Justice

Summer of ‘64: A Mississippi Freedom Fighter Remembers the Struggle

with JoAnne Prichard Morris

You never know when something's going to happen that will change your life completely. If I had stayed in Florida canning tomatoes, I wouldn't have been here when the civil rights workers came to Mississippi in the summer of 1964. But here I was in Mayersville, chopping Jimson weeds and Johnson grass out of Mr. Wilkerson's cotton for $3 a day. It was 1964, and I was 31 years old. We were living in our old two-room shotgun shack without indoor plumbing.

[Ladd] Freedom is Just Another Word

When I was living in New York, we heard that the Klan was coming to march in Manhattan. This, predictably, caused an outrage in the city with folks screaming about why the stupid yuck-yucks shouldn't be allowed to march there. They oughta stay home in New Jersey, or wherever they were shlepping from. Tell them they weren't welcome.

'Mississippi Burning' and Other Tall Tales

In one of those bizarre twists of fate that keep happening to me since I returned to Mississippi, I ended up recently spending a Saturday afternoon in Neshoba County with a camera crew from Glamour magazine. As if that weren't odd enough, we were at two of the most historic locations in Neshoba County, actually in the U.S. The über-hip crew, flown in from New York and Los Angeles, was doing makeup, arranging clothing, and taking pictures first at the spot where a gaggle of Klansmen killed civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner on June 21, 1964. Then the crew moved to Mount Zion, the black Methodist church that Klansmen burned to both punish the parishioners for trying to register blacks to vote, and to lure the civil rights workers to Neshoba County from Meridian so that they could be "eliminated."

[Hutchinson] What is ‘the Truth,' Mr. Cosby?

Comedian Bill Cosby's partial recant that his knock of allegedly bad behaving blacks was a call for action and not a broad brush stroke indictment of all poor blacks, came too little, too late. Rightwing shock jocks, conservative black apologists and op-ed columnists have giddily embraced him as their darling, and many blacks cheer him for supposedly daring to speak what they call "the truth."

I Felt the Earth Move

It was like old home day in Neshoba County Sunday … with a few twists. The usual suspects—the people I've gotten to know in the struggle for justice and racial reconciliation in the state—were there to honor Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner: former elected officials and social activists and journalists and movement veterans and everyday citizens who want justice for victims of civil rights violence.

Down a Southern Road

Monday, June 21, is the 40th anniversary of the deaths of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.

Bigotry of Low Expectations

I was about to start my second year at Mississippi State when Ronald Reagan came to the Neshoba County Fair in 1980. My gut instincts told me one thing. "The Republicans are playing Mississippians for fools," I told my oldest brother then. He was a Reagan supporter, but he later tended to agree with me about the Gipper. My naïve hunch played out. No matter how many syrupy, lemonade-soaked reminiscences of that visit we read about now from one Fair cabin owner or another (the "elite" of Neshoba County), the net result of that visit hasn't been pretty.

Neshoba County Coalition Calls for Justice

The newly formed Philadelphia Coalition of blacks, whites and Choctaws released the following statement calling for justice and issuing a long-overdue apology for the tragic murders that happened there on Father's Day 40 years ago. See http://neshobajustice.com for a schedule of the memorial service on Sunday, June 20.

The Next Generation

Those are six words I never expected to say. I grew up, like many restless kids, thinking my town was the most backward place on earth. That's normal. But when I was 14 and found out what occurred in Philadelphia, Miss., when I was 3, I was overwhelmed with shame. That's tragic

‘Philadelphia Coalition' Calls for Justice

The Neshoba Democrat is reporting that a multi-racial coalition of leader, business owners, newspaper editors and citizens in Neshoba County today issued a long-overdue statement, calling for justice for the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. The group—whites, blacks and Choctaws—also issued an apology on behalf of the citizens of Neshoba County to the families of the three men:

[Irby] Trouble in Mind

I set foot back in Jackson on Feb. 10, 2004, after a year and a half of moving around. I had traveled to what I considered the most liberal parts of the country, California and New York. I left in search of something different, a place of new ideas and open minds, where I could feel free.

Black Monday: Mississippi's Ugly Response to 'Brown v. Board' Decision

It was the late spring 1953, and Gov. Hugh White had called a crucial special session of the Mississippi Legislature. He needed to mobilize a group of moderate lawmakers. If he could get the numbers right, White would ask them to do something that would make them hated throughout the state.

[Ladd] Thin Line Between Love and Hate

I was talking to a young woman the other day who is in the family of a Jackson man who toiled and lobbied and prodded and threatened for many years to try to block school de-segregation and then to encourage white families to pull their children out of the public schools. The young woman told me that she admires my work. She has progressive ideas. She likes the JFP.

‘Thurgood's Coming:' Tale of a Hero Lawyer

When Thurgood Marshall hung out his shingle in 1933 as an attorney in his hometown of Baltimore, he immediately became a very popular attorney among fellow African Americans. One problem, though: His clients couldn't afford to pay the young man who received his law degree from Howard University in Washington, D.C.

JPS, Then and Now

The 1957 Murrah High School yearbook is filled with happy white faces, and names like Hederman, Copeland and Mize. One photo shows the yearbook staffers cutting up and having a good time; one young man's grinning face is painted black. The 1958 yearbook shows another boy in blackface, that year clearly ridiculing Little Richard. That was four years after the U.S. Supreme Court had declared school segregation illegal. But there were still no black children in Murrah High School; they would not cross the school's threshold for years to come.

Ellington