I went hiking yesterday in the Mormon Mountains. During the one-hour drive to the trailhead, I chatted about stuff with my fellow hikers/neighbors, the Kasbergs.
I don’t know how we got on the subject of housing costs, but we began to talk about home renovations (as seen on HGTV programs). The Kasbergs hail from Indianapolis, Indiana so we chatted about “Good Bones”, which is a show about two women who buy homes in derelict neighborhoods, fix them up, and sell them for $300,000 plus. Linda Kasberg said that she found that hard to believe because that area of Indianapolis is not a part of town anyone would want to live in. (That’s a code for: “wrong side of the tracks”.)
I mentioned another show which Charlie and I watch, “Home Town”, in which the young couple remodel 100-year-old homes (that might cost under $100,000) and then sell the spiffed-up version for $250,000. I mentioned that we are immigrants from Southern California where $250,00 wouldn’t buy a closet, let alone a home. A lot might cost $250,000.
Yeah, Linda said, but that $250,000 remodeled home is in Laurel, Mississippi: “Who wants to live there?”
Good point, I said.
For one thing, Laurel is situated in the glide path of virtually every hurricane that heads north out of the Gulf of Mexico. The little town gets pummeled every year, sometimes multiple times. Flooding, huge trees uprooted, houses shredded, power outages… you name it, every manner of devastation occurs. The folks who live there must be gluttons for punishment. Those winter cyclones and hurricanes are bad enough, but the Summer weather is no picnic, either. The heat and humidity down there are ferocious, justifying several showers per day. Icky, sticky, yucky, sweaty… no thanks.
Laurel seems like an Eden on the HGTV show: beautiful tree-lined streets; a cute downtown with boutique shops; friendly folks with smiley faces, Southern charm, and lots of “Y’alls”. The hosts are proud of their town and its history: they wax nostalgically about historic townfolk who built and lived in the relic homes 100 years ago. “Fine upstanding folks”.
Personally, I think that there’s another reason why that little town has fallen into disrepair, why most people don’t want to live there, and why those homes with good bones are going for $70,000 to $100,000.
It’s the culture: No matter how much the current residents smile, layer on that Southern Charm, and brag about their Christianity and “family values”, one can’t forget the ugly past and, unfortunately, current ugliness, as well.
As in other parts of the former Confederate States of America, Mississippi has a hard time letting go of “The Lost Cause” and accepting Black Americans as full-fledged citizens and human beings. This seems to be a common thread in the so-called Bible Belt: do unto others as you would have them do unto you… unless their skin is darker than yours.
Ironically, I was perusing my Internet news sites yesterday when I found an article in the Washington Post about an ex-Mayor of Laurel, Mississippi who came up with an answer to the “Negro question”. (Gee, that sounded a lot like the “Jewish question” that Adolph Hitler and his Nazis were Hell bent to answer!)
One hundred years ago, on February 20, 1922, State Senator Torrey George McCallum of Mississippi (the ex-Mayor of Laurel) introduced a Resolution calling upon the Federal government to obtain sufficient territory in Africa (from European colonies there) to relocate “the American Negro”. The Resolution indicated that it would be a “final settlement” and “the final colonization” so that the United States could become “one in blood”.
The Resolution passed the Senate 25 to 9, and was favorably advanced by a House subcommittee, before being rejected by the House 40 to 32. A number of the votes against the Resolution came from plantation owners who employed large numbers of Negroes, the loss of whom would severely impact their agricultural businesses. It was more a pocketbook issue to these Representatives, who otherwise would have favored the idea.
The Resolution would have force-exiled American citizens, all of whom by 1922 had been born in the United States. Their ancestors, going back to the original slaves accompanying the Pilgrims, were force-immigrated into the Americas, where they were bought and sold like goats and kegs of beer.
These would-be pawns in McCallum’s Resolution could trace their American roots back at least as far as Senator McCallum’s family. The excuse given for the urgency of the Resolution was “race consciousness”, a problem besetting White Americans like McCollum and his voting constituency in Mississippi.
It is interesting to note that in 1922, Negroes made up 52 percent of the population of Mississippi… more than the majority of the State. However, these Black Americans had little political power, as there were Jim Crow laws in effect, that limited their ability to vote, attend public schools, eat at local restaurants, buy property, and even drink water from a public faucet.
The Civil War had ended more than a half-century earlier, the Negro slaves had been “freed”, and they were theoretically American citizens. However, they weren’t treated that way in Mississippi and in the town of Laurel. Local Klu Klux Klanmen made sure that the traditional social order was maintained.
There have been another five generations of Mississippians since the early 1920’s (over 150 years since the Emancipation Proclamation), and the politicians in Mississippi are still finding ways to make it difficult for African Americans to vote in Laurel and other communities. The current White residents of these towns, including the young HGTV home renovators, are certainly not responsible for the acts of their forefathers. However, they and their neighbors continue to elect politicians to public office who openly discriminate against people of color.
The Mississippi state flag had a stars-and-bars Confederate flag on it until last year. The University of Mississippi athletic teams are still named “The Ole Miss Rebels”. Those “rebels” that Mississippians are so proud of are the guys who fought to preserve human slavery in the United States. Some habits die hard.
I’ve got to believe that most Americans don’t agree with this type of racial bullying and that’s probably a key reason why people aren’t flocking to those fantastic real estate deals down in Laurel, Mississippi.
The weather is shit and so is the fake charm.