Social Stratification in the Deep South

Even after having a couple weeks after the trip to process all that we saw, I still find it difficult to put into words everything I have taken from this experience.  I still remember what Cameron Cole told us on our second day in Birmingham. He explained that there were two misconceptions we might have once we return to North Carolina. First, it is important that we remember that the problems in the South are not exclusive to the area, but found everywhere. Second, the prejudice so apparent in the South cannot be separated from ourselves. Everyone is prejudice in their own way, and until we realize that there will be no change. On the day that Cameron gave us this advice, I found it interesting to ponder, but beyond that it meant little to nothing. Now that we have finished our journey, however, I think his advice is golden. Perhaps the most vaulable piece of information I learned on this trip is that the problems in the South do not only concern Southerners, and those at fault are not limited to bigots. We have a problem in this country that needs to be addressed, by everyone and for everyone. As we toured the South I realized that, like Marcus said, we are only one race, the human race. All the problems that African-Americans must confront are not only a “black problem” but a universal issue that must be addressed and which concerns everyone. And when we refuse to accept any group of people, we are contributing to this problem. We are not separated by the races but by the divisions that we create as a society. As I reflect on this trip I want to remember that I have been given a certain amount of privilege at birth, but that doesn’t mean that I am more or less important, or that I am not affected by others’ amount of privilege.

As I leave this blog and our trip behind, I want to remember that while Africa is experiencing genocide and while the Middle East has bombings each day, there are also  serious issues in the United States that must not be ignored.  There is a population of “invisible voices” in this country that need someone to speak up for them, and if nobody does, it will hurt us all. I have learned that it is the duty of those with privilege to help these invisible voices. I hope to give voice to the population of the US that is unknown to most of our society… this trip made me realize how crucial that is.

It was clear from the first day of the trip that we were all going to learn and experience a lot over the course of the two week course; however, what we were supposed to do with that new wealth of knowledge, besides personal enrichment, was somewhat unclear. However, as I sit here 18 days after the trip the charge is clear. I am supposed to use what I learned to affect change. Whether it be lead a on the topic of stratification in the Deep South or use it to write a national education policy once my PhD is conferred. In short, the course encouraged me to continue to seek knowledge and then use that knowledge to spark a revolution within the circles in which I’m a member.

“I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform. All reforms which rest simply upon the law, or the threatening of certain penalties, or upon changes in mechanical or outward arrangements, are transitory and futile…. But through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move…. Education thus conceived marks the most perfect and intimate union of science and art conceivable in human experience.”  – John Dewey

When Dr. Smith emailed us a few days ago about writing a final journal, my mind raced about all the things I could talk about.  Upon returning home, I have retold the story of our amazing journey many times, each time with different aspects sticking out to me or impacting me more profoundly.  I’ve found it difficult to communicate the passion and emotion seeing so many things first hand has given me.  I want people to understand all the aspects and take in all the sights, smells, and emotions we felt at every step of the way.  I want everyone I know to have an experience like I had, one that leaves you changed forever.  I want everyone else to feel the burden that I feel…that complacency is no longer a desire, no longer an option.  I want all my friends and family to see and feel the impact of injustice and to know that we all need to be working tirelessly to eradicate it.

So many things have changed in my heart in the last 3 weeks.  I don’t really know what I envisioned the trip being like or how I dreamed it would work in my heart.  Never could I have ever imagined two more wonderful weeks.  Never could I have hoped to feel such a strong call on my life.  Growing up in the United Methodist Church, I’ve heard the words of John Wesley over and over again:

“Do all the good you can,
by all the means you can,
in all the ways you can,
in all the places you can,
at all the times you can,
to all the people you can,
as long as ever you can.”

After the trip, these have taken on all new meaning for me.  It really makes me think about the ways and the places I spend my time.  The idea of doing ALL the good I can in ALL the ways I can goes far beyond the places and ways I currently spend my time.  This is not to say that the things I do are not good nor that they are not worthy of my time.  It is only to say that this trip has made me realized just how precious the resources that I have are, and that what may seem like such a small thing to me would actually mean the world to someone else.

