Shotguns. bludgeons, nooses and so on. All of it failed. But now, they use more subtle tools to keep the ideals of the Confederacy alive.
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@Robert
The GOP in certain districts mess with polling locations and hours. Very far apart in rural areas with no public transportation. Or, hours which make it impossible for the working poor to vote before work, or to get off work in time to vote after work. It is a ruthless game which the GOP will lose due to demographics: young people will not join in large numbers; minorities will not join in significant numbers. Eventually the GOP will be the 21stC version of the Whig Party.
14
Celebrates or remembers confederate times?
There is so much raw ugly hateful history that's not being told!
1
Richard Rubin makes history urgent again in this excellent article. I looked up Richard Rubin and he has written about Mississippi before--and I hope he will continue to put pressure on stories we know well--like Emmett Till--as well as finding others--for there are many, too many--that we don't and should know about the terrible history of the Delta. Southerners live a unique burden, what Robert Penn Warren called "the awful responsibility of Time." But, they also live a fractured present--for as soon as time catches up to us, it condemns us twice--for the past and for the fragile present. Jesmyn Ward's heartbreaking Men We Reaped eloquently and fiercely gives us Mississippi present: "There is a great darkness bearing down on our lives, and no one acknowledges it."
5
Mr. Rubin mistakenly refers to the saltire in the Mississippi flag as the “Stars and Bars.” The “Stars and Bars” was a flag with 3 broad stripes (the “Bars”)—two red and one white—with a blue canton containing a circle of (variously 7, 9, 11, or 13 the number of which depicted the number of states of the Confederacy) stars which was the first flag of the Confederacy.
The emblem to which Mr. Rubin refers was used on the battle flag of the Confederacy (sometimes referred to as the “Southern Cross,”) which in turn had been adapted from the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia.
Being a New Englander, I suppose Mr. Rubin is to be forgiven. What isn’t as easily forgiven are the Southerners who wave the “Southern Cross” about, mistakenly calling it the “Stars and Bars” and claiming it to be an emblem of regional pride, rather than the emblem of never-say-die racism. One might think that someone with so much “Southern Pride” would know the difference.
3
This article brought memories of a different sort for me. I was in Belzoni in the late 80s, early 90s when I was a reporter for the Clarion-Ledger. I was embedded in the Delta because the region -in fact, much of rural Mississippi, was undergoing a crack epidemic.
I remember one African-American deputy, whose name I can't recall. I wonder whether he is now the sheriff.
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Emmett Till and Reverend Lee were subject to State backed acts of terrorism.
Misjustice is at a different level when it is backed by the government. It sends a message that there is no recourse when the government has a role in the injustice.
The reason that we are more anxious about acts of terrorism is because those acts imply a significant amount of resources, planning, and organization has been used in performing those acts.
We need to never forget the support the State gave to Whites in oppressing blacks into the 21st century. Unfortunately, Trump just represents the continuation of support by the government of suppression of minorities. The shock is that we thought we had got beyond this point in our history.
Is the black sheriff in this article, an example of new governmental authority or is he just a cog in the wheel that continues the same order?
3
Don't think for a nano second that the Sheriff s department is not under control of the powerful!
1
Homocide is epidemic and interracial in the inner cities of the US.Homocide originates in the primal urges and is territorial .Politics effects territory so, in effect,you may find epidemic Homocide in certain areas of exact political control .Such as the deep south or the eastern and midwest cities of Chicago where inter racial homocide is epidemic.Many countries experience this phenomena such as Africa where inter racial and tribal conflicts have killed a few million Africans in recent years.Politicians ,often at fault for inciting conflict have been helpless ,in the US ,as well as Africa and the Middle Eastern countries.So as a result it's easy to cherry pick a few instances to reveal injustice ,often for political means ,but civil rights is world wide .
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@Alan Einstoss
Hard to understand what the point of your observations might be. It looks very much like deflection or denial. Yes, human violence happens everywhere. But this was a specific instance, in a specific time and place, and in a country whose Constitution states that it's a self-evident truth that "all men are created equal". Which the reality on the ground - then, and to a lesser but still significant degree, even now - did and does not live up to.
7
I read your comment twice and still don't understand your point!
