Barack Obama's victory stirs ghosts in Mississippi: Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman

[DeepModem Mom]

LAT: Barack Obama's victory stirs Mississippi ghosts
In the town where three civil rights workers were slain in 1964, his candidacy uniquely resonates. The county supported him in the primary. But some say little can change here.
By Faye Fiore, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 10, 2008

PHILADELPHIA, MISS. -- Some places are defined by a single event. Roswell, N.M., will always be known for space aliens, Dallas for assassination. And this little town in the Piney Woods of eastern Mississippi will forever be the site of one of the most brutal crimes of the civil rights era. But Philadelphia -- situated in a county once dubbed Bloody Neshoba -- can now add a remarkable footnote to its most nefarious chapter: The rural county where three men were killed for trying to help black people vote has cast the majority of its ballots to put a black man in the White House.

Much has changed here since African Americans like Sylvia Campbell, now 74, were told they couldn't vote unless they correctly answered how many bubbles were in a bar of soap. But much is the same. For all the excitement about Barack Obama and his history-making run for president, there is anxiety, too, because the present is still a hostage to the past. Everything in this slow town of one-way streets and more than 80 churches is viewed through the lens of race. Obama's success makes some people as anxious as it makes others proud....

Obama's victory in the primaries comes just as Philadelphia prepares to mark the 44th anniversary of the killings that put it reluctantly on the map. Racial tensions are not as violently overt as they were then; today the slights are subtle, from the glance averted on the street to the job application that is never considered. With five months of fierce presidential campaigning ahead -- black against white -- there is a sense that simmering racial tensions are about to boil again.

"What happened all those years ago -- that just keeps coming up," said Doris Gray, 81, who is white. The presence of an out-of-town newspaper reporter in her son's chili cafe not 24 hours after Obama cinched the nomination confirmed her fear that people are going to start poking around in matters better left be.

Around here, that always leads to the same date, June 21, 1964, Father's Day to be exact. Mt. Zion, a black church on the outskirts of town, lay in charred rubble, and three civil rights workers -- two white and one black -- came on the heels of that violence to register black people to vote. The three were stopped by law enforcement officers in league with the Ku Klux Klan and were jailed for speeding. Released that night, they were chased down a country road and shot, their bodies found six weeks later in an earthen dam outside town....

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-mississippi10-2008jun10,0,1307464,full.story

[Pirate Smile]

1. He just mentioned this in his speech to AIPAC last week:

I will never forget that I would not be standing here today if it weren't for that commitment. In the great social movements in our country's history, Jewish and African Americans have stood shoulder to shoulder. They took buses down south together. They marched together. They bled together. And Jewish Americans like Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were willing to die alongside a black man — James Chaney — on behalf of freedom and equality.

Their legacy is our inheritance. We must not allow the relationship between Jews and African Americans to suffer. This is a bond that must be strengthened. Together, we can rededicate ourselves to end prejudice and combat hatred in all of its forms. Together, we can renew our commitment to justice. Together, we can join our voices together, and in doing so make even the mightiest of walls fall down.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Thanks for posting that statement, PS! I heard it in passing but was distracted...

and am glad to see it in full. It is really disheartening to hear through the press that there's tension between the Jewish and African American communities when they share this history from the Civil Rights era.

[predfan]

3. not to mention the irony of Ronald Reagan

kicking off his 1980 campaign with a state's rights speech in Philidelphia Mississippi. What's the odds?

The rise of the Republican Party in the south was far more influenced by George Wallace than by Ronald Reagan, IMO.

[DeepModem Mom]

4. There's an interesting little mention of Reagan's kick-off --

"The way it looked to some, everything boomeranged to the town's racist past. Ronald Reagan chose the fair to announce his 1980 candidacy for president -- Nancy sat on his lap in a wood rocker, red Mississippi mud on her white shoes -- and critics questioned whether he was implicitly condoning racism by deciding to come here at all."