Jonna Carter: Mississippi Burning

Wednesday evening we learned that Mississippi had, per the wickedly funny Scott Colom television ad gone viral, “picked another protein.” The state that for over 100 years ran rampant with racial abuse and subjugation, the state with the highest number (656) of documented lynchings, the state that was loathe to repeal its Jim Crow laws — that state will have its first Black U.S. senator since Reconstruction, and the first ever elected by voters. Colom defeated Cindy Hyde-Smith, the “let them eat cake” incumbent. I was thrilled that we effectively ended the Susan Collins era here in Maine, but I am over the top about Mississippi.

Mississippi is also the state that, just after midnight on April 12, 1963, saw the assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers. Evers was the NAACP’s first field representative in his home state. He’d been leading a fervent drive to register the historically disenfranchised Black voters, and for this he was gunned down in his driveway as his wife and three young children slept inside their home. President Kennedy had that very evening delivered his landmark civil rights speech declaring that our nation “was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.” Medgar Evers was 37.