In 1970 my father was transferred by his employer from Indiana to Clinton, Mississippi, just outside Jackson. This move coincided with the coming of court-ordered school integration to Mississippi. In Indiana our school had been integrated but there was only one black kid - that’s how white the town was. In Mississippi there were rumors that our new schools would be riven by knife fights and race riots.
There were no knife fights and no race riots because most of the white people who could afford it pulled their children out of public schools and set up all-white “academies.” They invented an entire white-only school system out of thin air in less than one year. Never let it be said Mississippians can’t move fast when inspired.
The schools were euphemistically called "Council schools." This was shorthand for "White Citizens Council," the political arm of the Ku Klux Klan and the most powerful force in Mississippi politics at that time.
My folks put us in the public school, at least partly because they couldn’t fathom paying for us to go to grade school, but also because they were the kind of parents who didn’t mind us going to school with black kids.
The current senator from Mississippi, Cindy Hyde-Smith, is three years younger than I. She was one of those people who left public school and went to an all-white segregation academy. Can't blame her for that - she was a child - but when she grew up, she sent her OWN daughter to a seg academy too.
I’m not saying that everybody who attended a seg academy is a racist today. But if you wonder where Cindy comes by her quaint opinions on hangings, and on the desirability of keeping black students from voting, remember where she came from.
I am quite sure that all my DKos friends in Mississippi will vote for Mike Espy, and I thank you, and fervently hope a lot of folks will do the same.