Traveling the Black Legacy
Notes from a Journey Through the Deep South
This essay, which was originally posted in October 2023, shares some personal insights from a recent trip through America’s Deep South. The author, Mike Koetting, writes a column, "Between Hell and High Water," and is an advisor to Civic Way. Mike holds a PhD in Sociology from Harvard and served as VP of Planning at the University of Chicago Medical Center and Deputy Director for Planning at the Illinois Department of Health and Family Services, among other positions. Mike also created and taught “American Democracy and You” in the Honors College at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
Nobody is free till everybody is free. – Fannie Lou Hamer
Introduction
The museums we visited traced the experience of Blacks in America from the country’s beginning. The sites, images and life-like sculptures brought us closer to their struggles. The dedication of so many to carry on in the face of horrific conditions and violence was particularly moving.
Whitney Plantation (50 miles from New Orleans)
The Whitney Plantation has been restored to focus on enslaved people. The sculptures of enslaved children, with their vacant eyes, convey their trauma and helplessness. The term enslaved makes it clear that the condition existed only because of the action of someone else; slaves made it sound as if that was simply who they were. The institution could survive only when supported by a society that actively condoned and supported the enslavement of some people.
Mississippi Civil Rights Museum (Jackson, Mississippi)
The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum shares a two-winged building [with] the Mississippi State History Museum. What was striking about the State History Museum was how strangely anodyne several of the write ups were. For instance, there was very little on the Civil War or its causes. A picture of Vicksburg with a statement like: “After a long period of national division and acrimony, the Civil War broke out. Mississippians fought on both sides, and many died.” Two other facts stuck with me:
Since Mississippi wasn’t really settled until after the transatlantic slave traffic was illegal, most slaves there were domestic (shipped from back east) creating a very high rate of disrupted families.
The first cotton gin, which was built by an enslaved person (Eli Whitney drew up the specs), made it practical to grow cotton and led to the gobbling up of small farms by bigger plantations and the ensuing demand for slaves.
There also was an impactful presentation on the differences in Black and White education before Brown vs Board of Education. Black schools had much larger classes, dramatically shorter school years, lower salaries for teachers and fewer resources across the board.
Home of Medgar Evers (Jackson, Mississippi)
I knew that Medgar Evers had been killed in his driveway in 1963, but the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum had given me new perspective on who he was, and what he accomplished. He was a decorated combat veteran and active in the Civil Rights struggle through the 50’s, well before anyone had heard of King. Medgar Evers’ life and death were a living example of his line that “freedom is never free.”
The house where he was shot is in an enclave of houses built in the early fifties for Jackson’s growing Black middle class. It is maintained today by Tougaloo College. The house brought to my mind the ordinariness of heroes. This was a family just trying to make a good life for itself. It was their misfortune to be on a collision course between civil rights and a cancerous hate.
Edmund Pettus Bridge (Selma, Alabama)
I walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge—named after a former US Senator who had been a Confederate general and Grand Dragon of the KKK. I learned that voting rights agitation had been going on for years in Selma and Dallas County to no avail. [I also learned] that civil rights groups focused on Dallas County because they thought the Sheriff’s short fuse and likely over-reaction would get publicity.
If you’ve seen the movie Selma—and you should if you haven’t—you know there were two and a half marches. The first, Bloody Sunday, was where many protestors, including John Lewis, were badly beaten. The half march was led by King, who had an agreement with the Feds to honor the court injunction (not cross the bridge). When the court injunction was lifted, the actual Selma to Montgomery march took place. Downtown Selma is now largely boarded up, suggesting time has passed it by.
Slave Markets (Montgomery, Alabama)
Our time in Montgomery was in the shadow of Bryan Stevenson, a Harvard trained lawyer who provided legal defense for people on death row. (This is chronicled in his book Just Mercy, and in the movie of the same name.) He founded the Equal Justice Initiative, which provided legal defense, but with a much larger view of the road to equal justice.
Montgomery had one of the larger slave markets in the South. The first historical marker on the riverfront shows a timeline but omits any mention of the slave trade, a major part of what made Montgomery a seat of power. About ten years ago, Stevenson talked the city into placing a historical marker concerning the slave trade on the riverfront. Without this marker, one critical aspect of the story would have been missed, while the city was (and is still) rife with markers about Confederate activities.
State Capital (Montgomery, Alabama)
Looking at the markers around the beautiful capital grounds was an invitation to whiplash. Some of the markers provided a reasonable account of Reconstruction’s roll-back and subsequent civil rights struggles, while others celebrated Montgomery as the first capital of the Confederacy. How these disparate events are balanced in the minds of viewers is anyone’s guess.
I was also struck by how the rhetoric used to deprive Blacks of their vote was identical to today’s rationale for stricter voting laws—the need to prevent fraud in elections. Although, as implied by the marker, the adoption of the new constitution which included the provisions that effectively disenfranchised Blacks was itself marked by massive fraud; it would otherwise be difficult to explain 100,000s of Blacks voting to disenfranchise themselves.
