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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67 Responses to “Mississippi Goddam”
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Never mind the educated liberal Europeans, should she be allowed to show you round?
Other choice quotes , to me :
“Not all slave owners beat their slaves, like not all husbands beat their wives”
To me , about Dave “I can see he likes his Black history .” I’m not sure she meant that as a good thing.
“of course slavery is never a good thing BUT its not like its shown in Hollywood.”
“Slavery was not about race but it was cultural.”
“Until after the civil war , and later the civil rights movement , there wasn’t racial tension.”
bird stroppy type. Yes the blacks were privaleged after the civil war. They got their own exclusive seats on buses inspite of not wanting them. Black GIs returning from war could not travel on public transport with their white counterparts. It was OK TO DIE but dare not sit next to a white honkey type man.
“Not all slave owners beat their slaves, like not all husbands beat their wives”
Wow. Just wow.
I was looking at New Orleans on Google Earth this afternooon, the closest I’ll ever get to it, I would imagine. Maybe I was looking at th wrong bit, but they appeared to have reinstated all the damage from the flood. I’ll have to look up the Mississippi next. Try not to worry about the gen-u-uine racists you are encountering on your journey, remember, ‘history is on our side!!!!!’ (and other such morale-boosting remarks.).
Lemme see… You visited Vicksburg a small city which suffered one of the great sieges of history and which surrendered on the 4th July 1863. A city which couldn’t bring itself to celebrate Independence Day until 1944 for obvious reasons and all you can do is whinge about some woman that you took a dislike to.
Jesus fucking Christ…
Frightening and mindless racism in the US deep south is shocking but surely comes as no surprise David. Maybe we should not be surprised either that they still give the ignorant bastards jobs. I wonder what the unemployment rate amongst the black population is where you are. No need to tell me.
Attitudes under the thin surface are not so different here in the UK. A few years back in a session on promoting Equal Opportunity, I was asked how I would do it differently if a black person was in the group. You could not make it up.
I hope you discussed with the tour guide the age of the earth. 6000 years old no doubt.
Exile, trying reading the post, we visited Natchez where we had the racist tour guide. Is it whinging to comment on somewhere , a city tour guide , making out slaves didn’t have it to bad and the KKK didn’t burn all the churches !
She was trying to sanitize history, downplay the cruelties of slavery and also make out the civil rights movement created racial tension, the implication being it was a bad thing. FFS , this is 2011 and this woman represents the city ??
So yeah, we took a bit of a dislike to someone who proudly procalims themselves a member of the Daughters of the Confederacy (check out what they stand for )and is nostalgic for conferate times , with all that meant re slavery.
FYI , in Vicksburg today and visited the Civil War site . The post though was about Natchez .
Was this a state sanctioned tour? If so that is political incorrectness gone mad! Although hearing all views would surely chime with Dave’s libertarian principles?
What next? Sewer rat being put in charge of a Muslim history museum?
Inappropriate jobs Mark II: Martin as a training facilitator (Does he do anger management?), Deviation of Meanness as a teacher or art critic. Does anyone else have any other suggestions arseholes in the wrong jobs?
So Sewer you realised I was playing the arsehole in the wrong job game when I mentioned you as Muslim history museum curator!
Modernity – Chairman of the student debating society.
Boffy – Royal wedding correspondent.
Sewer Rat – Equalities officer or Logical philosophy lecturer.
Jimmy Glesga – Pyschiatrist.
Roger – Plain speaking society president
The post was dated from Vicksburg, hence my comment to be honest. That said Natchez was not a great place to be when the Yankee army arrived for about the third time.
The whole area that you are in reeks of the legacy of that defeat, so the fact that a tour guide tries to in effect put a brave face of things is understandable. And that fact that this is 2011 is neither here nor there. That defeat sits hard and cold in the stomachs of a lot of people.
Exile. I agree the fact that it is now 2011 is irrelevent. It was time to move on a century ago. Too much bigotry is justified by real or imagined historical grievances.
Deviation. You have a sense of humour. You cannot be a socialist.
“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,”
One of those utterances that just begs to be rebutted with “Can you give us three examples?”