1
The new civil rights museum in Jackson may be the best museum in the country. While you’re down there, combine the civil rights with the blues trail. No other state has a history like this- full of unspeakable horror and the sublime.
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I visited Jackson State University just to see the campus. What was most notable was that all the first floor dorm rooms were protected by security bars and there were almost as many security guards on campus as students. I had a casual conversation with a guard who explained that the security was necessary because of the violence in the surrounding neighborhood. Indeed, there was nowhere near the university where a professor would even consider living.
Jackson State looks as much like a penitentiary as a university. That speaks volumes. As I left the campus, I saw a plaque marking where the famous student shooting occurred during the 60's. It was one or two sentences that offered less information that a standard history book covering the period. I am not a fan of tourism that involves traveling to see plaque after plaque when real life is so much more revealing.
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@michjas
I lived in CT for 22 years, in Westport. Yale University was in New Haven; I went there at different times, once to take a friend to a medical facility located there. What could not be avoided was the neighborhood surrounding this rich, prestigious university: it was poor, run down and not inviting. Criminal activity surrounded the university; students were sometimes assaulted and robbed. It didn't look like a penitentiary, although it did not look like a campus open to its surroundings. Once inside the campus, it was lovely. The same can be said for parts of Harvard, bordering on Dorchester. I visited a friend who lived in Cambridge and made a wrong turn out of a gas station; the attendant ran after me shouting to turn back. I did, and he explained how to reach the thruway, safely. Same thing in the Seaport in Baltimore; you wanted to follow a certain route, otherwise you would get lost in a maze of ancient streets, as I did. I finally stopped and knocked on a door; a young black man answered and told me to wait while he got his car. I followed him to the thruway; he waved me off, smiling and nodding. Not all neighborhoods are safe; and, not all those who live in bad neighborhoods mean you harm.
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@michjas Sorry you came away with a lopsided view of JSU. There are professors that live in the surrounding neighborhoods. To state that you saw as many security guards as students is a wild exaggeration. Anyone who visits the campus will see that it definitely cannot be mistaken for a prison. Tone down the sensationalism.
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@DC
Nope. I agree with that perception of the campus.
The more things change the more things stay the same, which can apply to many places through out the US especially in rural places like Money MS. In 1860 Mississippi had the most millionaire's ,from the cotton trade & almost free labor than any other State in the Union. I cant imagine whats really changed in the way people in Rural America think of Race. I have a hard time explaining why the average rural non owning slave farmer from the South supported the Confederate cause to expand the institution of slavery. The average soldier sacrificed his own farm and livelyhood to a divide and conquer government in Richmond, VA controlled by the wealthiest 400 families. Does this remind you of whats going on in our Nations Capital today?. There is not a simple explanation to explain how mean and cruel we could become its built-in to our DNA. We need to understand our differences around the way we understand the past and work on the same page going forward.
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@Crew man
LBJ was famous for his statement that if you could convince a man he was better than some other man, he would let you pick his pocket ..."Hell, he'll even help you do it". In spite of what he knew, he pushed through the Voting Rights Act; he went home to Texas. He was a poor Texas hill country boy who knew poor Black people growing up; he remembered them and their poverty. He did the right thing for the right reasons. Try to imagine Trump doing that; try to imagine Trump making any sacrifice for any individual other than for himself and his immediate family.
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@Linda Miilu I even doubt that he would sacrifice for his immediate family. I can very easily imagine him "throwing them under the bus".
1
@Linda Miilu.....GOP passed the civil rights bill
Al Gore Sr of Tenn voted against it
I have an uncle from the Louisiana side of the Mississippi river and he told me something that I will never forget. He told me that he'd rather be in jail in Michigan, than free in Louisiana. It was over thirty years ago he told me this and the shock has still not worn off.
16
If friends seek advice of friends, then the US could ask for Germany's help in this matter. They have 70 years of experience going the extra mile - no, light-year - in not just admitting to the past, but acknowledging the wrongs of their ancestors. Yes, slavery and Jim Crow were not extermination measures, but they *were* just one, two short steps at most, steps below that.
Sure it was unpleasant for me (a white person who grew up just across the state line from MS) to learn things I didn't learn previously, but I acknowledged I had a responsibility to do what I can to not judge others - and certainly not make things worse.
