by Natalie A. Collier
Lacey McLaughlin
chorus, “It is well …” I told Ward he was supposed to echo. He did. I didn’t. All was not well with my soul. I spotted the sign behind the band, boasting that this year marked the 121st fair. “There’ve been 121 of these?” I mumbled. I picked up my phone to do a quick Google search. “There’s a black man with locs!” Ward pointed out excitedly. He was walking alongside a white guy. The two looked to be friends. I wondered if those two knew that six days after the FBI found civil-rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner buried 15 feet below the ground’s surface in 1964 fewer than six miles north on Highway 21, the fair kicked off. I’d just learned that. Then I wondered if they cared. As the crowd cleared out, I looked for a handheld fan that wasn’t endorsing a political candidate, and Ward made a call back to the office. I found church-style fans with “pur air” stamped on them. “Beautiful lies,” I thought. Ward asked if we could go grab a bite to eat before coming back to the square to hear congressional candidate Alan Nunnelee’s 10minute speech. We walked slowly, chatting, and a woman caught my eye. “Y’all hungry?” she asked. “We have plenty of food.”
Gov. Haley Barbour forgot to mention other Gulf of Mexico oil spills when he talked about the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster last week.
Ward and I looked at one another. I knew he’d want to go in. It was, after all, an offer for free food. I obliged him. Up one, two, three, four shallow stairs, I could feel the woman’s eyes on my back. “You’re probably just being paranoid again,” I thought. A quick glance over my shoulder confirmed I wasn’t; I caught her still looking. The four people in the cabin’s kitchen introduced themselves quickly, as did we; then they ushered us to the island in the middle of the small room where food sat buffet style. We put food on our plates, and I sat mine down to get drinks. “Do you want tea, lemonade or bottled water, sweetie?” I asked Ward. The little girl who sat on an adult’s hip couldn’t control her mouth, as it dropped open. Ward chuckled. “Water is good.” “Y’all can go out on the porch to eat or upstairs,” someone said. We walked up the stairs and positioned ourselves on the modest balcony. A black woman dressed in an apron and hair net walked out of the back door of a cabin across the way, tossing a bucket of water out, as Ward ate from his plate and mine. “There’s another black person,” he said. “Yep,” I replied, letting the sip of water I took punctuate my one-word sentence.
A gentle breeze blew, and the American flag I was sitting behind reached back and hit me in the face. “Wow,” boyfriendfor-a-day said. “I just got hit. In the face. With an American flag,” I said. “Wow. That’s a metaphor for something,” Ward said, chuckling. “Yeah; it’s a metaphor,” I agreed. We threw away our plates, thanked our hosts and went back down to the plaza to hear Nunnelee speak. “Together, we can write history. … But how will our grandchildren and their grandchildren know of the greatness of America?” Nunnelee asked during the opening few sentences of his speech. “Will posterity enjoy the blessings of liberty secured for us by our grandparents and their grandparents before them? ... (W)ill the greatness of America be barely a chapter in their history books? A record of what once was? The answer to that question is in our hands,” he declared before going on with a Nancy Pelosi-obsessed diatribe. The crowd hooted, hollered and agreed. I sat, finally figuring it out, as I looked over and spotted two more black people. I wasn’t uncomfortable chiefly because of my race. I was uncomfortable because I didn’t belong. The liberties Nunnelee preached about and
hope I can say ‘nuclear power plant’; I’m working on that, I’ll tell you about—but a new clean coal gasification plant in Noxubee County. A billion-dollar plant that’s going to provide jobs, high-tech jobs like Schultz will, like Twin Creeks will. We’re talking about 1500 new jobs in the state of Mississippi in the worst national recession in modern times. You bet I’m proud about that.” Mississippi Power is currently planning a coal gasification plant for Kemper County, not Noxubee County, at a cost of up to $2.88 billion. The plant and adjoining mine would create 260 permanent jobs and 1,000 temporary jobs during peak construction, according to a Jan. 16, 2009, Mississippi Power press release.
Gov. Haley Barbour “In the 50 years since the four Gulf States— Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas—first allowed offshore drilling, more than 30,000 wells have been drilled in the Gulf of Mexico. This is the first time anything like (the BP oil disaster) has ever happened, and to close down the Gulf of Mexico to oil drilling is very short sighted and awfully poor policy.” Factcheck.org reports that the BP oil disaster isn’t the first time an oil spill has occurred in the Gulf. In 1979, the IXTOC well blew out in Bahia de Campeche near Mexico, spilling 71,500 barrels of crude into the Gulf and washing up on 162 miles of U.S. beaches over the course of 10 months.
the ones the American flag that licked my face in the breeze over lunch symbolizes weren’t always meant for me. The disparities in this country and “our” Mississippi are just as much about class and the natural-born, government-acknowledged right to stake claim and pursue happiness as they are about race. It just so happens the powers-that-be granted some posterity and their inalienable rights a few generations after everyone else. A total of 20 blacks and zero Asians later, Ward and I left the fair, headed to the Choctaw reservation. The closer we got to the exit gate, the less oppressed I felt. Florence Mars writes in “Witness in Philadelphia” about the fair of 1964, after FBI agents found Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner buried: “The fair almost seemed the same. There were the same speakings, bands, horseraces, community exhibits, dances, sings, and carnival activities; the same crowds milled near the pavilion ... and there was the same talk about how good it was to be back. The unpleasant events of the summer were not discussed. … Still, there was an air of unspoken tension greatly heightened by the bizarre presence of the auxiliary police.” The unspoken tension, for me, 46 years later, still clung to the air. Maybe there’s a metaphor for that, too. In 1970, a blowout, explosion and fire on a Shell Offshore Inc. well in Louisiana’s South Timbalier region left four people dead and 36 injured and spilled 53,000 barrels of crude into the Gulf. The federal government has not closed down the Gulf of Mexico to oil drilling. The administration’s proposed moratorium only applies to new permits for deepwater drilling; production from existing deepwater wells continues. A June 8 Department of Interior press release explained that “shallow water drilling operations and production activity in both deep and shallow waters are not under a moratorium and will continue, provided they are in compliance with the new safety requirements.”
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