Mississippi Delta: Old Times There are Not Forgotten

The deeper you dig the more tenacious the lies.

How could it be otherwise when you start with slavery as a cornerstone of the Southern and let’s be honest - American economy? Chattel slavery is the ethic of capitalism taken to its ugliest, terminal conclusion. If labor is a commodity to be bought, why not introduce the option to buy and sell and eliminate as much as possible the requirements of remuneration? It’s just business.  

Once an economy is built on such a repulsive foundation what good could come from it?

And now The Peculiar Institution lives on. Its legacy is mass incarceration, wealth inequality, housing discrimination, and other institutions and mechanisms of white superiority.

My father’s family was part of it. I am saddened by my ancestors’ participation in slavery. Tracing my ancestry, I found documents confirming that my great-great-grandfather owned slaves. If the records I’ve found are indicative it appears that he had few, mostly devoted to household and personal service. But one is one too many. 

Regarding the Wilson family, the sole redemption I feel is that my great-grandfather came to loathe the abomination of slavery and left North Carolina for Kansas. His departure may make me persona non grata in Catawba County (which my great-great-grandfather helped found), North Carolina. I’ll find out one day soon because I intend to visit North Carolina to explore my family’s story in the state where Joshua Wilson, from Cork, Ireland, established residence in 1783.

The thing is, no white American is exempt from this responsibility. Are there degrees of culpability? Of course, there are. But no one is untarnished.

I could endlessly excoriate white America; it’s fish in a barrel. But I have adopted the creed of the Emmett Till Memory Project - “Reconciliation begins by telling the truth.”

I hope it’s true; in my heart I do. But I also know that reconciliation’s presupposition is that there was some previous state of grace to return to, which sure as shit is not the case. On the other hand, if folks who have suffered our shit for centuries say ‘reconciliation,’ who am I to quibble?

In Sumner, Mississippi, on the square

I sure as hell have no proprietary claim to truth. But I am in search of it and I hope to proceed unafraid.

If you walk the streets of Clarksdale, Mississippi in the vicinity of Fourth and Issaquena streets, try to imagine a bustling business district. Eighty years ago, black customers traded with black and white, mostly Jewish (some Italian, Chinese, even Syrian), merchants along crowded streets, streets of commerce during the week, and revelry on weekend nights, in any of nine to a dozen juke joints. It’s full of empty storefronts and dilapidated buildings now.

The white section of downtown, just to the north and west, was once lined with shops of all description, carrying everything from basic dry goods to fine millinery and tailored suits. This too is now more than dotted with the empty and dilapidated. With a handful of exceptions, the present occupants are focusing on tourists.

What happened?

Mechanization brought an end to the age of King Cotton. As the city of Clarksdale's own website says bluntly, "Whereas previously the area's sprawling plantations were worked largely by African-Americans, the rapid mechanization of cotton production made these underpaid workers expendable." Blacks in Clarksdale developed and enjoyed their own culture during Jim Crow as long as no white man’s wife wanted to juke it up – but not without gainful employment. With the loss of jobs in cotton, the movement of blacks to cities, especially Northern cities, accelerated and the very tenuous economies of black neighborhoods in Southern towns were dealt a brutal blow.

Also, the landmark decision in Brown vs Board of Education (Topeka) that promised the integration of public schools had a profound impact on communities like Clarksdale. Trust me, I’m not making an argument for segregation. In the wake of Brown, there has been a steady increase nationally in black graduation rates and college attendance. That is all to the good.

But the sad truth is that separate-but-unequal became even more striking in the post-Brown decades in Southern towns like Clarksdale. In no time at all after Brown, Southern whites, intent on preserving racial separation, established what is commonly known as “segregation academies.” In Clarksdale, there's Lee Academy, a low-slung series of buildings along Lee Drive, an arterial on the edge of town. In a city that’s 78% black, the student body of Clarksdale High is 92% black. Lee Academy is 92% white. In 2019, "the (public) district remains classified as low performing, bouncing between D and F every year since 2013. ...In the 2017-2018 school year, 19% of the district's teachers were not certified and – perhaps consequently – the district received an F rating." The district "has trouble retaining highly qualified educators." (Aallyah Wright, writing in Mississippi Today, 8/8/2019)

As for the Lee Academy, get a load of this from their webpage:

NON-DISCRIMINATORY ADMISSIONS AND EMPLOYMENT POLICY

Lee Academy and the Lula-Rich Educational Foundation, Inc., in keeping with our belief in the innate worth of every person, welcome the application of students and staff members of any race, religion, color and/or origin and do not discriminate against individuals of such groups.  

