Mississippi Goddam

Posted on Tuesday 26 April, 2011
Filed Under International

 


Super 8 Motel, Vicksburg, MS: GREETINGS from Mississippi, where the state flag still features the stars and bars in the top lefthand corner, and where state employees got Monday off in honour of Confederate Memorial Day.

This month sees the start of commemorations for the 150th anniversary of the US Civil War, and my guess would be that many of the locals will not be celebrating the outcome of that conflict.

Among the nostalgics for the Old South will be the woman who gave Stroppy and I a guided tour of the delightful antebellum houses of Natchez yesterday.

Now, if I were in charge of tourism in a small economically depressed town, where the money visitors bring in just about keeps the place going, I would think twice before allowing people like her to show educated liberal Europeans around.

We were told, for instance, that back in the days of the civil rights struggle, blacks sometimes burned down their own churches and pinned the blame elsewhere, because that way the federal government would stump up for a brand new building.

Here are a couple of verbatim quotes: ‘We have come so far, we truly have. We are learning in this area to coexist’. Note the present progressive tense there. And hey, it only took half a century.

But she topped even that with this gem of a Civil War factoid: ‘We surrendered here [in Natchez] three times. I know I’m ashamed of it.’

Our hostess even proclaimed herself a member of the Daughters of the Confederacy, an organisation of the women descendants of Confederate veterans, and offered us speculation as to how the South could have won the ‘war between the states’, as the euphemism puts it.

Nor was this rather nasty Southern belle a one-off. Governor Haley Barbour – touted as a possible Republican presidential contender until 24 hours ago, when he withdrew from the race – keeps an antique Confederate flag in his office, and did not distance himself from the suggestion that the founder of the Ku Klux Klan should feature on local licence plates.

One recent opinion poll found that 46% of Mississippi Republicans want interracial marriage banned by law.

But the good news is that not everybody round here is a redneck.  I spent the evening of Confederate Memorial Day in Hal and Mal’s bar in downturn Jackson, at a fabulous blues and southern soul jam session, where blacks and white drank together, danced together, and made wonderful music together. If anybody in the audience got lucky, miscegenation may well have taken place.

It was a cheerful end to a depressing day, and ultimately, the best possible rejoinder to Mississippi’s racist right.


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Comments

67 Responses to “Mississippi Goddam”

  1. Roger
    on May 4th, 2011 at 09:18

    Firstly: if you want a discussion with me you can stop the infantile playground bully crap.

    Secondly: oh what’s the point? – it should have been obvious to anyone with half a brain what I was trying to say.

  2. Jimmy Glesga
    on May 4th, 2011 at 10:32

    Wodger. ‘playground bully’. You have led a sheltered life. I do not think I will bother.

  3. Sewer Rat: telling it like it is.
    on May 4th, 2011 at 12:54

    Now, now, chaps, Uncle Dave will be back soon and he won’t like it if you’ve messed up the place.

  5. Martin
    on May 5th, 2011 at 22:54

    Interesting link. Not least because of the usual pile of bile posts under it. Each one competing to get the most withering purile attack and expletive in. So the internet free’s us eh? I just wonder what would happen if people used used it to speak to each other. Is that the revolution we are waiting for?

    Or is it David Oslers’s return from Switzerland? Ooops sorry, I was thinking of Lenin. Nevertheless. Can we expect David back in a sealed train. The revolution just six months away. Apologies to David. Just wondering why all headline posts have stopped. Even Glesga was allowed the privelage here once.

    As for Randy Newman. Great talented guy. But anyone notice how he is living evidence that the only satire the US of A now seems to allow is the cartoon strip. In it’s various forms. Anyone else make that link with Soviet censorship? From ‘Small Park’ to the rest. Newman making mega money these days from stuff like ‘Toy Story’.

    All power to Buzz Lightyear.

  6. Deviation FTM
    on May 6th, 2011 at 07:32

    Great point about the cartoon Martin.

    As for US TV, as someone who has to sit through every bloody banal CSI programme every week (cos the other half loves em) I can only say imo it is the most superficial, glossy, bland pap imaginable.

  7. Arthur Seaton
    on May 6th, 2011 at 20:07

    Hmmm, bit worrying this, US holiday or not, no comment from Dave through the whole election? Let us know you’re OK Osler.

  8. Martin
    on May 6th, 2011 at 23:29

    Of course I meant ‘South Park’. Drrrr. Cheers comrades. Plus ‘The Simpsons’ of course. Brilliant stuff.

    In the puzzlingly sad absence of David who would no doubt have picked up on this;

    http://www.unitetheunion.org/news__events/latest_news/unite_warns_against_privatisat.aspx

    ……and still they vote for them. Sorry needed a rant somewhere. Hope things are ok for David.

  9. LesAbbey
    on May 7th, 2011 at 03:20

    A year ago we had bloodshed in the streets of Bangkok. Now we have for the first time an independent report on the April/May red shirt protest from Human Rights Watch. Well worth reading, even if you just read the first part, the summary, and the appendix, a timeline of Thai political history since 1932. The link is below.

    http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2011/05/03/descent-chaos-0

  10. H.
    on May 7th, 2011 at 10:55

    The Big O is fine, Arthur. Stroppy is posting regular (and entertaining) updates on Facebook.
    As you might imagine, the feisty, lipsticked, animal print-clad Strops is going down a storm in the Deep South ;-)

    Blues bars, Graceland and the Gibson factory are some of the obvious highlights.

    The dynamic duo are currently en route to sweet home Chicago

  11. Sewer Rat: telling it like it is.
    on May 7th, 2011 at 14:11

    Reminds me of the passsage in ‘The Great Gatsby’ where after Gatsby’s death, partygoers who are not aware he is deceased, still drive out to his mansion on Saturday nights before turning round and heading home.

  12. jesus
    on May 7th, 2011 at 23:00

    where the christfuck is osler for the love of god?

  13. Jimmy Glesga
    on May 8th, 2011 at 00:29

    jesus. Dave is out there trying his best to save the world from god and jesus! And Aluck
    the new almighty in the pocket of a capitalist Scottish god Scooter Johnie the saviour of Scottish Christianity. Aye.

  14. H.
    on May 8th, 2011 at 16:03

    Can anyone tell me what that meant?

  15. stroppybird
    on May 9th, 2011 at 01:28

    We are both back safe and well !!

    Dave to busy having a good time to post much i’m afraid, its called having a life outside of the internet :-)

    Thanks Harry, sums up the road trip:-)

  16. stroppybird
    on May 9th, 2011 at 01:42

    We also managed to miss the tornados and floods, just .

    You will be all pleased to know Dave was safely chauffeured across 5 states and over 2000 miles, in a red convertible Mustang, by me .

  17. Paulinho
    on June 10th, 2011 at 08:49

    I’m just scared by your article. I am a young french and I am writing a memorandum about black music and civil rights movement. I am trying to see if it had much change in the South. I knew there was a strong conservatism in these states but not at this point!
    You say that “46% of Mississippi Republicans want interracial marriage banned by law.” and in the same time, you got a black president… What a crazy country you live in it!

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