Today, let’s look more deeply, beneath the electoral numbers. In January, 2017, seven cities around the state held Women’s Marches, in concert with the massive protest march in Washington, D.C. to communicate a new resistance to the promised policies and demonstrated rhetoric of Donald Trump. I was astonished by the number of marches, all well-attended and all planned with little notice or support.
Some of the march organizers in each place had been long-time activists for progressive causes. Some were new to activism and organizing. But in each place, that early show of defiance against racist ideologies and policies emboldened progressives in the state. Since then, progressives have played defense across the state as Republicans supported or enacted every discriminatory measure encouraged by the Trump administration. We’ve fought for Medicaid expansion. We’ve pushed for criminal justice reform. We’ve fought to protect the state’s only abortion clinic.
In August, 2019, seven Mississippi communities were devastated by surprise ICE raids at chicken plants. Almost seven hundred immigrant workers were arrested and detained; some workers were sent back to places they hadn’t lived in decades. Perhaps the Trump administration thought that reliably-red Mississippi would welcome this event. But an interesting thing happened; rural whites in those seven places got angry. They had come to know these workers and their families, many of whom had lived in Mississippi for decades. That anger grew and with it came new questions about the nation’s immigration policies and whether an automatic rejection of new people was wise or even Christian. A coalition of unusual allies came together to help support the families and to help free those detained where possible.
In the wake of the pandemic and then with the horrific murder of George Floyd by callous police officers in Minneapolis, I wondered how Mississippians would respond to the turmoil of the times. It put my purple theory to the test. The answer? Over 32 communities and counting have held marches, rallies, and protests against police brutality and systemic racism. THIRTY-TWO. In conservative towns like Pontotoc and Picayune and Brandon. Compare that to the seven women’s marches in 2017, a number you’ll recall was astonishing to me at that time.
Know this. It wasn’t courageous white public officials who earned the victory lap, though I am grateful for those who voted in the affirmative. But these are the same leaders who refused to even consider a bill on flag removal in 2015, in the wake of the Charleston massacre of 9 black churchgoers, when communities across the South distanced themselves from Confederate imagery. In 2017, when a similar wave of decluttering the landscape of Confederate memorials occurred after the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia, the state legislature and governor maintained their commitment to the emblem of slavery and white supremacy. There was both economic pressure and incentive then to make the switch and yet they did not.
What changed their minds?
What gave the legislature, dominated by a Republican supermajority, and a Republican governor the backbone to do the right thing? The people of Mississippi. You heard me. Mississippi’s elected representatives, as with most other politicians, chase the sentiment of the people. They very rarely lead it.
You may be asking—where is my data? Come back tomorrow for the rest of the story.
Written by guest blogger Dr. Susan M. Glisson. Susan is co-founder of Sustainable Equity, LLC. She has worked for more than 20 years to change conditions that have created a legacy of inequities. Mississippi is her home.
Come back tomorrow for Part Three of A Tremor in the Middle of the Iceberg.
* The title for this three part series about Mississippi is taken from a Bob Moses’ quote. Bob Moses, age 85, is an American educator, civil rights activist and hero, known for leadership of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee on voter education and registration in Mississippi at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi.