; 11 percent of Mississippi white people and 35.7 percent of black people fell below the federal poverty line in 2007; African Americans constitute 36 percent of the population and make up 75 percent of those imprisoned; and the per capita income of black Mississippians is 51 percent of that of their white counterparts. The signatories concluded that the “best way the Mississippi governor could ‘honor and celebrate’ the Freedom Riders would be to bring the quality of life of Mississippi blacks approximately equal to that of Mississippi whites.”18

• 19  Shelia Byrd, “Freedom Ride Anniversary to be Mississippi Tourist Draw,” Associated Press, Yahoo Ne (...)
• 20  Hank Thomas, Jr., “Speech Before the Mississippi Economic Council,” January 6, 2011, Website of th (...)

26Other Freedom Riders and black officials in Mississippi support the commemoration. Judge Reuben Anderson, an African American State Supreme Court Justice, told a 1,000 member gathering of the Mississippi Economic Council meeting that the Freedom Rides were “part of Mississippi’s heritage and part of tourism” and that the commemoration would be the “largest event in Mississippi history.” Further, the event’s chairman is U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson, the African American congressman from the Mississippi Delta.19 One of the fourteen original Freedom Riders who rode the first bus through the South, Hank Thomas, Jr., who serves as the chairman of the reunion committee, also supports the Governor’s attempt to honor the Freedom Riders. In a speech before the Mississippi Economic Council, he called upon all Mississippians to “show the world the new face of Mississippi,” and to work for “religious and racial reconciliation.” We have,” he said, “an opportunity to show the world that Mississippi has changed.”20  

• 21  William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation Position Statement on Reconciliation, (www.wint (...)

29The Institute serves as a facilitator for communities seeking to confront a history of racial violence and injustice. Its strategy is based on the belief that black and white people must come together in a “safe” space to share their stories of the past, a history that is usually centered on a specific horrendous racial crime that occurred during the post-World War II era of segregation and disfranchisement. Through a process of “truth telling,” the Institute encourages communities to develop their own strategies for confronting and redressing their history, including an acknowledgment that racism is “both systemic and institutionalized, with far-reaching effects on both political engagement and economic opportunities for minorities.” The Institute insists that justice “is the essential component of the conciliatory process—justice that is best termed as restorative rather than retributive”—a form of reconciliation that does not aim to simply “forgive and forget.” The goal of the truth telling process is to forge a “collective memory” that will promote a ‘healthy model of communal healing.’”21

• 22  The best account of these murders remains Seth Cagin and Philip Dray, We Are Not Afraid (2006).
• 23  Rita Schwerner Bender to Governor Haley Barbour, June 27, 2005, (www.winterinstitute.org.).

30The Winter Institute has been invited into several communities where horrendous racial crimes have occurred. In 2004, it helped to form an interracial coalition in Philadelphia that brought to trial and led to the conviction of Edgar Ray Killen who had planned the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. These murders occurred during the famous Freedom Summer when young people from all over the US came to Mississippi to participate in voter registration campaigns. The case became the subject of a popular, if misleading, film, “Mississippi Burning.” 22 Barbour quickly declared that the conviction had closed the book on this difficult chapter in Mississippi’s history, allowing the state to move on to better things. Rita Schwerner Bender, the widow of Michael Schwerner, saw it differently. In a public letter to Barbour, she noted the state’s involvement in murder and terror via the Sovereignty Commission and the collaboration of local law officials with murderers and terrorist organizations. She also noted Barbour’s own checkered past, his association with the Council of Conservative Citizens, the successor of the Citizens’ Councils, his wearing of a Confederate flag lapel pin, and the refusal of Mississippi’s US Senators—Thad Cochran and Trent Lott—to join 92 others in signing an apology for the Senate’s refusal to pass anti-lynching legislation in the 20^th century. And there were far too many acts of murder and other crimes that were never acknowledged. “So, please do not assume that the book is closed” she insisted. “There is yet much work to be done.”23

• 24  “Timeline of the Mississippi Truth Project” (www.winterinstitute.org.).

31One consequence of Bender’s letter was the formation of the Mississippi Coalition for Racial Justice to “explore what Mississippi might look like if it were a social justice state.”24 Out of this grew an effort, led by the Winter Institute and community groups, to create a statewide, community-based truth project as a step toward establishing a Truth Commission to address the state’s difficult past. The truth project’s goal is to provide a forum for individuals to discuss the past of racism, terror, and segregation, and to acknowledge its legacies as a means for developing a more just future. Significantly, this truth process differs from more formal truth commissions held in other parts of the world in that it is not state sanctioned and is driven by grassroots organizations whose aim is to forge a more equitable society. Where this effort will lead remains to be seen, but over 500 people attended a 2009 meeting and signed a declaration of intent to pursue a truth process.

• 25  Tallahatchie County, Mississippi Quick Facts from the US Census Bureau,(http://quickfacts.census.g (...)

