NPR: Back from Jackson

Back from Jackson

It was good to make that trip to Jackson, Mississippi and it's good to be back.

The trip made a profound impact on me. One of the reasons was that it forced me to read Unita Blackwell's marvelous memoir "Barefootin'"

This book was one of the first that landed on my desk when I started this program over a year ago. We started actually in podcast form and I desperately wanted to talk to her but for a variety of reasons it did not work out at the time, so I put the book on my shelf and there it sat. I knew Unita Blackwell's name but I confess that I did not know much about her other than that she was the first African American female mayor in the STATE of Mississippi, that in that job she was able to bring running water and municipal sanitation services to her town, she was close to Fannie Lou Hamer ... and that she was, well, a character.

What I did NOT know was everything else: she was born to sharecropping parents, she picked and chopped cotton alongside them as soon as she was able. She dropped out of school in the eighth grade (and went on to get a master's degree, teach at Harvard! and become a MacArthur Fellow). That she was friends with Shirley MacLaine (another story!). And that her courage and that of her husband and countless other less well known women and men are a very large reason why this country is a better place today.

Why?

Here's a passage from Barefootin.' It describes a time she and 1100 other people were arrested after a PEACEFUL march in support of voting rights in June 1965. Notice I said 1965, not 1865 . The men and women were separated. They were held for days crammed into a municipal livestock barn. Do I need to help you with that metaphor? Here is some of what they experienced.

"Nobody even had a change of clothes. We'd all wash out our underwear every night and hang it in the bathroom--hundreds panties hanging everywhere. Police would pull up the women's dresses. Just a lot of filth went on, you know. They brought in doctors and they opened everyone of the women's legs, mine included. We had to undress and they looked up our vaginas, put their hands up in there and stuck things in them. They said they were examining us to see if we had some terrible disease. It was not even done privately, but with a whole bunch of women in a big room at the .same time. It was terrible to see hundreds of naked humiliated women all standing in a row. So depressing and sad and repulsive. we did not have any blankets or anything to lie on. We slept on bare concrete floors. And the police walked up--kept us moving. They wold walk us all night long. Just about time we'd nod off to sleep somebody would come in and say, "Niggers move up." and the guards worked in shifts to keep us awake, to harass and torture us. They would go to hollering at one or two o'clock in the morning. They'd say things like, "something is stinking here. Do you see any niggers?" then they would come in and move us again."

It went on like this for ELEVEN DAYS.

Now, as I said, Unita Blackwell went on to do amazing things. I was so grateful to have the chance to talk to her yesterday, even though our circumstances made it impossible to meet in person (she lives in Mayersville, about 90 minutes from Jackson and just was not up to the drive and we could not get there and back in time to meet our other obligations.) I appreciated the interview; she was so lovely and warm and gracious.

But I want to ask you: Would you blame her if she were angry? Would you ask her to defend it, to insist that she should "let that go?" Do you see any connection to the treatment of others, being done in your name, as citizens of the United States? I ask you.

Once again I want to apologize for the noticeable technical difficulties we experienced throughout the Jackson remote. We did our best to fix them and we are having a meeting today to help us understand how to avoid those problems in the future. But we thank our friends at WJSU AND Mississippi Public Broadcasting who also helped us get on the air. It's good to get out of the office and we are so glad you invited us.

Michel Martin

3:48 PM ET | 05- 8-2008 | permalink

Comments (Send a comment)

Thank you so much for this interview and reference to Unita Blackwell's memoir, BAREFOOTIN'. Today, I just finished the class discussion sessions of my Civil Rights Movement course here at Hartwick College in upstate New York. What an incredible time to be teaching this class. We progressed in our readings from 1954/Brown through Montgomery, Birminghamton and Mississippi Freedom Summer to Selma and the 1965 Voting Rights Act to our discussion of Obama's campaign and the potential of his running for -- and being elected! -- president. Next week the students begin their paper presentations on their research on discrimination in their home communities -- not limited to racial discrimination, but discrimination in its many forms. Next Fall I teach Race & Ethnicity in American History and I'll refer them to your Interview with Blackwell. I've often used COMING OF AGE IN MISSISSIPPI, but now I'll consider Blackwell's memoir for one of their readings. Thank you for an excellent broadcast. Re your questions: No, I would not blame her if she were angry, and I would not suggest she "let that go?" I recommend the philosophy and actions of Van Jones and the Ella Baker Center in Oakland CA for the constructive use of anger. Thanks for listening.

Sent by Edythe Ann Quinn, Ph.D. | 7:14 PM ET | 05-08-2008

See, that's why I love TMM. Look at the range of the stories on Friday's show. Sweet. I think one of the greatest challenges of being black, and maybe of being human generally, is achieving a healthy understanding of what concerns you and can interest you. Too often folks, myself included, have too narrow a view of what concerns them. (I think it's no accident, for example, that black movies are too often limited in tone, scope, and depth. Those making the movies AND those approving the making of the movies seem to be following too-narrow a script - one that is far more narrow than we know our lives to be as they are lived day to day.) Thanks again, TMM, for serving up a wide range of good stuff. Even crazy Karl Rove is in the mix. I'm reminded of some lines from Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" - don't they go something like this:

Scrooge: "Why, it was not my concern."
Ghost: "Not your concern?! Why, all mankind is your concern!"

Sent by Stanley | 10:44 AM ET | 05-09-2008

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