“Such groups?” Seriously, is this the best they can do in 2020 – even rhetorically. Jesus, they need a public relations professional.

In 2001, Bob Edward, the former Clarksdale Schools superintendent, recalled that the opening of Lee Academy was "the worst thing that ever happened to our schools." He explained that when the public schools integrated, white families "ran" to private schools. Black students were and are hamstrung by the inequitable distribution of educational resources.

Lee Academy is a private, 92% white institution, so I find myself wondering how poor white kids can afford to go there. Surely, not all white kids are rich. Their moms don’t all lunch every day at Yazoo Pass (a nice, downtown café), proving that race may be the number one prejudice, but class often isn’t far behind.

African American educators and friends of education advocated for the Clarksdale Collegiate Charter school, which is public, and opened in 2018 with about 70 students and an eventual target of 150. Controversy remains in the community, however, about its impact on Clarksdale High and other public schools. Will it encourage a black brain drain?

But I digress. My question is: what sense of shared community is possible with such institutional segregation and separation? In cities where the mania for white segregation is less embedded, the whole town - White, Black, Latino and all other ethnicities - cheers for the high school football team. Not in Clarksdale or a host of Southern towns where too many white people still long for the good old days of separate toilets.

Show me a town where forever-Jim-Crow is practiced that’s growing or prospering. The price of racism will eventually be oblivion, a deserved oblivion for the white rentier class, many of them descendants of the plantation owners. The problem is, black citizens are the ones who are most negatively affected. I hesitate to call them victims. Certainly, that's not the self-perception of many African Americans. Nonetheless, the segregation academies are a central part of compelling different outcomes in education and those outcomes help shape economic futures. 

Without blues tourism (more on that in future posts) it's not clear what would sustain Clarksdale. I would estimate that fully half of the occupied downtown buildings (and that’s about half) are occupied by businesses whose primary, in some cases sole, reason for being is tourists. Without many opportunities, the young folks who can, white and black, are getting out of Dodge and the population has dwindled consistently for decades.

Sure, the decline of the rural economy has played a huge part in Clarksdale's swoon, but my belief is that by clinging to old 'values' and insisting on the maintenance of segregation the white folks with money may have signed their town's death warrant. Again, those most impacted are the black residents, too many of whom live in endemic poverty.

The solution? It is to move beyond segregation, beyond tolerance, and toward building real, inclusive communities where people look one another in the eye and talk about real shit rather than driving down Sunflower Avenue without so much as eye contact. How do the Clarksdales of the South move in that direction? Recognition and conversation. It has to start somewhere. It has to start with lower-income whites waking the fuck up to the fact that they’ve been hoodwinked into believing Black people are a threat to them.

This is not to pick on Clarksdale. There’s a wealth of sins to go around in America when it comes to race, from St. Louis to Detroit, Memphis to Boston. And that I’m even ranting about Mississippi is testament to the way the black culture there drew me in. Perhaps, because the hurt and division in the South are so profound, the states of the old Confederacy have an opportunity to lead the way. 

p.s. – I’m a Kansas Yankee. Despite our abolitionist heritage, white Kansas is not without sin when it comes to race relations. I’ll write about an especially egregious example in a future piece. However, my next subject will be a little town called Elaine in the Arkansas delta.

                                                                                                          

If you’re a Mississippian and something I say contradicts your experience, I’d like to know your thoughts. I’ve learned a lot in your state. And I have a lot more to learn. I know that for sure. Hell, I’ll keep visiting just to eat at Fan and Johnny’s in Greenwood. That’s good eating. - Steven J Wilson                                                                                                     

                    Fan and Johnny's, best food in the world

                                                                                                             

                           ROAD MUSIC: Wire - Off the Beach