Mississippi Burning

Well, despite the economic fireworks on Wall Street, they pulled it off. Obama and McCain made their appearances at Ole Miss in Oxford Town just as scheduled. Strange PR antics this week, but my guess is that we’ve not seen the end of any of it, so let’s be sure to keep our collective seat belts fastened.

I just finished reading (listening to) another great book, Ten Days That Unexpectedly Changed America by Steven Gillon, based on the History Channel series by the same name. It was interesting because the key word here is “unexpectedly.” They chose ten dates that were not the ones we might usually choose, like the signing of the Declaration of Independence or the attack on the Alamo. Instead they chose more obscure dates and issues which had wide ranging ramifications. Shay’s Rebellion was one such event. The assassination of William McKinley was another.

Interestingly enough, the tenth day in the book's ten events had to do with Mississippi and race relations in America. It dealt with the killing of three young civil rights workers who were taking part in the Freedom Summer efforts to register black voters. Two were white students from the North.

The chapter details the background of this tragedy as well as the fallout.

If you are not familiar with the great lengths to which the Southern white politicians made it near impossible for a black to vote, I strongly recommend the last chapter of this book as a place to begin your homework.

What was galling to many black leaders, however, was that blacks in Mississippi had been dreadfully oppressed, terrorized and mistreated for a hundred years, and no Federal action was taken. But when two whites from good families got killed here, the FBI came in by the boatload. No expense was spared to insure justice was carried out.

The film Mississippi Burning, starring Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe, is a powerful portrayal of this specific moment in our history. Though criticized for bending facts for the sake of story, one does come away with at least a partial sense of the terror of those times. And the tenth chapter of Gillon's exceptionally researched book vividly acquaints us with those details.

That being said, one hopes that the problems of voter registration in the Deep South are behind us. We have on the ballot our nation's first black candidate for our land's highest office. It would be a shame if blacks were still still hindered somehow due to continued shenanigans.

It's hard to say what the next four years will bring whoever reaches office. George Reedy, in his book The Twilight of the Presidency, wrote, "One of the American people's most cherished notions about the presidency is that the office somehow ennobles the occupant and renders him fit to meet any crisis." (p. 30) The American people love their myths.

As for the future, we can only hope for the best.