During our last reflection time, Marcus asked us to think about the one thing that we were going to take home with us from the trip…the one thing that would most profoundly impact our actions when we returned.  My response was about the role of the church, specifically the white church, in perpetuating the ideals of racism, oppression, and intolerance.  In my 20 years, I’ve poured myself into many different ministries and faith-based organizations.  In high school, my life revolved around church.  At Wake, my primary involvement is in campus ministries.  It literally broke my heart to learn of the problems an institution that I hold so near and dear to my heart had created in the lives of many.  But in a lot of ways, this is a good thing because it shows how overpowering this impact was to me…and that it leaves me with little option.  While I’ve yet to gain insight on exactly what it means, I feel a strong calling to public service, especially in a way that would reverse any vestiges of this intolerant sentiment.  The church should be filled with love and acceptance.  I don’t know what this ultimately means for my life, vocation, etc, but I do know that it has gripped my heart and shows no sign of letting go.

Earlier this week, I reread Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”  I came across a passage that sums up my experience: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”  Most of the things that I saw have little direct bearing on my life…but this doesn’t diminish the fact that they are of utmost importance and fully deserving of my attention.  I am tied to each of the people I met on this trip.  Whatever struggles they face, I need to be paying attention to.  Many of them do not have an ability to fight for themselves.  I, however, have the ability to fight for them.  It may be in small ways now, but I know it will be in big ways in the future.  So fight I will…

From June 5, 2007

After a pleasant and great night out at Po’ Monkey’s, our destination for today was the notorious and depressing Mississippi State Penitentiary called Parchman. Parchman sits on a plot of land measuring roughly 18,000 square acres where it seems to be its own little self-sustaining “community” (with that term being used very loosely). Driving into the gates of the penitentiary, I had very little expectations on a specific level, but I did believe that it would be very difficult and disturbing to witness some of the things that go on in one of the state’s three penitentiaries.
Parchman outnumbers Wake Forest undergraduate students in terms of population by a few hundred people. As an all-male, maximum security prison, I find it very odd and illogical that the majority of the workers are young black females. Not only are these young girls unable to provide the proper level of protection for themselves and the security of the prison, they are just too young to have the proper experience in dealing with hardened criminals in such an institution like Parchman. Issues of liability and accountability begin to arise just from that initial realization as we entered Parchman.
For so many reasons, it seems that the overall status of this penitentiary is to uphold the slave labor system. I think that the history of the Deep South indicates that when slavery was abolished and sharecroppers came to learn of some of their new rights, the whites in the south tried to develop new ways to imprison people and force blacks to provide free labor. The judicial system in the Delta seems to have worked against blacks by creating and upholding laws that they knew were either unjust or too harsh a punishment for the act committed.
There are glaring issues of corruption in Parchman. The first prisoner who spoke with us had so many things to say about the food, the forced farm labor, and the overall lack of protection and humane treatment while in prison. The administrative bodies that control Parchman should be held accountable for their actions, or lack thereof. The overall experience of Parchman was incredibly eye-opening.

When I saw this article on CNN.com it reminded me of our class and our experiences at the Southern Poverty Law Center. It’s so amazing how cases from that time period are being solved in 2007.

Seale Convicted in 1964 Death of Black Teens 

Dear Summer Class:

This is Prof. Earl Smith.

This is my last blog (or close to my last blog):

Prisoners: Those persons (male, female, youth etc) confined to an institution (including home arrest) for reasons that they have been convicted & sentenced to a specified sentence (overall time of confinement).

Prisons: The actual place of confinement. Confusion arises when delineating a prison from a jail, from a state institution, from a federal institution. For simplicity sake a prison (qua jail) is the place convicted persons are sent to serve out their time. New to the US Justice System is the SUPERMAX PRISON. Here we have an institution (many located underground) whose sole purpose is holding the most hardened criminals in the US, many of who will never leave the SUPERMAX alive

Corrections: The treatment of offenders through a system of penal incarceration, rehabilitation, probation, and parole, or the administrative system by which these are effectuated. the department of local government that is responsible for managing the treatment of convicted offenders.