This is not me feeling "white guilt" or any other garbage labels. That's admitting this country needs to be more consistent about treatment of all people - regardless of race or any other diversity category.
15
Having read this well-written story with fascination, I have decided to add the trail to my bucket list. I was in my early twenties when Emmet Till was murdered. It horrified me then and now. There were only three national television broadcasts, and I remember going through the broadcasts of all three, until I could sketch together in my mind the sequence of events mingled with the narration and the voices of the citizens in the area. That has formed an image of the stupefying hatred and inhumanity of the white people there.
I lived not far away then, in New Orleans, which had its own disgusting legacy of bigotry and racism. I have to get back to my roots there to see what change has happened. I am seventy-five now, and time’s a wasting.
21
A great story about American History that so many don’t want to discuss with any degree of accuracy. This was a welcome change. Thank You. However, one sentence seemed to continue to perpetuate a lie that resulted in the awful murder of an eighth grade boy. “ . . . when a black 14 year-old from Chicago, down visiting his mother’s kin . . . supposedly whistled at, or said something fresh to, or pawed at the white woman working behind the counter.” To continue to report that lie, with no reference to the fact that the woman at the center of this lynching has admitted that she lied, does a great disservice to the VERY people & history this story is meant to cover. Given that the NYTimes covered Carolyn Bryant’s recantation last year, I am wondering how this line slipped past the editors as written? A forever 14 year old Emmett Till who never had the opportunity to defend himself against this lie deserves to have the FULL extent of the crazy that resulted in his murder known. His mother fought all those years ago to have the truth told so please report the full truth of Emmett’s lynching. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/emmett-till-lynching-carolyn-bryan...
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Having spent much time in the Old South, I found the people generous and hospitable. Yes, their legacy is one of separating from the Union for economic and cultural reasons. They believed in Individual Sovereigns (save slaves) and their States could create a separate culture from the Union. After the Civil War, the refrain became, "The South shall rise again!". Indeed they have; and like everywhere, there remains the largest room for improvement. I wonder if Schaeferhund aligns him/herself with the current "cold insurrection" against the founding principles of the United States?
My family's business (established 1892) purchased five to ten years ago a "slave family"'s legacy 160 acre farm which was conferred by the plantation owner. They provided the same for each of their freed slaves' families. This was not evil.
1
@Nello What is your point? So, do I understand you as saying that providing land to a formerly enslaved family negates the several years of being owned? Not sure if that equates to goodness. Seemingly still remains quite evil.
11
Try that with your family's business' employees. Explain to them about benevolent slavery, and how withholding their wages now for something that you'll later give to their children is "not evil," and see what happens.
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@Nello
Lynchings continued after Reconstruction; refusal to allow Black citizens to register to vote continued after Reconstruction; that is why there was a Civil Rights movement in the '60's. So your family purchased some farmland owned by former slaves, probably not the best farmland available. Don't put "slave family" in quotes; there is nothing fanciful or undocumented about slave families. Decades of murders, rapes, abuse etc. deserves more than "slave families" in quotes. If you ever visit D.C. be sure to visit a slave quarters behind an old lovely Federal home. I lived there and took the tour. I had to crawl through the small opening to this hovel with dirt packed floors, one tiny window high up on one wall. I was shaped like an igloo, facing a large kitchen garden which the slaves worked in. House slaves lived in small rooms off the kitchen, or up in small attic rooms. No doubt these antecedents of current Black citizens were fortunate "slave families". Your statement is so mired in ignorance of our past history,
it is breath taking. Did you go to H.S.? Did you ever learn about the Civil War, with the Confederacy fighting to keep slaves on cotton plantations, and Northern abolitionists fighting to uphold the freedom of all individuals? When you dig in the soil of the farm you bought, think about the blood soaked into decades ago.
10
So happy that this story is getting nationwide attention. I lived in the area for several years in the 60s......when I left my parents in New Orleans, their farewell warning was, "Please don't get yourself killed in Mississippi!" I had been active in civil rights in New Orleans, and my parents were frequently horrified that I was participating in events that could cause me to be jailed. One big difference: I'm white, and every time I participated in Civil Rights actions, the people of color were arrested, and I was merely told, "Go home, you don't want to get hurt out here."
