The Mississippi Delta

1/21/14

Today, we traveled back in time to the 1950’s.  Visiting Simmons High School and the Sunflower County Freedom Project meant returning to the times we’ve been learning about on the trip.  We took a trip to the world of segregation.  Pure segregation.  Where you live, who you interact with, where you go to school, is defined almost solely by race in the Mississippi Delta.  It’s about white and black.  In each area, there is a dividing line between the two races and it isn’t crossed.  Sure, Baltimore is super segregated, one street wealthy and white, the next poor and Black.  But I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such obvious, blatant segregation as I did in Mississippi today.  The Mississippi Delta is 70% black and 30% white.  The public schools are almost 100% black.  The private schools are almost 100% white.  If you’re poor and you’re white, you can get a scholarship to go to private school because your “safety is in danger at public schools.”  If you’re black, maybe you’ll get to go to private school, but only because the school needs the funding they get for having a few minority students.  That’s it.  The public schools and the private schools don’t interact, they don’t play each other in sports, they don’t participate in after-school activities together. 

The most upsetting thing is that the Freedom Project focuses on teaching Civil Rights Movement to the kids and taking them to the places where their history, was made, while they live exactly the life of black kids before Brown v. Board of Education.  People fought and died for the right for every child in this country to get a good, equal education, and these kids know that.  But their world is one that denies them this basic right because of the color of their skin and not the content of their character.  Here these kids live in full awareness of the segregation, of the fact that after the struggle for integration, association with white people is barely an option.  When we asked the kids at the Freedom Project about their interactions with white people, they described how going into the white part of town meant avoiding the dogs that the white residents let loose on them as they come by.  Let me make this clear: its 2014, and major parts of this country are split down a line based on race, private schools are for white children, and dogs prevent black children from venturing out of their neighborhoods. 

The night before, the Park chaperones told the Park students that we need to be prepared for the abject poverty we would witness at Simmons today, but that’s not what it felt like when we met the kids there.  They were just very regular people, going about their regular business.  What is upsetting is that these kids are normal people who live in a horrendous situation, isolated and in poverty, through no fault of their own.  We are all the same, but these kids are forced to live in an unequal world, at an unequal school, while kids sit in classrooms a couple miles a way, with all the opportunities to learn, to go to college, and leave the desolate Delta.  They were born into a system that immediately recognizes them as less than, not worthy of our attention.  Their government does nothing for them, gerrymandering districts in Mississippi to serve their interest of keeping minorities from exercising their fundamental American right to vote and better their lives.  I cannot describe how angry it makes me feel that this blatant racism still exists and that nothing is being done about it.  We must finally bring to fruition the ideals that were fought for in the Civil Rights Movement.  It cannot end where it started, with smart, hopeful black children being forced to be satisfied with their station in life.  We cannot allow this in this day and age.  The kids at the Freedom Project’s hopefulness and will to succeed should inspire each and everyone of us to do everything and anything to revolutionize the unequal world we live in.

-Sara P, the Park School of Love