Parchman (a Mississippi State Penitentiary) is an older type of prison whose existence is built around the style and structure of the “plantation.” Hence, prisoners being held there, for the most part, carry out old style farming. Many of the farm staple goods are consumed by the inmates (beans, corn, okra, etc).

Since about the 1970s we see in the US an increase in male and female incarceration. With the change in the drug laws (most infamous are those applied in New York State under the administration of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller), more and more US citizens (and so-called illegal aliens) begin serving longer and longer sentences for violating drug laws. These lead to the now controversial “3-strikes you are out” felony convictions whereby a third felony conviction can mean life imprisonment regardless of what that 3^rd felony is. E.g., people can now go to prison for life for three drug convictions. Many crime scholars argue that these people have nothing more than a drug problem (a medical issue) and they are being WARE HOUSED in American prisons.

Important to prisons like Parchman is the issue of privatization. Although the state of Mississippi is still considering making Parchman a private prison, in the 1970s private corporations began to purchase and run American prisons. The significance of this is that prisoners are now laborers in many of these private prisons and they produce products that are purchased in the “free world.” Mostly they work for private global corporations (e.g., McDonald’s, Microsoft, Vitoria Secret, IBM etc).

At Parchman, although not a private penal institution, the production of the commodity cat fish is organized as a private production, distribution crop and sold on the world market. The cat fish industry is so lucrative for Parchman that it has knocked out of competition many of the previously successful cat fish farms in the Deep South, including Mississippi.

Hence, prisoners, prisons and corrections remain central to the study of social stratification not only in the south of the US but worldwide.

It used to be, but is no longer the case, that you could teach a social stratification course (outside of the standard criminology courses) and never have to include in the syllabus anything on the penal system. This is no longer the case.

The course was great. Have a wonderful summer.

NEWS BLAST FROM PARCHMAN

On this 20,000 acre prison farm it is routine to hear that no one escapes. It is not routine to hear that VIOLENCE is a daily occurrence. A week before our visit to Parchman (June 5, 2007) a murder took place and our visit was almost cancelled.

This morning, I am receiving information from Dr. Luther Brown (Delta Center, Cleveland State University in Cleveland Mississippi) that a few days after we visited Parchman there was an escape of an inmate working in the hospital unit (now you know why we insisted that there be no tank tops, no colored shoe laces, pull your pants up and, as we were told in the “pre-release unit” in our discussion with the two inmates - DON’T LET ANYONE PASS ANYTHING TO YOU. All of these rules are important in a place like Parchman). A few days later an inmate committed suicide (he hung himself) in Unit #32 (the unit we saw in the electronic TV monitoring room).

So, the past two weeks were amazing! I learned so much and I was fortunate enough to be with a group of great, intelligent students, professors and faculty members! Even though I am at home in Virginia, I am still in social stratification mode. I have analyzed things in my local community that I didn’t before. For example, Sunday, June 10th at my church was the first lady’s birthday and I thought about how my church celebrated that event in comparison to the celebration at Greater St. Stephen’s in New Orleans the previous Sunday. Our last reflection really made me think of how hard it is to summarize all the feelings and emotions of the trip into words! A question that was posed during the last student reflection was, “What is one thing that you will take with you from this trup and apply into your life from here on out?” My response that I am sticking with is that I will carry the wonderful art of conversation back with me. People have stories to tell and I didn’t realize how important those stories were until I took this class. I learned so much from conversations that were set up into formal interviews and the conversations that just randomly occur. Our last day out in the city of Clarksdale, I had a conversation with a young mother and her son in a local barber shop. The South seemed to really have a positive effect on me in how I deal with meeting new people! I can truly say that people are waiting for others to discover them. Our class did just that, we went into the Deep South and we learned so much from the people. Social stratification has a new meaning to me than it did three weeks ago when I read an article about it in the reader.  The Deep South also has a new meaning to me. I am so comfortable in a place that I thought I could never feel at home in because of the judgements I had made about people and their beliefs. Some of the steroetypes of the South are true but many aren’t. Instead of thinking of the stereotypes now, I ask myself what can I do to help places like Waveland, MS and New Orleans. And, what can I do to assist poor counties like Tunica, MS. Social Stratification in the Deep South: Summer 2007 will forever and always be a part of me!

