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Z 231 Z chapter 22 MIssIssIPPI TOday In the fall of 1963, we moved back to Boston just before President KenZ nedy’s assassination, when I was appointed an Assistant U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts. I did not return to Mississippi until I began work on this book. Shortly after leaving the Jackson airport in late June of 1989, I stopped at one of the multitude of Waffle House restaurants that populate the South. There I saw an African American man seated with his arm around a blonde white woman. Neither seemed to fear imminent attack. That was a quick jump start in my realization of how much Mississippi had changed in the intervening twentyZsix years. When I reached Hattiesburg, Eloise Hopson gave me a different example: When I first came here, there was a garment manufacturing place called “Big Yank. ” Black women could not work there, except as maids. They couldn’t work at the machines. And you know the reason, the white women said, “If you let the black women work there, we won’t have anybody to babysit and do our housework. ” Therefore black women were not permitted to work there. They do now. And at the Dairy Queen today, there were five teenagers working. Three were black and two were white. That’s a massive change since the civil rights days. And the major factors were the employment provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But a particular development unique to Mississippi occurred on April 1, 1982: the sale by the Hederman family of the Clarion-Ledger, the Daily News, the Hattiesburg American, and six weeklies to Gannett.1 Until Rea Hederman became editor of the Clarion-Ledger prior to the sale, their paZ pers were, as Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff put it, “vindictive, poorly written, and errorZridden. Their management of the news helped explain Mississippi Today Z 232 Z why Mississippi remained the most reactionary state in the South.”2 WithZ out Gannett’s implementing fairness in both staffing and news coverage, Mississippi could not have changed. Jerry Mitchell would not have worked for the older Hedermans. As a visiting law professor at Ole Miss during 2000, I had the opportuZ nity to teach students in both Legal Ethics and Civil Rights, and observed the slowly growing number of African American students. One of my white civil rights students told me of the minority scholarships being awarded by the private academy he attended that had been founded to avoid school integration. While Stephanie and I were in Oxford, Nick Lott became the first AfZ rican American elected to head the university student body. As at other schools in the Southeastern Athletic Conference (SEC), African Americans dominate the football, track, and basketball teams at Ole Miss.3 There was no lack of enthusiasm among white supporters of Ole Miss football for the team’s great African American running back, Deuce McAllister, who went on to star with the New Orleans Saints. “Deuce for Heisman” bumper stickers abounded on cars and pickup trucks throughout the area. Ole Miss has had African American head basketball coaches, and Mississippi State University took the additional step of hiring an African American as its head football coach. The William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at Ole Miss played a significant role in the healing process, with passage in 2006 of legislation directing the State Department of Education to teach civil and human rights education in the state’s public schools, as well as creating the Mississippi Civil Rights Education Commission, a major accomplishment.4 The Sunflower County Summer Freedom Project, which provides enrichZ ment for African American children, has been conducted at Ole Miss. In October 2007, more than four hundred gathered in front of the TalZ lahatchie County Courthouse where fiftyZtwo years earlier the murderers of Emmett Till had been acquitted. A biracial commission deplored the “terrible miscarriage of justice” and expressed its “deep regret.”5 A setback was the crushing electoral defeat in 2001 of a carefully workedZout proposed new state flag which retained the Confederate flag in a corner. The broad business and university support were not sufficient for the electorate. Forrest County voted 11,207–6,532 against the new flag, a vote approximating the whiteZblack racial composition of the county.6 I was reminded of what a newspaper editor told me when I set out to visit him in Sunflower County: “Don’t forget...

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