bookshelves. Scott also lived to see the property
Isaac Scott and Willena Scott-White are looking
returned and his children take their places as
toward the future now, but it’s impossible for
caretakers. Now that the family has it back, they
them ever to forget the tilled-up meaning of the
have no intention of letting it go. I asked Isaac why
past. More specifically, it’s impossible for them
the story matters and what younger generations of
to ever forget their father.
Mississippians should learn from their struggle. “I
Ed Scott Jr. was a veteran of World War II. He
hope that they would understand that land is not
drove fuel trucks to General Patton’s front lines
made anymore,” says Isaac.
in freezing, war-torn Europe, even ducking sniper
The land contains far more than the nutrient-
fire with the General they called “Old Blood and
rich soil that is now bringing the family their fifth
Guts” when a Nazi with a high-powered rifle had
consecutive crop of this new era. Wrapped up in the
them pinned down from a belltower roost. When
dirt is all the toil of the men and women who came
he returned home from war, he thought about
before them and all the promises of self-determination
leaving the state. “[The people back home] didn’t
that were so often denied to black Southerners.
care about us no way,” Scott recalled, speaking of
Half of the land is outside of Mound Bayou,
whites’ reception of black veterans. “They didn’t
the historic town founded by freedmen after the
want to see you with that uniform on back then.
Civil War as an incubator for African-American
I was proud of that uniform, but I wasn’t proud
exceptionalism and community. (Think Wakanda,
of Mississippi. Wasn’t proud of Mississippi at all.”
from Marvel’s “Black Panther” – a place of genius,
But Scott decided to stay to help his father on the
plenty, and protection that was ahead of its time.)
farm. In the 1960s, Scott carried food to civil rights
Above: Ed Scott Jr.’s catfish processing plant and a smiling Ed Scott Jr.
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