Memorial for Peace and Justice (Montgomery, Alabama)
The Memorial for Peace and Justice (the “Lynching Memorial”) is a stunningly elegant memorial for over 4,000 lynching victims. The memorial is a pavilion with metal shafts hanging from the ceiling listing known lynchings by county. As you read those signs, it becomes crystal clear that the lynchings were intended to send a message to the entire Black population. One sign reads, “After Calvin Mike voted, a white mob attacked and burned his home, lynching his elderly mother and his two young daughters.” That would surely make anyone think before voting.
Legacy Museum (Montgomery, Alabama)
The Legacy Museum, like the Memorial for Peace and Justice, was conceived by Bryan Stevenson. One of the take-aways was how much the entire nation’s economy depended on the cotton-slave connection. The enslaved were big business [and] not inexpensive. Current-dollar prices for a young male would be about $40,000. In 1860, the total value of the cotton industry (including the enslaved) was greater than the combined value of the nation’s factories and railroads. As some cotton was turned into finished products or shipped overseas, the eastern seaboard profited handsomely. No region was uninvolved.
Another take-away was the role of convict labor (an extension of slavery). In 1880, 73 percent of all state revenue in Alabama was from convict leasing. Blacks were arrested on vague laws, given vague sentences, and leased to companies and farms, with almost no revenue going to the prisoners. After release, the primary working years were lost.
Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham, Alabama)
The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BCRI) provided a brief history of Birmingham. While not founded until after the Civil War, it emerged as a center of industry, particularly steel mills. Though never explicitly involved with cotton or the slave trade, [other] industry provided plenty of opportunity for [racial] discrimination and deliberate attempts to prevent a labor movement.
The BCRI was very well done. Two things we did before visiting enhanced the experience:
A video on the lengthy prosecution of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, which killed four young girls, [underscores] how omnipresent was the threat of violence for those working to deliver civil rights.
A small book on the A.G. Gaston Motel in Birmingham, the functional headquarters for out of town participants in the Birmingham Campaign (including Martin Luther King), provided a look at Jim Crow how affected people[i].
The Birmingham Campaign—officially about the boycott of downtown stores for their segregated practices—became a long campaign of resistance. Its graphic images became front-page fodder for newspapers all over the world. Reading one of the city’s press announcements, I was struck that the reason given for prohibiting public marches was “the safety of the citizens.”
The BCRI also had an interview with a 1950’s Birmingham society matron whose obtuseness on racial issues was jaw dropping. Seeing someone say those words—with a self-satisfied cluelessness that was virtually self-parody—made a greater impression than any number of words on a page.
These Black-White differences persisted, actively nourished by a segment of White society, which is why Bull Connor and his ilk kept power. It is hard to imagine that White support for the most violent anti-segregationists and White Citizens Councils didn’t run fairly deep. But was there any appreciable group who felt uneasy but just didn’t say anything?
National Civil Rights Museum (Memphis, Tennessee)
The National Civil Rights Museum incorporates the remains of the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther was famously gunned down. [By all accounts,] this museum has grown considerably in size and sophistication over the years.
The museum renewed my understanding of the importance of Emmett Till. (Last year’s movie Till is worth seeing.) Till’s death in 1955, while not covered by mainstream media, was widely covered by Black newspapers and magazines. Several civil rights activists commemorated attributed their activism, at least in part, to the realization that they could have been Emmett Till if the cards had fallen differently.
Seeing the site of King’s assassination—that indelible fateful moment—we couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened had King not been shot down. Over the course of the week, we were reminded of King’s pragmatic but charismatic leadership and magnificent oratory. Maybe Nixon and the descent of Republican politics were inevitable. Maybe Reagan would have begun his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi[ii] with a speech on states’ rights anyway.
Final Thoughts
The museums and sites are brimming with stories. The terrible inhumanity of enslaved people's lives and deaths. The horrors of being yoked together like cattle. The desperation of begging the auctioneer not to sell their children. The tender sculpture of a young teenage girl being led to the auction block as tears streamed down her face. The inherent risk of being Black in America.
Emancipation did not end the struggle. As one formerly enslaved person asked after the initial “singing and celebrating, …, ‘What did we really get?’” Civil rights didn’t happen because the country just decided to accept the Constitution. It happened because a bunch of people—dating back to the slave rebellions—risked, struggled and persevered until they got rights the rest of us have taken for granted.
At the end of one tour, an older black woman and her family asked us if we’d be willing to share our … thoughts. Then we asked for theirs. This business of trying to sort through history and how it plays into our lives today is complicated. We need more places where people can discuss what happened and how it affects them. The willingness of certain politicians to suppress this history is nothing short of criminal. Refusal to learn that history is to condemn oneself to ignorance.