Social Stratification in the Deep South

If I didn’t know much about the Blues before, I sure do now. We spent another day deep in Blues Country: Clarksdale, MS. Susan and I spent some time walking around the city. Clarksdale is surely a prime example of living social stratification. The fried green tomatoes at Morgan Freeman’s Ground Zero Blues Club were so good that we had them not only for lunch, but also ate them as leftovers for dinner!

My favorite site was the Delta Blues Museum, where there was a stunning exhibit by photographer David Turnley on the Delta region and also a photo exhibit on “Delta Dogs” that made me homesick for ole Trixie, Elmo and our newcomer Beagle, Homer.

Our lodging for the night is (you’re reading this right) the Shack Up Inn. The adults (well, most of them) are staying in single “bins” at the newly rehabbed Cotton Gin section and the students are staying across the green in mostly authentic sharecropper shacks. Susan got right to work by re-setting the router so that we could all get wireless in or outside our shacks and keep up on our blogs for all of you. Here is Lynn at the Bin:

Home: none too soon!

I feel like an old, old woman after two days of riding the bus around the Mississippi Delta. I confess to being geographically challenged and ignorant of the Delta before this. I actually thought the Delta was the area around New Orleans, rather than the section of alluvial land further north between the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers.

I also confess to being musically challenged because while I have heard of BB King, I did not know Charlie Patton or Robert Johnson before Monday’s endless bus ride. Growing up in Motown, I started to think of them as the Smokey Robinson and Little Stevie Wonder of the South. We were educated by several Blues scholars who were very excited about the “Blues Trail” of markers, commemorating their legendary heroes. I refused to go to Charlie Patton’s grave, however, because we were warned that the recent mowing may have scared up some snakes!

Speaking of snakes (skipping the Po Monkey’s scene altogether, under the bus motto of “what happens at Po Monkey’s stays at Po Monkey’s”) they were mentioned again today at Parchman Prison as one possible source of the mysterious “bologna” or “wolf booty” that the inmates are served for lunch. We were privileged to see the video monitoring room where over 300 cameras capture live images of all sections of the prison. We were all stunned to see a red liquid pooling out into the hall from a cell and sure enough, the monitors said it was blood from an inmate who had cut himself. They didn’t seem to be too concerned, as they said it was a common technique to get into the camp hospital.

Parchman turned out to be pretty intense, made all the more meaningful to me because of the recent experience of a close family member of mine who was recently released from prison. Many details in the speeches by the inmates resonated with me, especially the ones about family. Dr. Hattery says that when a person is imprisoned, his/her entire family is also imprisoned and that seems very true.

This is my first post in a while as I have had a rough couple of days, emotionally speaking. At the church this morning, I thought again of something that has bothered me off and on throughout the trip and hit home most especially in Hancock County.

Primum non nocere means “First, do no harm.” Sociology involves the science of observing people and then analyzing how and why they behave the way they do. I am not a sociologist, but the techniques of observation and analysis are familiar to me from my doctoral work. What has bothered me is the risk we take in harming the people that we study through the very act of observation. I was uncomfortable at both the George Washington Carver homes and the Lower 9th Ward because it seemed we were close to the line, if not crossing it, of gawking at the residents of the neighborhood and causing them discomfort. A 45′ bus is not an easy thing to disguise and neither is a multicultural group of 23 people with cameras. A number of participants have already blogged guiltily about the hand-lettered sign on a falling-down house in the 9th ward reminding us that “1600 people died 4 u 2 take this picture.”

In Hancock County, students had the additional complication of carrying out a service project while at the same time being trained to observe social stratification issues around them. These blogs are wonderful tools for collaborative work but they are also a public display of research in progress. In the 72 hours we stayed in Hancock County, views of the community matured rapidly among many participants. Surface observations at the beginning of the trip often did not hold up to be valid. The consensus at the end was that this was a strong, closely knit community trying its best to recover from a storm of unnatural ferocity and restore the community to all its residents. We went to help, I only hope that we did no harm.

Southern Poverty Law Center: I was very impressed with the work they do at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Who knew? I didn’t even know there was a Civil Rights Memorial anywhere. The memorial is very well done, the work of Maya Lin, architect of the Vietnam Memorial.

This inscription is very special to me, as Dr. King included it in every one of his speeches and I have learned to listen for it. (Confession: while we were in church Sunday, I spent some time looking up the original verse in Amos 4:24)

If I had my life to live over again, I would go to law school instead of library school and work at a place such as this, with the ultimate goal of becoming a Supreme Court justice. Too late for me, but maybe not for my son Alexander who is a rising senior philosophy major at the University of Michigan.

Selma: very sad, very poor, seemingly unchanged. I was among those who were very uncomfortable walking the streets in the George Washington Carver district. I wasn’t afraid, but I felt embarrassed that our group was so intrusive in the lives of the people there. Dr. Hattery warned us not to look at them like we were at the zoo, but it was not possible to look like anything other than we were, rich American tourists with bling bling and cameras around our necks, gawking at the sites.

The long ride to Mississippi was over before we knew it and we faced the ironic contrast of the desolate hurricane-damaged landscape with the glitz of the newly rebuilt Hollywood Casino. A sociologist would perhaps have something to say about the fact that there is always money in America to rebuild casinos while the people of the town are still waiting for FEMA trailers and insurance settlements.

The surprise of the trip occurred after we checked into the hotel and I went with Ronnie, our driver, to scope out the location of the library and the places we would visit tomorrow. We drove along the Beach Road, looking like the surface of the moon almost two years after Katrina. In the course of the trip, Ronnie opened up to share his political views, predicting that history would be made in the next election when the first woman would be elected President of the United States. And further, he would help work for Hillary to make it so. Go Ronnie!

This Memorial Day was spent honoring not only those who gave their lives defending their country, but also those who gave their lives earning the right to vote, a right that white men have enjoyed from the first days of the young democracy. I’ve always been disturbed by the reality that when they founders said “all men are created equal,” they meant all white land-owning men, and not women at all. It has also disturbed and surprised me that Memorial Day is taken fairly lightly in the South, more like Columbus Day than the national holiday it is. Shortly after I got to Winston, one of my staff took me aside and explained that Memorial Day was created to honor the Union dead and that was why not much was made of it. So, for instance, today is the first day of summer classes at Wake Forest, which would be unheard of in other parts of the country. And don’t even get me started on Labor Day, but, I digress….

When we finally got there after a few detours in the Alabama countryside, the Lowndes Interpretive Center turned out to be a lovely museum, though in a somewhat desolate setting. The film about the struggle for voting rights, culminating in the Selma to Montgomery march was the best piece I have ever seen. The message to young people and others who do not participate in voting was very strong: do not take this privilege lightly, as those who went before you died so you could have it.

While we were waiting for Ronnie to grill the burgers (thanks, Ronnie) I heard one of the guys say, “You know Ben Wallace? He’s from here. That’s his mother’s house behind there.” I know Ben Wallace to be the NBA star, formerly of my beloved Pistons but now with the Chicago Bulls. So I took this picture from a distance to show everyone back home.

Today we attended services in the 16th Street Baptist Church - quite an experience to say the least.

I was raised Lutheran, Missouri Synod Lutheran to be exact, and turned Episcopalian only after I could no longer stand the social conservatism of my home church. Those white Protestant services are about as far from the black Baptist church as you can get. I got a taste of the black church experience when I lived in Detroit, however, and would attend the funerals of my Wayne State co-workers’ families. 16th Street Baptist did not disappoint: fabulous choir and jazz-band music, brow-mopping preacher, waving, swaying parishioners, and sinners coming down from the aisles to be saved.

What was most interesting was the “reflection” time in the bus following the church service. To some of the students, this kind of church was normal; to others it was other-worldly. I found my own reaction was closest to Ricky’s because as I watched the rapture on the faces of the choir members and the intense preaching of the pastor, I was reminded of what my friend from yesterday in the park said, “God is all the blacks ever had and all they will have. In the days of despair, they clung to his promises and in the days of deliverance they still look to him.” As Ricky pointed out, this kind of fatalism can lead to apathy or at least acceptance of one’s low condition and continues the cycle of poverty. Another saying came to mind as I sat in church, thoroughly enjoying the gospel music - that of Karl Marx calling religion the opium of the people. It keeps them occupied and keeps them down. And yet the joy on the faces in that church was real. Hmmmm…

My other experience of the day was when we drove 20 miles to a WalMart bypassing at least one Wynn-Dixie on the way, burning $3.25 a gallon gas at an alarming rate in our huge bus to get groceries for dinner. I didn’t know we were headed to a WalMart until we pulled into the parking lot.

