The new Mississippi: is it really better than 'up north'?

Ebony, August, 1989 by Charles Whitaker

The New Mississippi:

WATCHING award-winning fifth-grade teacher Anna Walker conduct a reading class at Casey Elementary School in Jackson, Miss., is like peering through a window into the soul of the entire state. For nowhere are the sweeping changes in Mississippi's racial climate more evident than in the enthusiastic and unselfconscious exchange between the young Black teacher and her 25 charges--an ideally equal mix of Black and White 10- and 11-year-olds.

To these youngsters, the bigotry and violently maintained segregated social order that were a way of life for their parents and grandparents are ancient history--far removed from their integrated classroom experiences. They and their 27-year-old teacher are part of a different Mississippi, a new Mississippi; a state that desperately wants to shake off its hard-won image as a backwards bastion of racism, a state that is attempting to carve out a new reputation as a land of untapped potential for anyone, regardless of race.

"What you will find here," says Ms. Walker, a Jackson native and the recipient of a $1,000 grant for excellence in teaching, "is that people are trying very hard to change the old image of the state and ease the old racial tensions. We're not 100 percent there yet, but great strides are being made."

It is difficult for outsiders to comprehend the progress Mississippi has made in race relations. And with good reason. Images of the brutal resistance that marked the civil rights struggle in the state are indelibly etched in many minds.

Yet Mississippians will tell you that Blacks and Whites there have reached an accord and that race relations in Mississippi are no worse -- and, in some instances, far better--than they are in many of its smug Northern counterparts. There are even those who argue passionately that Mississippi today is better than up North.

"There's probably been more real change for Black people in Mississippi than there has been in most states," says Judge Reuben V. Anderson, a vetcran of the civil rights struggle whose string of historic "firsts" includes the first Black graduate of the University of Mississippi Law School and the first Black to serve on the Misissippi Supreme Court. "I think that you have substantially more integration in Mississippi -- in the South in general -- than you do in the North."

Mississippians point proudly to their most visible signs of progress. Turn on the evening news in almost any part of the state, for example, and invariably, you will se a Black personality (sometimes two) anchoring the broadcast. Blacks, in fact, are the majority shareholders of NBC-affiliate WLBT in Jackson, a television station that more than a quarter of a century ago denied gubernatorial candidate and state NAACP President Aaron Henry the opportunity to buy television time on the grounds that it "didn't allow niggers on the air." The FCC yanked WLBT's license because of such racist practices and awarded it to a consortium of Black investors. Today, Henry chairs the station's board of directors.

Twenty-five years ago, Blacks who attempted to vote in Mississippi were often beat or killed. Today, Mississippi boasts 600 Black elected officials, more than any other state, including 22 Blacks in the state legislature and numerous mayors, city council members, county commissioners, and, after lengthy court battles, an increasing number of judges.

"We are starting to enjoy the fruits of many years of struggle, says Ed Cole, the first Black chairman of the state Democratic Party. "The civil and political action that took place here is paying off in visible ways."

Still, no one would suggest that Misissippi has solved all of its racial problems. A number of all-White social clubs still exist; housing patterns remain split along racial lines. And, despite their numbers, Blacks in the state legislature charge that influential committee appointments and chairmanships continue to be doled out to members of the "old boy" network.

But racism in modern Mississippi has taken on the subtler hue of racism in the North. Says Angela McCoy Lewis, the 25-year-old daughter of murdered civil rights activist james Chaney, "It's not like there's open hostility toward Blacks like there was when my father was killed. But there is still prejudice here. It's just not as easy to see it."

The fact that racism has gone underground in a state that once wore its racist stripes shamelessly is a leap of monumental proportions, say long-time residents. "This represents a completely new era," says celebrated author and Jackson State University English professor emeritus Margaret Walker Alexander, for whom a street in Jackson is named. "When I came to Mississippi 40 years ago, I had to wait five years before I could get through all the barriers--the poll taxes and things -- before I could even vote. Black teachers were struggling to get equal pay. The 'Whites Only' signs were everywhere. Today, you see Blacks shopping all over downtown. We have Black police officers and politicians. I do not say that we are where we should be, but we are far from where we were."