March 28th

If you have Alabama, you have to have Mississippi (some people might say you can have both of them). Seriously, just as Germany has done a lot of public acknowledgment of the horrors of the Nazi era, I have seen several impressive museums and outdoor exhibits in my two days in the Deep South detailing the horrible treatment of African-Americans over the last four centuries.

I first took a tour of the public spaces of the Governor’s mansion in Jackson, where the governor of Mississippi has lived continuously since 1840, except for when General Sherman occupied the house and the city before his March to the Sea.

Then I visited the house of Medgar Evers, the state NAACP director, who was assassinated in 1963 in his driveway, with his wife and three young children inside. Our host was Minnie Watson, a woman in her 70’s who knew and was inspired by Edgar.

Next was a brand new Mississippi Museum of Civil Rights. Featured were the Freedom Riders of 1961 and Mississippi Summer of 1964, where white and black college students came down from the North to help with voter registration and set up better schools than the segregated public schools.

Then I drove to the edge of the Mississippi River and the Vicksburg National Military Park. The Union army, led by General Grant, finally outlasted the Confederate soldiers and the townspeople after a month and a half long siege that gave the North control of the Mississippi River for the remainder of the Civil War. The battles of Vicksburg and Gettysburg, probably the two turning points of the war, both ended on the same day, July 3rd 1863. But Lincoln didn’t feel like going all the way to Mississippi to give an address!