Without thinking, I blurted out, “WalMart? I’ve never been in a WalMart in my life and I’m not about to start now!” So while everyone else went in to buy their groceries, I waited out in the bus. Later, Tania asked me what I had against WalMart and I told her the many reasons: how it is the worst example of capitalism in this country, keeping the obscenely high level of profits in the hands of the family while refusing to pay workers a living wage, how the company pays no health care benefits so the taxpayers of the state have to pick up those costs in Medicaid, how they keep women out of management levels, how their own research study showed the depressing effect on the local economy when WalMart moves in, how they arrange for outside contractors to hire illegal immigrants to clean their stores so they don’t even have to pay minimum wage for those services, and if that weren’t enough, I am from Detroit, home to K-Mart, where WalMart is to K-Mart what Toyota is to Ford and GM. They don’t pay a living wage or health care costs so it is impossible to compete with their low prices. That’s why I don’t shop at WalMart.

Saturday was quite a day, from downtown Birmingham to the quiet neighborhoods surrounding Center Street, to the earthy Dreamland BBQ. One of the good things about a group blog like this is you pretty much know that others will cover the main things so you don’t need to. I was tempted to write about Ms. Heidi, Judge Helen Shores Lee and Barbara Shores, three strong, patrician women, black and white, who lived through the bombings of Birmingham and share their experience with grace and wisdom. But Susan has already done that and others are likely to as well.

So I will tell a little vignette about my experience in Kelly Ingram Park.

I wandered over to the Park once we learned that the 16th Street Baptist Church was unexpectedly locked for the day. Dr. Hattery had told us that the sculptures in the park were dramatic and moving and she was right. I took some pictures and was standing in front of the statue of my hero, the good Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. when an African American man rode up on his bicycle. He stopped suddenly, backed up, and seemed to be assessing me as his target: white, middle-aged woman, taking pictures in the park alone with shopping bag on arm. He asked if I were enjoying the park, if I had seen all the sculptures, and if I knew the history of the place. Trying out my best Southern manners (resisting all my northern impulses to turn heel and walk away) I said yes, I was enjoying it very much. Reassured he had sized me up correctly, he launched into his schpiel, talking about Kelly Ingram, for whom the park was named, the four quadrants of the fountain symbolizing the four little girls killed in the church across the street with water flowing down like tears, and the meaning of each statue. “Did you read what was at the base of the Children’s March sculpture?” “I ain’t afraid of your jail,” I dutifully replied.

“Did you see the man with Bull Connor? That is Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, who was so committed to non-violence that he stepped back from the fire hoses and dogs and refused to show anger. ”

Then he went on, “they strung that good man upside down, beat him bloody, beat him to death, but before he died he wrote in his own blood on the wall, ’segregation is sin’ and then the angels carried him away.” Here I started to have my doubts and wondered if he was going to ask me for money, but he launched onto another story about the kneeling ministers and the fire hoses and to tell the truth he had all the cadences and rhythms of Dr. King at his best so I listened to the rest of his stories.

Finally, he said “now I don’t do this for everyone but I sensed you was a good woman and would be pleased to make a contribution to my livelihood.” Oh boy, I thought to myself, if I give this guy money I will be setting a bad example to the students on the trip who have probably been taught not to give money to panhandlers who will only use it for drink or drugs or worse. But then I thought the cost of the official Kelly Ingram Park audio tour was $4 and admission to the Civil Rights Institute was $10 and he was more entertaining, by far, than either of them, so I did what my heart said and happily gave him three loose dollar bills in my purse and considered it a fair exchange of trade.

We made it to Birmingham after a very loooooong, but entertaining bus trip. It turns out, there is actually real content to this course. Who knew? (jk) Since I had been working on Hancock County Library preparation all week, I did the readings on the bus and my favorite one was the Paul Escott piece (I’ll have to tell him next time I see him). As a Yankee, still going through Southern acclimation, I had a few aha moments. Thanks, Paul!

Another treat was Fried Green Tomatoes, which was just getting good in a whodunit kind of way when we arrived at the Comfort Inn. Tonight we are eating at the restaurant that inspired the WhistleStop Cafe in the film (I’m sure Susan has a link somewhere).

So far, so good!

I am so excited about this trip. Thank you to Dr. Smith and Dr. Hattery for including ZSR Library staff in this endeavor!