Alan Ji. I could see the point in burning down an old clapped out wooden building if you could get insurance. I hardly think those people had insurance. It actually amazes me how tolerant and forgiving the black Christian people have been in the US after all that has been done to them. They are to be applauded.
“But the good news is that not everybody round here is a redneck.”
Bien-pensant English couple suffer culture shock – she sounds like a proud Southerner to me… next week Dave and Stroppy holiday in Sri Lanka and find a Sinhalese taxi driver who thinks the LTTE deserved all they got.
SR,
‘Inappropriate jobs Mark II: Martin as a training facilitator (Does he do anger management?)’
As it happens yes. Why the fxxx do you think I offload here? Anger is bloody good. Maybe it is just ‘drones’ like yourself were not programmed to cope with these times.
My bloody worry is why are most on this island not seething with anger? Confused by management ‘business speak’. So many would market the bloody Granny if they could.
Have a nice day!
Serves you right for going on holiday rather than standing and fighting for the republican cause in blighty. OTOH maybe the weather in Alabama is the hand of god…
Martin: Physician, heal thyself. What psychic hurt was done to youto cause you to become so rancourous?
One of the things that amuses me about the States is the way they have preserved aspects of long since forgotten English life and manners. The expression ‘Goddam’ was once on the lips of every Englishman, in fact Shakespeare says in one of his Henry plays (the one about Agincourt) that teh French called us the ‘Goddams’. Better than being madames, I suppose. Incidentally, I see some enterprising genelogist has dug up a distant connection between Kate Middleton and HRH Prince William of Wales. On her father’s side, she has some gentry links. My mother always likes to say that anyone who has English blood is descended from Edward III (do the maths), so I guess that even includes me, although so far I have not traced any such connection.
Hope you’re not affected by the storms out there. Take care, y’all.
Woods fuck the Republicans. The bunting is out here in Scotland and the wine and beer will be flowing. I wish I was in the land of cotton and Dixie with Dave. Aye Right.
SR ‘What psychic hurt was done to youto cause you to become so rancourous?’
Bit aggressive and rancorous yourself SR, what? I have yet to see a post from you here that is not full of aggressive put downs. I admit some of them deserved on the sexist front.
As you ask my excuse? In keeping with David’s theme here, it’s fighting to prevent this island becoming the next US State.
Maybe we are too late and there already?
Been forced to watch the Russia Today channel on the tv. Just to get away from all the guff.
Jimmy Glesga wrote, “Woods fuck the Republicans.”
The American ones or the British ones Jimmy? I concur if the former and if the latter beg to differ, but in Andy’s spirit of goodwill to all I won’t be churlish- enjoy the party and the bunting!
Goddam, would you there’s even wall-to-wall royal wedding on Danish TV?
Breaking news is that Chris Knight and two others have been “preventatively arrested” in Lewisham for “possession of a toy guillotine” which they were allegedly planning to transport. That should lead to a interesting debate as to what to charge him with back at the station.
FREE CHRIS KNIGHT!
“but in Andy’s spirit of goodwill to all I won’t be churlish”…. ooops for those who were a bit confused by that I forgot which blog I was on, a problem of the 21st century.
Mick. Although the Democrats are right wing the Republicans are Loony Tunes especially with all the shite they come away with about Obama. So I support Obama. I thought SueR would have been out celebrating in the London East End. Giving it Knees up Muther Broon and Doon by ra Bull and Bush, Bush Bush.
Royal bloody wedding blues here. Wall to wall mania. Cheered me up no end to read of toy guillotine’s. More wool anybody?
Can I bag the front seat for Harry’s turn. Nauseating mindless overprivelaged thug.
Hope that was rancorous enough for you SR. I can do much better.
Martin. You are probably a closet Royalist. Dressing up and looking in the mirror and thinking of Kate! woooahh what a nice bit of working class totty crumpet selling her soul to a man she loves. The future Queen of Engerland.
I watched an episode of the 1979 Turtle’s Progress on DVD. Far more enjoyable than the wedding. Anyone who missed this sitcom the first time round should give it a go. Even those from Glasgow, although they may have trouble with the language.
