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| where I went this month |
I believe that what I've spent a month seeing is the result of a very old frame of reference: how we've always done things is good enough for then, now and always.
Several results flowed from that point of view, none of which have helped Mississippians over the long term.
■ One result is the perpetuation of a belief in white supremacy. This had traditionally been focused on slavery and taught that white people are naturally superior to black people, that slavery is the natural condition of black people because it improves and civilizes them. So first as slaves, then as victims of Jim Crow laws, black people were used to fill jobs that could also have gone to poor white people. Without those jobs, the poor whites have been unable to escape poverty. Nonetheless, because they saw themselves as superior to black people, poor white people have allied themselves first to white landowners and later to whites in power, ensuring that they stayed poor. Martin Luther King's Poor People's Campaign in 1968 sought to ally all poor people of any color, to break out of that cycle.
■ Another result is the state constitution that was passed in 1890 and is still, with amendments, in use today. That document was written to favor rural agriculture and disfavor corporate industrial development. Though that choice was made to benefit the white landowners who were still running the state after Reconstruction, there's nothing inherently wrong with it. Nonetheless, it has resulted in a state economy that still depends almost entirely on agriculture, which any farmer will tell you is an uncertain business at best.
■ A third result was, to avoid being forced to desegregate, MS repealed compulsory school attendance in 1956. That law was changed back in 1982, but it left an entire generation to fend for itself for education. Further, because "separate" has never meant "equal," and because MS's population is 37% black (the highest in the country), more than 1/3 of Mississippi's children never got even the educational opportunities of the white children who went to school. These factors resulted in a plummeting literacy rate, from which Mississippi has not yet fully recovered. It's easy to do the math to understand why MS has for decades ranked last among the states in student achievement. When voters and the workforce are poorly educated, the entire state suffers.
■ Having opted for the ancient status quo, i.e. farming - especially cotton farming, MS was then visited by decades of blows to that economy. In 1907, the boll weevil infestation helped make MS one of the poorest of the states. In the 1920s, crop prices fell so low, farmers couldn't pay their mortgages and the banks foreclosed. In 1927, the Mississippi River flooded so completely, it was 80 miles wide in some places; 100,000 people lost their homes and property. In 1929, the Depression hit the entire country so nobody could pay for what they were able to farm. In 1937, Mississippians were hit with yet another serious flood with yet more damage to the area. In 1973, the River got the largest volume of water since the 1927 flood. And for almost 9 months last year, the lower Mississippi River got hit with the longest flood on record. Although MS has other economic avenues, such as transportation and logging, it's still clinging to its "small town way of life," as the governor said. So MS has the lowest cost of living of any state, but it also has the lowest per capita income, and is one of the lowest in workforce participation rates (56%).
As I see it, MS dug itself a grave way back there when they chose to embrace the past at the cost of enhancing the future. They're trying hard to climb back out, but there are still plenty of folks around here who are ready to refight the Civil War.
The present
With all of that in the state's history, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to find how very rural Mississippi is, but I was.
Jackson, its capital and largest city, has 173,000 residents, which (for comparison) is a little more than half of the population of Anchorage, Alaska. MS's second largest city is the coastal city of Gulfport, with 72,000, and they get much smaller after that. The 10th largest city has 27,000. That's not my definition of a city. MS has nearly 3,000,000 citizens statewide, which shows how thoroughly they're spread around the state.
I'm sure my blog entries got really boring as I mentioned a zillion times that I was yet again passing crop fields. But that's really almost all I saw. It's an attractive state, and is likely a great deal more so during the summer, but there's nothing much to fix the eye on. The highest point is 807' high, not exactly a mountain, though it's named Woodall Mountain. That's how flat it is over most of the state.
Ideal, I'm sure, for farming. Just not for stunning visual effects.
But MS does a good job of maintaining its roads, which I appreciated.
I liked it here, because there's a lot to be said for the peace of this countryside, and because the Mississippians I met were all really nice people. Some of them told me they weren't as happy living here as I was visiting here, but many love it and are proud of the lives they've made.
On the other hand, the amount of litter all around the state, on all kinds of roads, points to the inescapable conclusion that residents see their state as a trash dump. I understand that it may be hard to make recycling pay for itself with so few population centers, although I've seen recycling drop-off bins in some very small isolated towns in Kentucky, for instance. But the level of litter in MS is almost aggressive and says folks here deep down really don't care about where they live.
Maybe it's a symptom of economic despair, or of racial despair (by either blacks or whites), or of a simple lack of education. And I don't for a second think all Mississippians litter. But it's being done by a whole lot more than just a small group of folks. You may think I'm making too much of something simple like litter, but I grew up thinking it was a mark of self-respect and respect for the world around me, and I'm seeing the exact opposite here.
What I didn't see that I wanted to see
Actually, not much other than those places I mentioned in my daily posts. As the map shows, I managed to get to most parts of the state, though often only for brief visits. A month simply isn't long enough to see everything there is to see, and I'd have liked to spend more time in many areas.
In Jackson, I missed several places due mainly to the terrible weather while I was there. Besides those I mentioned in my daily entries, there's an International Museum of Muslim Cultures I'd wanted to visit; the Museum of Mississippi History; in nearby Richland is The Little Red Schoolhouse, called the Birthplace of the Order of the Eastern Star. No one in my family was in Eastern Star, but I wanted to visit to honor the women I knew growing up who helped me and who were in it.
Otherwise, I saw here what I'd hoped to see.
My conclusion
I liked it here. I liked the people I met. The weather was messy, but it's January, after all. We didn't have snow or tornadoes, so what's a little rain.
But I'm sorry to say that I think it likely to take another 100 years for Mississippi to succeed in pulling itself out of the hole it's been digging for itself for the last 100 years. I think the problem is frame of mind as much as anything, and that is something that's very difficult to change. I have a lot of faith, though, in the younger generations who are growing up in a very different world than the one their parents and grandparents knew. Many of today's kids are being educated in integrated schools, are technologically savvy, and understand what an entrepreneur is. They can see a wider world than the one of previous generations. And I expect that view gives them a sense of hope that this state needs to move forward. I believe they'll be able to do it. Eventually.
