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The Betty Blog

At Least on Some Days, It Is Good To Be from Mississippi

November 21, 2009

Of Red Satin, Southern Pride, Parenting and The First Amendment
or . . . At Least On Some Days, It Is Good To Be from Mississippi

My mom dressed me in a handmade red satin outfit for the Holiday Pageant at Culkin School near Vicksburg. My six-year-old heart filled with pride about the shiny red satin and the fur trim too. I stood on the school auditorium stage with classmates from Mrs. Beasley’s First Grade, and we gave our best for that song about the famous reindeer and the red nose.

Fifty years hence, my daughter is pointing out just now the report in today's Huffington Post of the KKK Rally at Ole Miss. It happened as alumni gathered for the annual football game against archrival LSU. The Mississippi Chapter of the Ku Klux Klan was on campus to protest the banning of a song called “From Dixie with Love.”

For several years, the fans at football games tacked on a chant - “The South will rise again!”- at the close of each performance by the marching band. This tune has thus joined Confederate flags and Colonel Reb mascots among game day elements no longer welcome in the stadium.

Now, here am I half a continent away, answering the call from my daughter who’s with my son-in-law at their home in Oxford near the campus. She guides me patiently to her facebook commentary on free speech, divergent opinions and the right to protest, and she points out the link she’s placed there to the HuffPost online coverage.

She speaks to me with pride of fellow alumni from this school known for tailgateing and high rankings on Newsweek’s list of top party schools. Perched at my screen in the hub of San Francisco’s very gay Castro district, I am listening and reading words she wrote on her facebook page: "Today we said no to hate."

We view photos and YouTube videos of Klansmen in bright costumes standing on the steps of an old chapel building where her granddad and grandmom, her uncle, her father and I, each in our own time, once attended lectures. She is adamant I must pay attention to the part in the videos and adjacent AP story about the counter protesters reading the University’s creed – students, faculty, staff and alumni reading in unison.

She points out to me where the designated free speech zone was on campus today and where it was also on the day of the first Presidential Debate between Obama and McCain. She reminds me of a photo she took of a poster declaring “Rednecks for Obama.”

I am preoccupied, though, peering at my screen. I am preoccupied with shiny satin Klan robes appearing digitally before me. The red one is trimmed in green. I see myself on stage in red satin with fur for the Holiday Pageant fifty years ago.

And, I see myself, a high school student, looking out the front door to see the KKK cross burning outside our home that night in the 1960s, during the era of desegregation. My father, her granddad, a Mississippi public school administrator, had refused to meet local Klan demands.

And it occurs to me that I, too, might be prideful on this day, during this phone and online visit with my child who's come to be an adult. It occurs to me that I, too, can have pride in being among Ole Miss alums nationwide who watch as this teapot tempest unfolds peacefully. And I am thankful it is exactly and no more than that.

And I enjoy the thought that there’s no need for me to speak of First Amendment rights on this phone call. No need, indeed, for in this conversation those rights have already been spoken of to me.

And I feel pride in being a parent deemed worthy of alerts from half a continent away, and that I have done my job and so can daydream about red satin memories of long ago.

And, finally, I feel pride that I may be ready, at last, to assume my own grand role in the audience applauding the next generation of singers who cheer for reindeer on a school stage somewhere, should that, in fact, be what comes to be.

Photos: Huffington Post Blog