The city of Philadelphia, Miss., where members of the Ku Klux Klan killed three civil rights workers in 1964 in one of the era's most infamous acts, on Tuesday elected its first black mayor.James A. Young, a Pentecostal minister and former county supervisor, narrowly beat the incumbent, Rayburn Waddell, in the Democratic primary. There is no Republican challenger.
The results, announced Wednesday night, were a turning point for a mostly white city of 7,300 people in east-central Mississippi still haunted by the killings, which captured front-page headlines across the nation and were featured in the 1988 film "Mississippi Burning."
« Know The Ledge | Main | Just When I Thought I Was Out... » Mississippi Cooling22 May 2009 09:00 am
Things just ain't the same for Klansters:
Comments (10)Post a comment |
Today's Headlines From The Atlantic |
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
. . . and don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win . . .
This is great news. I worked in Mississippi for a summer when I was in undergrad and the institute I worked for helped plan the event that marked the 40th anniversary of the Freedom Summer killings. I'm not going to get into all the drama that happened behind-the-scenes. (There was a bit too much for my liking, let me just say older civil rights "heros" need to check their egos a bit). But beyond all of that, I DID see a community come together, white, black and Native American to confront the past, not deny it or push it under the rug.
It was one of my favorite memories from that summer, among many. I grew up in the South but had never been really all that close to it's painful legacy until I was hearing all the stories first hand that day. I have to say I'll always have a special place in my heart for the state of Mississippi, as strange as it sounds. I had this whole vision of the place as backwards and racist, and while some aspects of my experience there didn't disappoint that view, I found some wonderful people living their every day lives that have the courage to say let's learn from our past rather than get defensive about it. (THIS was my biggest pet peeve of that summer, see: "Right in America Feeling Wronged", the scene with the older black guys griping) I spent several days in Philadelphia over that summer and my first impression was that there was a lot to confront, but at least people there were trying and it seems like from the looks of this, it's working a bit.
Something I noted, elsewhere, on November 5th:
In 1964, a year before I was born, the US Supreme Court ordered Prince Edward County in Virginia to open the public schools which had been closed in order to avoid integration. This was part of the Massive Resistance to integration in Virginia.
Prince Edward County broke for Obama, 54% to 44%, and Virginia overall went for Obama.
Rayburn Waddell. That is a southern name. It almost makes him sound like a fictional character. Out of Faukner. Or Twain. It's a name that you almost have to assume a southern accent just to pronounce.
Damn. I was so close to posting the lyrics of KKK bitch some of these days. So liberating. But now those southerners spoil ma party.
Take that, Ronald Reagan!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39345-2004Jun13.html
wow. my best friend's uncle was one of those civil rights workers. the arc of history, maybe it does bend toward justice.
We knew exactly why Reagan announced in Philadelphia, MS. And no amount of revisionism is going to remove that stench. We knew who Reagan was from jump street.
Little Rock and Selma (and dozens of other much larger cities) had already joined the late 20th century. It took Philadelphia MS a LONG time. Decades too late. But progress deferred is still progress.
that was a pretty bad movie -sv