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| Many people are unaware of this
wonderful diversity in Mississippi – no
“melting pot” here, rather the ethnic
ingredients of our population resemble a salad or beef
stew or a quilt, with distinct and separate parts that
together constitute the whole. Mississippi became the 20th state in the Union in l8l7, a newly born-darling daughter in the growing family of states in the fastest growing country in the world. There was exuberant pride abounding in the land; Mississippians were Americans and proud of it. But there was a serpent in this American Garden of Eden: human bondage. The French brought the first slaves with them to the lower Mississippi valley in the l720s. Later, the English and Spanish, who later governed here, used slavery. The law that created the Mississippi Territory in l798 specifically allowed slavery. By the early l800s, after the invention of the cotton gin, cotton became the chief money crop in Mississippi. As prosperity occur- red and the state’s population grew, slavery became much more than a labor system; it became a social mechanism for allowing the slave-owning whites (never more than 25% of the population) to maintain control. A great deal of money was made from slave-grown cotton, attitudes toward slavery changed: from that of “necessary evil” to that of “positive good.” Thomas Jefferson likened slavery to holding a “Wolf by the Ears”; you can’t let him go lest he attack you but you can’t stay there with him forever. In the l830s Northern abolitionist attacks on slavery caused white Southerners to become defensive, to develop a “siege mentality,” to think of themselves as a “conscious minority” in the Union. Abolitionists were branded as radical troublemakers and white Mississippians developed paranoia and became suspicious of all outsiders. A political and ideological orthodoxy developed to which all Mississippians had to subscribe. Dissenters and non-conformists were silenced or forced to leave the state. Mississippi became isolated from the outside world; a “closed society” developed. The new Mississippi daughter was beginning to think about leaving her American family of states and would do so on January 9, 1861. Three months later the killing began. A by-product of that “closed society” then and later was closed minds. A rationale to defend and justify slavery was formed. A popular state politician, Sergeant S. Prentiss, claimed in l836 that “the people of the state of Mississippi look upon domestic slavery as it exists among them, not as a curse, but as a blessing, as the legitimate condition of the African race, as authorized both by the laws of God and the dictates of reason and philanthropy.” He added that his generation would “transmit this situation to their posterity, as the best part of their inheritance.” Finally, he said, there would be “no further discussion upon this subject [because] we will allow no present change, or hope of future alteration of this matter.” A century or so later, most white Mississippians would be articulating the same sentiments except that, instead of slavery, segregation would be seen as a “positive good.” This was the Jim Crow Mississippi into which I was born in 1934. During the Civil War, 1/4 of all the white men and boys who went to war were killed. Countless thousands return home after the war without an arm and/or a leg. One-fifth of the state budget in l866 was spent on providing artificial arms and legs to Confederate veterans. The economy of the state was devastated; Mississippi fell from her antebellum position of fifth in the nation in per capita wealth to that of last. We have been there ever since. The Southern belle was now wearing a soil- ed and tattered dress. She had to deal with poverty, despair and guilt. But it was not the Civil War that was responsible for our staying there on the bottom. After the war, former slaves and former owners and thousands of whites who owned no slaves, grappled with the political, social and economic consequences of emancipation. In many ways, we are still doing that today. Because of the debilitating legacy of slavery and racism, southern whites could not or would not accept a biracial society based on equality of opportunity. The South blindly promoted an inefficient system of agricultural production that resisted reform and an antiquated credit system that forced the overproduction of cotton and prevented diversification. This brought grinding poverty to both blacks and whites and a stagnant economy to the entire section. The legacy of slavery left blacks with few marketable skills and a 90% illiteracy rate; decent education and advancement in society were closed to them. The only alternative was sharecropping with its repetitive, never ending cycle of poverty. Also the hill country whites, like my ancestors in Itawamba county, were poorly prepared for the new world into which they were thrust. Many of them, too, became sharecroppers. The only ones they could look down upon were their fellow black Mississippians. But there has also been a great deal of change in recent years. Out-migration has slowed down considerably; censuses from 1970 through 1990 showed that more people, black and white, were moving to Mississippi than were leaving. There are more black public officials in Mississippi than any other state. Our l982 Education Reform Act under Governor William Winter was touted as a model of progressive educational legislation. The reinstatement of compulsory attendance for children 6-14, competency testing of high school students, creation of an appointed state school board and the establishment of public kindergartens are measures the state has taken to enhance the quality of education. These are just a few of the positive changes that have taken place here.
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