33Tallahatchie County provides a site for understanding the complexities of confronting and commemorating the past, of how race and class shape historical memory, forgetting, and the legacies of terror. The county is divided by the Tallahatchie River which made it necessary in the early days of the region’s settlement to have two separate county courthouses, each with its own sheriff and constables. Tallahatchie County is also complicated by its divergent economies and terrains. The west side of the county is located in the low lying and rich alluvial soil of the Mississippi Delta and was defined until the 1960s by large-scale plantations worked by African American sharecroppers and day laborers. It remains an economy based on large-scale farming controlled by a small percentage of white farmers. The population is overwhelmingly African American. The county seat on the west side is located in Sumner. The east side of the county is part delta and part hill country. Its county seat is Charleston, which was in the early 20^th century the site of one of the largest lumber companies in the world. African Americans constituted less than 40 percent of the population.  Overall, Tallahatchie remains a poor county, with a median household income of $27,493, and with 28.9 percent of the people who live below the poverty level.25  

• 26  I have conducted numerous interviews with black and white people in Tallahatchie County, 2007-2011

35By all accounts, Tallahatchie County remained a violent and repressive place for African Americans to live and work in. It is still known as the most corrupt county in the state. Interviews reveal the terror and fear that people lived under. According to several people, eight other men were murdered prior to Till’s death. Others tell stories of disappearances, whippings, rapes, and land theft, often by the local police. In all these instances, no one was held accountable.26   

• 27  Emmett Till Memorial Commission Home Page, (http://www.etmctallahatchie.com)

36In 2008, the two African Americans on the Tallahatchie County Board of Supervisors persuaded the other elected members to create the Emmett Till Memorial Commission. The commission’s statement of purpose reveals the dual aims of reconciliation and tourism. It was created “for the purpose of fostering racial harmony and reconciliation” and to “seek federal, state, and private funds and grants” to restore the County Courthouse in Sumner.” The Commission also intends to “explore the restoration of other buildings and sites of historical value” and to “promote educational tours of the courthouse and other sites” in the county.27

• 28  See Emmett Till Memorial Commission.

37The commission consists of an interracial coalition with board members who are appointed by the Board of Supervisors and include African-American mayors from surrounding villages, ministers, some of the largest white landowners, and others. The group invited the Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation to its meetings to serve as a facilitator and because of its work with the Philadelphia Coalition that had been instrumental in bringing to trial Edgar Ray Killen. Members of the commission spent the early meetings sharing their memories and experiences of the Till murder and trial and discussing various interpretations of where the murder had occurred and where the body was discovered. The commission agreed to offer an apology to the Till family, to create a brochure on the murder with a map to the various relevant sites, to place a marker in front of the courthouse telling the history of the case and trial, to name part of a county highway after Till, and to find funding to restore the still operating courthouse and place a museum in one of the rooms.28  

• 29  Video, Till Apology Ceremony.

38A formal ceremony was held at the courthouse, the committee wrote an apology,  the white county sheriff then read it to the Till family who graciously accepted it.29 While four hundred people attended the ceremony, it is not clear how widely known the event was in the county. Both sides of the county share one weekly newspaper, perhaps contributing to fewer participants. However, some white people knew enough to deface the historical marker commemorating Till’s murder site soon after it was erected.

• 30  Carmen K. Sisson, “Mississippi Mandates Civil Rights in Classes in Schools,” August 12, 2005, Chri (...)

48But these confrontation efforts can over time go in different directions. They can lead to civil rights tourism where a map directs people to the sites of memory centered around horrendous acts, or in some cases, successful protests. Or they can lead to a deeper understanding of that past, allowing Mississippians to address the real legacies of systemic racism in the state—a direction that could lead to better education, better housing and health care, and better life chances for all of the state’s citizens. This latter approach has fueled the Mississippi Truth Project and much of the interracial coalition building.  And in part, it has led to the recent passage by the state legislature of a law introducing the teaching of the civil rights movement to the curriculum of the public schools.  A commission was established to supervise the creation of a curriculum that incorporates the civil rights movement, focusing on local communities and leaders.30 However, no mandate to adopt the curriculum was included in the legislation. Questions remain as to how successful this endeavor will be. It is significant, however, that the legislature responded to pressure from grassroots activists who insisted that educating the next generation in an accurate accounting of the past held out the possibility of securing a more just future for all Mississippi citizens.  

• 31  Czeslaw Milosz, “Nobel Prize Laureate Speech,” December 8, 1980 (Nobelprize.org.).

49Changing the curriculum will hopefully lead white and black teachers in a joint and meaningful discussion of what that past has meant in their individual communities—one that will force a painful acknowledgement of the relationship between memory and history in a most fundamental and profound way.  For it will pose the question of how a community confronts the legacy of state sanctioned terror and violence, when many of the perpetrators are still living and working in the community; where some of the perpetrators may have been relatives of the white teachers, while some of the victims may have been relatives of the black teachers. Black and white teachers will be asked to bridge the vastly different understandings of history that are held within the African American and white communities. They will have to confront a history as taught and spoken by white people as it brushes up against the lived history of African Americans. They will see how their respective communities have chosen to remember and to forget the daily acts of disrespect, violence, terror, and theft that underwrote the world of white supremacy. This localized setting offersthe potential for a genuine confrontation with the past. And if people are honest, they may fulfill the poet Ceslaw Milosz’s charge that: “Those who are alive receive a mandate from those who are silent forever. They can fulfill their duties only by trying to reconstruct precisely things as they were, and by wresting the past from fictions and legends.”31