Ghosts of Mississippi

Very nice read, Scipio—thanks for posting the link.

outstanding read, scip. thank you.

i learned quite a lot from reading that. several surprising things.

one, i had never known there was anything particularly noteworthy about pickett’s charges.

also, i didn’t know james meredith’s remarkable familial background.

it is ironic that meredith’s home town was kosciusko. read about kosciusko, the revolutionary war hero:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadeusz_Ko%C5%9Bciuszko

especially note the part about kosciusko using his large reward from the american government to help free some slaves.

(side note: i recall hearing on new york’s 1010 wins about backups on the bqe to the kosciusko bridge and always wondered who kosciusko was to have such a prominent fixture named after him or her. amazing what you can learn by hanging around the barfing carnivore.)

i was raised by a father who judged a man by the content of his soul long before those words were immortalized by dr king. i always assumed that my dad was raised that way as well.

when i read a letter he wrote his mother back in oklahoma after finishing his schooling and entering the workforce, i realized the man i knew was very different from that man.

i wish i could ask my dad what brought about that change.

oh, by ’picket’s charges’ i mean the men for whom he was responsible. not his credit purchases or any other foolhardy ventures with which he might have been associated.

Several thoughts come to mind on similar articles (this is an excellent one, btw). One, I do think sometimes there is too much hand-wringing over things that happened many years ago. I say that both understanding the deserved shame over treatment of blacks with the realization that, fairly often, reverse discrimination exists as well, sometimes in rampant form. That isn’t necessarily brought about by blacks, but well meaning whites in a number of cases. Sometimes, such can cause a sense of resentment from whites, a case of “why punish me (directly or indirectly) for things that I (or my own relatives) had nothing to do with?”

It’s the best that things have changed, obviously. And, the pertinence in this article is that there’s zero question Ole Miss’s intolerance led to its demise on the field, still felt to this day. Other than the two Manning (Archie and Eli) eras, the Rebs’ program hasn’t really been jack since the early 60s. That’s no doubt due to them being way behind the curve with integration within the program. You reap what you sow.

Maybe before long, Ole Miss can build a football program it has true pride in; that shared by people of all color.

slick, i experienced in connecticut what you speak of.

despite a lifetime of living near and working very comfortably with people of very varied backgrounds, i was regarded with great suspicion and mistrust up there. both from white people and from black people.

getting back down here was such a breath of fresh air. i had forgotten what it was like to speak with someone of whatever race and it just be two people talking.

up there i wasn’t just some guy. nor was i a texan. i was a southerner.

glenn, prejudice takes many shapes, it seems. Thankfully, at least in my experience, if you treat folks well—totally regardless of color—you generally get a warm response. People are people.

Really good stuff. At the end Thompson links to his Ode to Southern Football from a couple years back. Tell me reading that doesn’t induce a glance at the calender and a long, heavy sigh.

Great read. Also recommended- Willie Morris’ “Courtship of Marcus DuPree”.

slick, that is generally true.

it was true in seattle and new york, and in various other places. it wasn’t true in connecticut and wisconsin. both places i became downright defensive, and that was so foreign to me i had to learn to be that way.

i was made to feel responsible for things i have spent a lifetime despising.

i should mention my affliction. it is apparently a red flag in some places.

i grew up in a town so small we had to jump around to get the census people to count us. i don’t have a city texas accent.

understood, glenn.

That very year my Dad was in grad. school in Berkeley, and there was a place across the street from campus that wouldn’t serve Blacks.

glenn writes the stupidest shit I’ve ever read. If you can’t see a qualitative difference between someone not liking how you speak and having your civil rights denied then there’s no hope for you.

Any man who goes around and says, “I’m from Texas”, deserves whatever the hell happens to them.

I’m from Texas