The town of Clarkesdale was pretty depressing to walk around because everything was run-down and most of the stores were closed.  There were very few people walking around as most were just driving through.  Jill, Margaret, Teresa, and I decided to brave the heat and try to walk to the Riverside Hotel.  We ended up turning the wrong way and walking deeper into Clarkesdale when an older white lady pulled over and asked us if we needed a ride.  We took that as a hint to turn around and go back to the main street but noted the demographics of the area if only four white girls stuck out so much for a woman to pull her car over and offer strangers a ride.

Ground Zero, Morgan Freeman’s restaurant was a cool place but felt really touristy.  The only people in there were our group and a man named Puddin’, who quickly befriended and played pool with the boys.  I’m sure there was a large crowd that evening with people listening to the band we heard at Po’ Monkeys.  Running into the band member we had just seen a few nights before in Merrigold just shows how small town and few people live in the Delta.  My favorite place in Clarkesdale was Cat’s Head because the artwork was so fun, I especially liked the piece Susan bought and Margaret bought enough t-shirts to support the entire community that day.

Staying at Shack Up Inn was my favorite night of the trip.  I just ran around when we first got there and it felt like we were at summer camp.  DJ and I had hand stand contests in the grass and we checked out everyone’s shack.  After getting settled in a little in the Hopson Plantation, Jill and I went the main desk to ask if there was a gas station in walking distance since Ronnie left us stranded for the night.  I was shocked when the owner just handed me a set of keys and said the gas station was 2 miles to left.  We had to wait for him to put power steering fluid in before we could leave!  The car was a really old Cadillac that was as big as a boat.  I was the first to drive and got nervous pulling out because the car was so big it swayed back and forth on the road.  Barely driving the speed limit we finally got to the gas station and then Jill drove home and we surprisingly did not hit anything.  Driving the old Cadillac was definitely a highlight of the evening.  We spent the majority of the night playing games accompanied by Lilly and Tonia on our porch since ours was screened in.  The next morning everyone was complaining and ready to leave but I liked it there and would have no problem spending more than one night at Shack Up (minus the poison oak I got that showed up when I got home and thought was chiggers)  As much fun as I had there I do realize that we were very lucky to have electricity and air conditioning and that I cannot compare it to summer camp because of the history of the shacks.

I was not at all excited to go home and have the trip end.  Although living out of a suitcase for two weeks was not ideal, I am in denial that it’s over.  I have tried to tell my friends and family about the trip but there is no way to fully explain everything we went through, saw, and accomplished.  Our group was perfect and I was apprehensive before leaving because I did not know many people going but now I am just as close with most people on the trip than I am with my friends at Wake I’ve had for three years.  I cannot put into words the impact of our class but I have already decorated my room with the posters we got and cannot wait to go home and show my family all the pictures.  My first night back was the worst and I miss my roommates!!!

Touring through the different sections of Cleveland, Mississippi was seeing houses and living conditions like night and day. The night we got to the hotel a few of us were watching TV in the lobby with the girl who worked behind the desk. She told us about her town Shaw which we actually got to drive through and see the high school she went to. The school history was interesting because it went from being completely white to Italian to African American. It was the first school in Mississippi to have integrated teachers and as Luther Brown pointed out the first teacher received more problems from other teachers and administration than parents because the parents were mostly Italian and directly understood the effects of segregation.