Sewer Rat – Likewise (even al-Jazeera was full of it), though I did get to see Kojak: The Marcus Nelson Murders, as wideranging an indictment of corruption as I’ve ever seen in a regular police procedural. On again next week at 2 in the morning.
D’n'S – Hope the tornadoes haven’t been wreaking destruction where you are.
Well I worked my way through half of a series of King of the Hill and a re-run of Team America – in either of which there is more wit and wisdom than you’d find in the entire output of the BBC TV comedy department since about 1980.
America – Fuck Yeah!!!
I didn’t think I’d ever thank Skidmarx for anything but I had no idea ITV were repeating Kojak in the wee small hours of the morning.
Now if only they would get their fingers out and repeat Lou Grant and Barney Miller and Soap and WKRP in Cincinnati and all the other 70s classics that it is way too much hassle to try and find on DVD or as dodgy downloads.
Hey guys and galls, I appreciate your stance against slavery etc etc but remember that the civil war was about many other issues. Robert E Lee never owned slaves but fought for the right of a State to choose rather than obey a dictat from central Government. Shame you old Camden/Islington now in the real working class East End heartlends type fashonlefties don’t read more books!
Mr C (working class hero)
Whether or not Robert E Lee owned slaves is irrelevant.
Lee fought on the side which was for the preservation and expansion of slavery westward.
Therefore Lee’s personal attributes don’t come into it, Lee purposely advanced the cause of slavery, however you read it.
That is the real issue, not some personalised view of history and questionable individuals 150 years on.
Modernity – I completely disagree with your analysis. Lee didn’t want his state to secede from the Union (Lincoln had actually offered him the command of all the Union forces), but when it did, he felt honour bound to his home state of Virginia, despite his disagreement with its policy (and his anti-slavery attitudes).
“Therefore Lee’s personal attributes don’t come into it, Lee purposely advanced the cause of slavery, however you read it.”
And you purposely advance the cause of globalised capitalism, the bombing of Libya, invasion of Iraq etc, when you purposely pay your UK taxes. Your personal attributes don’t come into it.
I hope Dave and Stroppy are OK, btw. Anyone heard from them since the tornadoes struck ?
And FWIW Jefferson Davis was such a good master that he handed over his huge Mississippi plantation to the slaves themselves to run as a sort of commune (of course they still had to pay him a share of their crops – but at least they had no white overseers and were not bought and sold off the plantation like cattle) and after the Civil War they all petitioned for his release from Federal imprisonment.
But this means nothing – Davis like Lee and Stonewall Jackson (another allegedly benign master) all fought for slavery as a system knowing full well that most slave owners were far less benevolent than themselves – so ultimately they chose the interests of their class over whatever Christian and Humanitarian principles they professed.
In fact the only leading Confederate who ended up with any honour at all was General Longstreet who after the war became a Republican politician and organised black militias to defend the rights of freed ex-slaves against white supremacists – and of course his memory was excoriated for generations for this betrayal.
Laban,
You completely missed my point and didn’t engage with it.
Lee’s particular owning of slaves is an irrelevance, brought up to somehow endow him with prestige, it is a red herring.
I left out the obvious because it seemed so bleeding obvious.
Had Lee successfully led the South to winning the American Civil War then there would have naturally been an expansion of slavery westward, a massive expansion.
Now can you engage with this question and tell me, do you think it would have been morally acceptable to go along with an expansion of slavery? And how would you then have viewed Lee’s role in that eventuality?
PS: There is a bigger picture to this, I suggest you try and see it.
Were safe , thanks .
Mod,
Don’t forget that when the Army of Northern Virginia invaded the North during their campaign which ended at Gettsyburg, they rounded up freed slaves and free black men and shipped them back to the South.
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/08/andrew-hall-robert-e-lees-civil-war-army-of-northern-virginia-as-a-slave-raiding-enterprise.html
Glad to hear it, stroppy.
You may have evade the excesses of the British media on The Wedding, but you’ve walked into another media blitz over there. Is there any dancing in the streets?
Modernity – I understood your point perfectly and you totally missed mine so decided to repeat yourself.
