A Yankee in the Deep South

I'm fortunate enough to have relatives that are open to discussing many of their past experiences, which really lend themselves to being clear portals into history.  In American Studies class, we've been learning about slavery and what led up to racial segregation in southern states and this coincidentally aligned with a bit of childhood memory that my aunt relayed to me over winter break.  For a little background, my mom's family moved around quite a bit while she was growing up due to her father's line of work, and when her family moved from New York City to Vicksburg, Mississippi, you can imagine that it was quite a culture shock.  It was, by my deductions, akin to that in the film "My Cousin Vinny" where New Yorker Joe Pesci confusedly and hilariously asks, "What's a grit?" in an Alabama diner.

Although my mom in particular wasn't very old when she moved from New York to Mississippi, she did have four older siblings that remember living in the South very well.  One of those siblings is her sister, my aunt Marie, who divulged some old memories she had of Vicksburg to supplement the snapshots I've already gained from my mom.  My Aunt Marie said the southerners made fun of her distinctive New York accent, called her a Yankee, and even proclaimed that the Confederacy won the Civil War as they flew the Rebel Flag, all probably just to spite her.  My mom remembers young, Cajun men coming home at dinner time with knapsacks on their backs, squirrel tails and turtle shells popping out the tops.  People didn't wear shoes; smaller roads were never paved, thick forests encompassed the land directly behind houses.  It's somewhat hard to imagine that this is America in the late 1960s/early 1970s very close in time to when U.S. astronauts first landed on the moon in 1969.  Space travel and turtle soup for dinner, both in America at the same time.  Despite significant differences in society, my mom's family also experienced more significant differences in racial segregation while in Mississippi.

The U.S. Civil Rights Movement was in full force at this time and my relatives have told me that they attended one of the first integrated southern high schools in Mississippi, and the discomfort on the half the southern whites was noticeable.  Aunt Marie recalled with disgust and horror how it was commonplace on the bus for a white to get up and move seats if a black person sat down next to them.

A high school integration that has been most notable in the history books has involved the famously dubbed, "Little Rock Nine" which referred to nine black students who in 1957 chose to attend an all-white, Arkansas high school.  Fights and mobs broke out at the school and then President Eisenhower had to order in troops to protect the black students.  A short video and longer article by the History Channel said, "One of the nine, 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford, was surrounded by the mob, which threatened to lynch her."  The article also said that Little Rock's mayor actually ordered in troops to keep the black students out of the school to prevent any violence from erupting inside and that this opposition to integration was the staunchest since the Reconstruction Era.   

Mississippi officially integrated their high schools in 1970 (right as my mom's family moved there), but separation still persists.  In Charleston, Mississippi, NPR did a report on the first integrated prom at the local high school.  It was 2008.  While listening to the story, a Charleston High School then-recent graduate said that it's really the parents causing the separated proms.  She recounted a time that a black student wanted to enter the white prom to see some friends and was escorted out of the building.  The white prom, she said, involved the parents more, in that the fathers would dance with their daughters and the mothers with their sons.  What kind of differences do you see between racial tensions today and racial tensions of decades past?  What has changed and why?  Also, how have these racial tensions been charged by societal differences between the South and the North and how has the strength of this charge changed over the years?