SCOTT COLOM, A BLACK MAN,
WINS RACE FOR MISSISSIPPI SENATE SEAT
John Lewis speaking about the Jim Crow era: "Alabama is bad, Alabama is hell. But to go to Mississippi at that time was worse than hell."
During the 1950's and 60s, Mississippi was viewed as the most dangerous and entrenched stronghold of white supremacy.
No one knows how many black men lay at the bottom of Mississippi lakes and bayous.
My
grandmother was born in 1893, 28 years after the Civil War ended.
When I was
eight years old, my grandmother, who raised me, moved us from Kentucky to
Rolling Fork, Mississippi.
In Kentucky, there had been a young black girl in my second-grade class, but in Mississippi I was told not to speak to black children. We moved into an apartment across the creek, two blocks from ‘Nigger Town.’ I was forbidden to ride my bike into that area. My uncle, who owned T.C. Kelly’s grocery, a shotgun shack that sold necessities, slept with a pistol beside his bed. On his mantelpiece sat a framed Confederate $100 bill signed by some Confederate officer. I don’t know the backstory on that bill.
When my
Grandmother’s older brother died, kin came to the funeral from as far away as Illinois
and Texas. When they unpacked his trunk,
they found his KKK robes and paraphernalia.
The family was extremely proud of the find.
My
grandmother’s sister was married to Fielding Write, the governor of Mississippi,
who, in 1948, ran as Strom Thurmond’s vice president with the Dixiecrat Party – Their
slogan: ‘Segregation forever.’
In
Mississippi, we didn’t celebrate the Fourth of July; we celebrated Jefferson
Davis’s birthday.
After high school, I left Mississippi and never returned.
As a
quirk of many families on the southern border, my Kentucky grandfather served
in the Northern Army and died at Shiloh.
On election
night in Mississippi, Cindy Hyde Smith bragged about blocking Scott Colom’s
appointment to a federal judgeship and driving Kamala out of Mississippi…
. Racism has
been passed down from generation to generation, and is still very much alive in
Mississippi.
Against all
odds, Scott Colom won the United States Senate race in Mississippi
Mississippi
God damn
Who’d of
thunk it?
the Ol’Buzzard