The fact that ‘objectively’ there could (potentially – it was up to the autonomous State concerned, which was what Lee cared about) have been an expansion of slavery had Lee’s army won, doesn’t mean that he ‘purposely’ advanced the cause of slavery – because that wasn’t what he was fighting for. He was a man with a very difficult and painful choice to make whichever way he made it. You may consider he made the wrong choice, and so may I, but that doesn’t mean he’s not worthy of respect.
Just so do you have to make the difficult and painful decision whether or not to pay taxes to a state which will use them (inter alia) to advance globalised capitalism, fund the bombing of Libya etc. But assuming you DO pay them, I wouldn’t label you in some future Museum of Politics as “Modernity. Although he espoused left-wing views, he funded the expansion of global capitalism and the bombing of Libya”.
Laban,
My apologies, I thought that you were sincere in your interest in this subject, and reasonably intelligent but now I can see you are pushing an agenda.
When I first came across this topic I was surprised how apologists for the various leaders would twist even the simplest issue to exculpate them, particularly Lee.
Further, I was often annoyed at Libertarians who would bang on about “States right” and such like, while conveniently avoiding the issue of slavery and its implications.
I’ll repeat the issue again for those readers (who unlike Laban don’t have an agenda) to better understand the historical issues:
1. In the long scheme of things someone’s intent in history is largely irrelevant, it is the consequence of their ACTIONS that is important for humanity, as a totality.
2. Part of the issue in the Civil War was the expansion of slavery westward into California, etc
3. Had the Confederacy won the Civil War, then it seems highly likely that slavery would have expanded beyond the South.
4. Slavery is one of the worst crimes against humanity, therefore to allow its expansion is to be culpable.
5. The leaders, irrespective of their own personal habits, who allowed that expansion would have been culpable.
6. Taking up Laban’s irrelevant point, that we are all guilty in some way, another red herring, this fails to appreciate the role of leaders in history and is lacking in any historical appreciation of the precedents.
7. These leaders are conscious actors, not bit players like everyone else. Leader’s choices and their actions have major consequences for hundreds of thousands and millions of people, that is why they are different from the rest of us and why the judgement of history looks at them in a different light.
Again, the ultimate consequence of the Confederacy winning the American Civil War would have been the expansion of slavery in North America, and its prolonged use probably for another hundred years, thus, leaders in the Confederacy who sought to win the American Civil War were, by default, culpable of participating in the expansion of slavery.
Modernity,
Lee was a very conscious actor. He knew he was fighting for the rights of slave owners, among other things. He was also a great general by all accounts.
mod. Not that great he lost the War. Bad tactics all round on both sides lining up men in rows. Hold the gound chaps do not break the line and all that. Almost as bad as World War 1. The North had more cannon fodder they won the War.
Read some history – or if that is too hard watch the Ken Burns TV series.
The ACW was actually the first modern war where overwhelmingly amateur officers and men often (though not always) broke all the rules and did things like dig trenches and hide behind trees and bushes rather than stand about in lines waiting to be slaughtered.
The much shorter Franco-Prussian war of 1870 was actually much bloodier relatively speaking as the professional soldiers continued to behave as if they were at Waterloo – even though they and their enemies were now armed with repeating rifles, breechloading cannon and early machine guns that vastly increased their firepower.
Anyway my real point is that class will always out – Lee and Jackson may have claimed that they fought for the right of their state to secede from the Union but the only reason that Virginia and the other Confederate states had to secede was that their ruling elites genuinely believed slavery to be under threat.
And given the economics of slavery it is not an institution that can stand still without a constant supply of new slaves – a victorious South would have needed to reinstitute the African slave trade or it would have eventually become as unviable as it did in Cuba and Brazil later in the century – and this would probably have involved a whole cycle of imperial expansion.
Can I incidentally recommend the Radio 3 documentary that aired on Sunday at 9.30:
Sunday Feature
The American Civil War
Blockade Runners and Black Minstrels
What did Britain do in the American Civil War? Louise Welsh investigates blockade running, blackface minstrelsy, spy-wars and abolitionists, with the Clyde shipyards as her focus.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b010nrnp/Sunday_Feature_The_American_Civil_War_Blockade_Runners_and_Black_Minstrels/
Wodger. All Officers are amateurs until they have gained experience in battle. Some die some learn to keep their heads down. Fuck Wodger I thought you knew better!