JACKSON - East central Mississippi, particularly Lauderdale, Neshoba and Newton counties, have since the 1960s endured a national reputation as places that harbored racial turmoil.
That reputation came deservedly, many would argue, based on a number of racial atrocities in the region - prime among them the 1964 murders of Mickey Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney by a group of Lauderdale and Neshoba County Ku Klux Klansmen that included the sheriff and deputy sheriff of Neshoba County.
Almost 40 years have passed since those days. East central Mississippi is a far different place today than existed in the early 1960s. Three races - white, black and Choctaw - live and work together in the region and have built a strong regional economy, good public schools and a strong industrial base.
But in many ways, the racial reconciliation efforts that have been visible in the Delta, metropolitan Jackson and the Gulf Coast have not been as visible in the region. But this month, there are two notable efforts by the people of east central Mississippi to change that reputation.
Many Mississippians have forgotten that Medgar Evers and his brother Charles were natives of Decatur in Newton County.
Medgar Evers was born in 1925 in Decatur, the third of four children of a small farm owner and sawmill hand. In "The Martyrs: Sixteen Who Gave Their Lives for Racial Justice," Jack Mendelsohn quoted Evers about his Newton County upbringing: "When we were walking to school in the first grade white kids in their school buses would throw things at us and yell filthy things," Evers remembered. "This was a mild start. If you're a kid in Mississippi this is the elementary course.
"I graduated pretty quickly. When I was 11 or 12 a close friend of the family got lynched. I guess he was about 40 years old, married, and we used to play with his kids. I remember the Saturday night a bunch of white men beat him to death at the Decatur fairgrounds because he sassed back a white woman. They just left him dead on the ground. Everyone in town knew it but never (said) a word in public.
"I went down and saw his bloody clothes. They left those clothes on a fence for about a year. Every Negro in town was supposed to get the message from those clothes, and I can see those clothes now in my mind's eye. But nothing was said in public. No sermons in church. No news. No protest. It was as though this man just dissolved except for the bloody clothes."
This week in Newton County, a biracial group held a 40th anniversary commemoration of the assassination of Evers and a celebration of his life. The leadership of Newton County - social, political, economic and educational - put together a meaningful event that paid tribute to the slain civil rights leader.
Bill May, a Newton attorney, said the event "is long overdue and simply the right thing to do." Amen.
In neighboring Neshoba County on June 22, the Mt. Zion United Methodist Church will hold a memorial service for Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney. Gov. William Winter, Jackson City Councilman Dr. Les McLemore and civil rights pioneers Winson Hudson and Mabel Steele are slated to speak.
As east central Mississippi takes bold steps toward economic parity, so to is the region taking even bolder steps toward social and racial parity with the rest of the South. Times, and people, are changing.
Perhaps the message is that while "Mississippi Burning" makes a convenient stereotype for the region, a clearer picture exists in the real racial reconciliation that is ongoing in 2003.