Lunch at the Hoover grocery store was really good except the Kool-Aid pickles that most of us regretted trying. Mr. Hoover then showed us the neighborhood which is where Robert Johnson used to live and play jazz out on the street corner. We went into a house and Mr. Hoover explained how life was like during the time of the explosion of blues. There was one bed, one mirror, no running water, and no electricity for a large family. They used kerosene lamps, bathed in the back yard, and the children slept on blankets on the floor. Being in the cramped house on such a hot day made us realize how blues was inspired. Mr. Hoover told us how Robert Johnson would draw the whole neighborhood outside when he played but parents discouraged their children from listening. He said that if he even started to sing blues his mother would immediately hit him to stop since it was “devil’s music.”

We continued our tour to Money, Mississippi and passed the railroad tracks where Emmit Till rode the train and the store where whistled at the white employee to trigger his murder. The contrast of the run down homes (which a bunch actually had Direct TV dishes but no windows or fully enacted roofs) to the neighborhood approaching the Alluvian hotel was very drastic. It was such a short drive from houses that looked more like shacks to houses that would fit in on Stratford. The shops surrounding the hotel were very upscale and the hotel was ridiculously luxurious. It was hard to see such poverty and then wealth.

Dinner at the Senators Place was incredibly good. I was so full from lunch at Hoover’s that I did not think I could possibly eat another bite but ended up stuffing my face with catfish, hush puppies, green beans, cole slaw, and of course banana pudding. Dr. Rosen’s passion for blues was so apparent which made his lecture during dinner really interesting because he was so excited about it. Senator Willie Simmons was very generous for keeping the restaurant open later and cooking for us and showed us even more hospitality later that night at Po’ Monkeys.

Po’ Monkey’s juke joint was clearly the highlight of the trip! Having gotten so close on the trip everyone had a great time with each other dancing, playing pool, and hanging out. The blues and that played was great and it was fun to be out with locals and not feel out of place as we often did walking around in such a large group. Not much to blog about the evening but for sure memories from Po’ Monkeys will last forever.

The last part of our trip was spent in Clarksdale, Mississippi. We spent Wednesday afternoon walking around Clarksdale, exploring the blues capital of the world. The majority of my afternoon was spent in two locations, the Delta Blues Museum and Ground Zero Blues Club. The museum was very interesting and provided more time to take in the all of the blues history that is abundant in the region. It was fun to see pictures of places like Po’ Monkey’s, knowing that we were there only two days before. I was also really excited to get some posters in the gift shop that I can use to decorate my new apartment with. After the museum we went to Ground Zero for lunch. This is a Blues club that is rather well known both for its blues, and for the fact that it is owned by Morgan Freeman, who is from Clarksdale. One of the things that makes this place unique is that people sign their names all over the place; on the walls, the tables, the mirrors, everywhere. It was fun to find a place to make my visit official by adding my name to the wall. We were only there for lunch, so we couldn’t take in the full experience with a band, but it was still fun to see the place.

After spending some time downtown, we got back on the bus and headed to our “hotel” for the night, the Shack Up Inn. I put hotel in quotations because the Shack Up Inn is unlike any other destination in the hospitality industry. I had explored the website prior to our arrival, so I was somewhat expecting what we saw when we first pulled up, but it was still a bit of a surprise. The Shack Up Inn consists of a row of shacks that have do not look like they belong in the year 2007. The shacks all have electricity, hot water, and air conditioning, but that’s about it. At first it was really fun to explore the shacks, see how they differed, and decide which ones were better or worse, but then it started to set in that we were actually staying there for a night. I’m obviously biased, but I’d say that my shack was the best one. It was bigger than some, and ours was the only one with a screened in porch. The experience was a lot of fun, and the class definitely made the best of it, but I wouldn’t really say it’s something I would like to do again.

Our stay at the Shack Up Inn was followed by two long days of driving home. We drove all day Thursday and spent the night in Knoxville, Tennessee. Unfortunately we did not get to see much of Tennessee because we left for Wake at 6:30 the next morning. The whole ride from Knoxville to Winston-Salem was spent sleeping on my part, so it went by pretty quickly. When we finally got back on campus it was pretty sad to realize that the trip was actually over. I had such a great time and learned and experienced so much that I really didn’t want it to end, but I know that I will keep this trip with me for a long, long time.