Double standard still exists....from the White House down to the lowliest, unemployed, disabled peon.
43
Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were white.
7
In the deep South, it wasn't just a few bad apples, a few evil murderers. It was the evil judges and members of the juries that acquitted the white perpetrators. It was the evil members of the police that covered-up rather than investigated these crimes. It was the complicit telephone operators who prevented people from making long-distance calls. It was a massive, multi-generational conspiracy.
We want to raise our children to be proud of their heritage and country, obviously. Most whites of the South, unfortunately, may never partake in such pride. It will take a new generation to atone for those of yore, and to set a new standard, so that the future generations of their offspring may have moral values and a sense of pride. Many still don't realize they don't even have that right now. In the Age of Trump, they may never.
I'm descended from a Confederate soldier. His son married into an abolitionist Quaker family, and adopted their values. I'm proud of that heritage. Something similar has to happen for everyone if it hasn't happened already.
Sadly, even some in my family disregard their own proud heritage for a false heritage admiring the Confederacy. It's going to take a long time.
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Something important is consistently missing from discussions like this, not only those about our history as a nation, but of today's political schisms: for millions of Americans, racism is fun.
They detest having that joy stigmatized, as we've always seen. And as we've seen recently, when someone in authority gives them permission to celebrate it, they do. They hate being shamed. They hate being presented with evidence that they deserve to be ashamed. They hate the people who present that evidence, and the processes that make such evidence unimpeachable. And they love someone who denies all of it and tells them to believe their myth of inherent superiority, to embrace their ugliness of character and their self-delusions, and to savor once again the gall of their cruelty.
They used to pose for photos beside the hanging tree. Now they shoot signs at night.
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@Next Conservatism A proper explanationof such behavior has always eluded me. I've never understood such responses to revelations about dark deeds and thoughts of people who surely have hearts and a sense of common decency and basic humanity.
I believe "horrified" must replace "shame" though. I am horrified every time I hear how some people still see humans with surface differences. I believe they fear others more than they fear the darkness that lurks in their own hears and minds. People tend to hate what they fear. Thank you for giving me your words. I finally understand.
4
Never forget. Forgiving may take longer.
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@Brucer
Too often the victims are dead. No one but the victims has the right to forgive the perpetrators.
1
@Jean
I agree with you regarding the actual crimes, but not the societal factors as a whole which made the crimes acceptable. I'm related by marriage to a very large family in Mississippi consisting of both doctors, lawyers and other professionals. Very nice Christian folks, with a huge blind spot concerning "the blacks." It is very painful for me to understand how deeply ingrained racial discrimination is in even educated folks who should know better. I find that to be nearly unforgivable.
Articles like this one is the reason I subscribe to the New York Times. Thank you!
40
Yes, indeedy, in a state that still practices racism. How quaint is this story?
8
I just went back and read Richard Rubin's "Ghosts of Emmitt Till" story from 2005 - https://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/31/magazine/the-ghosts-of-emmett-till.html
This R.Rubin guy is a smoking-good reporter!
17
It makes me sick to my stomach, to have to read this, and to think the descendants sill harbor the same racist views from the 1950's.
28
Well timed article. I plan to use this information on my next Delta trip, a place like no other in the US.
15
Thank you, thank you, for helping to ensure that we never forget our ugly racist history in this so-called "land of the free"
19
Yet more strong reasons never to visit Mississippi.
I'm still waiting for "post-racial" America.
11
@Porter You won't find it in Florida.
4
@Porter
It's not going to happen until everyone in elected government was born in the 21st century and not the 20th.
9
What a peculiar thing to say when you live in Florida which brims with racism.
8
Thank you for this powerful story. As I was born in 1948, the civil rights struggles were part of my childhood and have mesmerized me ever since. I knew of Emmett Till, of course, but don't recall having previously heard of Rev. Lee's horrible murder. How sad that the Till marker has been repeatedly vandalized but I am glad that both Till and Lee have been recognized by Mississippi as worthy of commemorating. When the citizens of Mississippi finally take down their symbols glorifying both the Confederacy and slavery for which the Civil War was fought, then a true evolution in morality will have occurred. Progress has been made, but not enough.
29