Mississippi is renaming two stretched of highway after individuals killed during the Civil Rights era. This is one of those situations where we can lament something that is long overdue or celebrate that even with too much time passed, this is still a remarkable example of change over time. A stretch of U.S. Highway 19 South will be named after James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, the three Civil Rights workers murdered in 1964 on that highway. U.S. Highway 49 East in Tallahachie County will be renamed the Emmett Till Memorial Highway after the 14-year-old boy beaten to death in 1955 in the town of Money. This story in the Jackson Free Press is the best thing I have read about this telling effort at memorialization. As one writing about the reception the Freedom Riders met on Mississippi's highways, I am especially happy to see this.

My lecture on Emmett Till is always the toughest one I have to give in any given year. By the end I am usually at the end of my emotional tether, voice cracking, eyes tearing (mine, but sometimes students’ as well). There can be no real closure, an overused word in any case, for something like these murders. But this might be as close as we are likely to get. The bill passed both the Mississippi House and Senate unanimously. The legislation was brought by Democrats, supported by both parties, and signed into law by Republican Governor Haley Barbour.

Indicating how these wounds are still raw, the state has finally brought murder charges against one of the killers (oh, sorry, alleged killers) of Cheney, Schwerner and Goodman, Edgar Ray Killen. For anyone interested in this case, I would strongly encourage you to read Mary Winstead’s memoir Back to Mississippi. Winstead intended to write this book to honor her father, a native Mississippian who moved to Minnesota with his wife to raise his family. In going back to Mississippi, where her family always made her feel welcome, Mary stumbled upon an uncomfortable realization: Edgar Ray Killen was kin. Hers is a powerful story.

I was able to meet Mary Winstead when I was asked to do an interview with her for a program on books for Minnesota Public Radio. Her family pretty well shut her out once they discovered the direction her book had inadvertently taken. I cannot help but think about her today and wonder how she is doing.

Oscar Chamberlain - 3/31/2005

I had not meant to gloss over the importance of the act, and the unanimity of it. I grew up in Dallas in the fifties and sixties, just as formal segregation was ending. The change since then is staggering. And given some of the other news that comes out of Mississippi today, it is particularly good to see these actions.

Derek Charles Catsam - 3/31/2005

Oscar --
For me the process of memorializing is as important as the memorial itself. That Mississippi went through this process with virtual unanimity says something. mississippi may have a long way to go, but unanimous support for highway memorials for Emmett Till and Cheney, Goodman, and Schwerner shows just how far we've come since 1964, indeed since 1984.

The Trail of Tears rest area. Eeesh.

dc

Oscar Chamberlain - 3/31/2005

The Mississippi memorials do sound like a good idea. What makes it work, I think, is that the individuals are named. Highway memorials for the uncounted dead are simply too easy to ignore.

I say that because I once saw--in southern Illinois I think--a truly strange memorial: an interstate rest area dedicated to the Trail of Tears. Inside was a museum-type display relating the story, and it was ok, (though I know much more about the atrocity now than I did then.)

But whoever thought of a Trail of Tears Rest Area was either utterly oblvious to irony or had the most jet black sense of humor that I have ever seen.

Or maybe he or she was smart. Maybe that juxtaposition of water fountains and walking the dog with the story of loss and privation made more of an impact than the same display could do anywhere else.