House races in the South among most competitive | clarionledger.com | The Clarion-Ledger
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Stephen Rozman, a political scientist at Tougaloo College, said Childers' race will be partly a referendum on Obama and Democratic leaders. "Republicans will try to tie Childers to the national Democratic Party and make him appear more liberal than he is or than his voting record indicates," Rozman...

Sompost.com – Hot News » Blog Archive » African-American History ...
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Looking Black - Radio One Celebrates... - http://lookingblack.com/
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Black Americans in the 2010 Census
There are 40 million black Americans on the eve of the 2010 Census. We are 12.3 percent of the U.S. population down from 14.8 percent of the population in 2000. African Americans became the nation's second-largest minority group in the ... The District of Columbia had the highest percentage of blacks (56 percent), followed by Mississippi (38 percent). Cook County, Ill. (Chicago's county) had the largest black population of any county (1.4 million), and Orleans Parish, La. ...
THEROOT.COM - http://www.theroot.com/users/cicurug
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TODAY IN BLACK HISTORY 2/10/10 « The Renaissance Man
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Mississippi Divided by Race?

How many Mississippis are there, one or two?


http://www.vicksburgpost.com/articles/2010/02/07/columns/doc4b6c84aed1fa2753078147.txt

in reference to: The Vicksburg Post > Archives > Columns > Mason sees Mississippi as forever divided by race (view on Google Sidewiki)

Mississippi builds Davis library and museum

by Edward C. Smith
With its enigmatic leader in chains after his capture in Georgia on May 10, 1865, the Confederate States of America, which had been slowly dying since Gettysburg, was dead. However, most historians will agree that a "burial" never occurred, because the spirit of the Confederacy lives on throughout the South. This is notably the case in Virginia, where Jefferson Davis is buried in Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery, in the state where 60 percent of the war's battles were fought.
Davis would remain a prisoner for two years, never standing trial for treason or for taking up arms against the U.S. government because there were many powerful figures who feared that Davis might win in court what he had lost on the field of battle, the right to found a new nation.
Davis, who died in 1889, spent his last years at his Beauvoir estate in Gulfport, Miss., where he had the leisure to reflect on the Civil War and write his memoir, "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government."
A few weeks ago, I visited Beauvoir for the first time, having been invited to address an annual Lee-Jackson commemoration. The handsomely landscaped grounds face the blue waters of the Gulf Coast. The estate, formerly the elegant home of Sarah Dorsey, who sold it to the Davis family in 1879, contains a small but impressive Confederate cemetery, complete with an unknown soldier. There is also a visitors center with a theater, museum-bookshop, etc.
But the most prominent presence at Beauvoir is the construction site for the new Jefferson Davis Library and Museum, to be dedicated in 1998. This ambitious project is being funded entirely by the state of Mississippi, even though Davis was born in Kentucky.
What is more surprising about this newest memorial to Jefferson Davis is that Mississippi is the blackest state in the Union and the one that produced the first martyr of the modern civil rights movement, Medgar Evers, who was murdered in June 1963 by Mississippi Ku Klux Klansman Byron De La Beckwith. (Evers is buried near the ceremonial entrance to Arlington Cemetery, Robert E. Lee's former home.)
More than 40 percent of the state's population is black. Mississippi also has a higher number of black elected officials than any other state. The 1965 Voting Rights Act brought about a revolution that changed the complexion of Mississippi politics forever.
When I asked if there were any protests from the state's black officials and community leaders at using taxpayer money to construct the Davis library and museum, I was informed that there was virtually none. Had even a small number of blacks opposed this initiative (with the national media eagerly joining as a powerful ally), it most assuredly would have been defeated decisively.
Recently, a small group of black leaders in Maryland were outraged by the image of the Confederate flag on a few state license plates owned by members of the Maryland Sons of Confederate Veterans. After a few days of media heat, state authorities revoked the right of the owners to publicly display these tags. (That ruling is being challenged in court.) For many blacks, and some whites as well, the Confederate battle flag is seen as the American equivalent of the Nazi swastika. That such a comparison is blatantly untrue hardly matters to those who are convinced that slavery was our nation's holocaust.
During Reconstruction and beyond, blacks in Mississippi suffered far more virulent racism than did their brothers and sisters in Maryland. And yet, the majority of blacks in Mississippi today are sufficiently understanding that they can study and accept their state's past as it was and still let those voices of earlier eras be heard in the present.
Ironically, in this respect, they are following in the tradition of one of Maryland's most magnificent black heroes, Frederick Douglass, who never disconnected himself from his slave heritage or his master's family and would visit that family on the Eastern Shore. Douglass understood that Christian doctrine dictates that transgressors should be forgiven.
Before the Civil War, Douglass had adopted slave-owning Thomas Jefferson as an "intellectual father figure" and encouraged Lincoln, who was not an abolitionist (and who harbored unsavory sentiments about blacks), to see that the Declaration of Independence was the true "soul" of the American experience. He also urged that Lincoln use the exigencies of war to elevate himself and the nation to a higher plateau.
It can be argued that this particular memorial to Davis in Mississippi is tacit admission that he was, indeed, the president of a new nation, one that Lincoln simply refused to recognize.
Like the Revolutionary War, the Civil War was a war of secession. The 11 Confederate states declared their independence from the federal union in a manner similar to the way the 13 Colonies rebelled against the authority of England. Thus, our victorious and beloved Stars and Stripes is as much a rebel flag as the defeated Stars and Bars of the Confederacy.
With the capital moved from Montgomery, Ala., to Richmond, the Confederates could make the claim that they were indeed revolutionaries, that it was they, not the Unionists, who were the true sons of the Founding Fathers of 1776. Upon defeating England, the 13 new states voluntarily entered the Union, and thus they reserved for themselves the right to exit voluntarily from the Union.
Lest we forget, South Carolina seceded alone. Such was the essence of the concept of "states rights," the right of a state not to have to surrender its sovereignty.
There are many other links between the Colonial rebellion and the Confederate rebellion. Jefferson Davis was named in honor of Thomas Jefferson. The Confederacy's vice president was Alexander Hamilton Stevens, named in honor of Alexander Hamilton, principal co-author of the Federalist Papers. The Confederate ambassador to England was James Mason, the grandson of Virginia statesman George Mason, and for a while the Confederacy's secretary of war was George Randolph, the grandson of Thomas Jefferson.
Accompanying Lee at Appomattox was Lt. Col. Charles Marshall, the grandson of U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall, who served in that office from 1801 to 1835 and was also a colonel in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.
Jefferson Davis was a remarkable American, compiling a resume of achievement in public office that few could equal. A West Point graduate, he was a Mexican War hero, and he served Mississippi as a member of both houses of the U.S. Congress. He was also secretary of war during Franklin Pierce's administration. And he was one of the original trustees of the Smithsonian Institution. Many felt that with such stellar credentials, he was destined eventually to become president of the United States.
The most glaring difference between Lincoln and Davis was in their use of language. Lincoln as president was a master of political poetry. Although Davis was well-educated and well-read, the capacity to write and articulate the immutable, eloquent line escaped him. His speeches and letters were thoughtful and well-constructed, but they lacked art. Politics is always an art, and mostly it is the art of compromise.
If Davis ever came to this understanding while in office, it obviously was much too late to have any effect. Temperamentally, Davis did not want to lead the South as much as he wanted to fight, literally, for the South. He saw himself as an Alexander, Caesar or Napoleon.
Many historians have argued that Davis was his own worst enemy, that his exceeding attention to military matters caused him to neglect the need to neutralize and control the sensitive egos that composed the Confederate Congress. Also, he was never able to form lasting working partnerships with the powerful state governors, some of whom even threatened to secede from the Confederacy because of their difficulties in dealing with him.
In his desire to save the Confederacy by personally wielding a mighty sword, he was unable to effectively master the wielding of the always far mightier pen. This contributed significantly to his downfall. Thus, in the classic tragic tradition, he, like many others before and after him, was the architect of his own end.
Well before his death, Davis had been forgiven by most Southerners for his inability to lead the Confederacy to victory, and now, more than a century later, his adopted state has awarded him the eminence he so desperately desired. Finally, he never regained his citizenship, and thus he died as a man without a country, the only former Confederate to do so.
Professor Edward C. Smith is co-director of the American University Civil War Institute and a lecturer for The Smithsonian Institution.
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Publication Information: Article Title: Mississippi Builds Davis Library and Museum. Contributors: Edward C. Smith - author. Newspaper Title: The Washington Times. Publication Date: February 22, 1997. Page Number: 3. COPYRIGHT 1997 News World Communications, Inc.; COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group

Google Alert - African Americans in Mississippi - Google Docs

Google Alert - African Americans in Mississippi - Google Docs

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The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, the Grenada Movement and Dr. King
http://www.progressivehistorians.com/2008/01/mississippi-state-sovereignty.html

Remembering the 60s in Mississippi
http://chasblogs.blogspot.com/2008/01/part-five-black-churches-of-mississippi.html